Feminism, relationships and the power of the BuzzFeed quiz

There was a point in my life, sometime last year, when I didn’t know what BuzzFeed was. Sometimes, I wish I could go back to that point in my life. I hate BuzzFeed. I think it’s dumb, I think it’s basic and I think it’s useless. But the worst part of Buzzfeed is that when I am trying to write a paper for an English class or study vocabulary for my Spanish test, I instead find myself on it, trying to determine whether it was President Obama or a character from Adventure Time who said, “People make mistakes. It’s part of growing up. And you never really stop growing up.” (It was an Adventure Time character, by the way. I got a 10 out of 10 on the quiz.) In other words, although I hate BuzzFeed, I love BuzzFeed, and as I was scrolling through its labyrinth the other day a quiz popped up entitled "We Know Why You’re Actually Single." That’s an odd title, I thought, but since it looked more intriguing than my homework, I clicked on it. It was seven questions long, and surprisingly, the outcomes were pretty all right. One was, "you’re too independent to be in a relationship," and another was "you’re too sexy for everyone." The ensuing descriptions were positive, ending with the advice to "keep doing you." At first, I was impressed because this quiz took something that is generally seen as negative -- being single -- and turned it into something positive. Yet the fact that this quiz is even plausible is still pretty ridiculous because its existence depends on the societal stereotype that single women, not men, must have a reason to be single.

Just look at the webpage design. All the pictures are of women, and the questions were created with women in mind. But there are plenty of single men out there, so why don’t they need an excuse for being single? I don’t know, but this quiz exemplifies society’s expectation that a woman must have a reason for not being in a relationship. In other words, a woman can’t simply be single because she wants to or because she hasn’t found the right person. She must have an excuse, like focusing on her career or being unable to get a boyfriend. Men and their relationship statuses, on the other hand, simply aren’t questioned as much. And, let’s be honest, that’s ridiculous; there are plenty of people in the world who aren’t in relationships not because they can’t be, but because they’re simply not interested.

This quiz also identifies the ridiculous idea that a woman’s relationship status is not only her business. One of the questions is labeled “what your mother is always asking you.” The answers range from a meek, "Are you seeing anyone new?" to "When will I have grandchildren?" When I got to this question, I honestly had no idea what to answer. Personally, my mother is definitely more worried about whether or not I’ve done my homework and changed my sheets than my relationship status. After all, this is not the 1800s, and unlike Mrs. Bennet, my mother had more to worry about than marrying off her three children.

At first, I was somewhat impressed by the irony in this quiz. It revealed some pretty horrible ideas in our society. Yet, the more I picked it apart, the more problematic this quiz became. Though this quiz mocks a societal stereotype of women, it targets a very specific type of woman. For example, the first question of the quiz is to pick an emoji that represents your love life. There are six options, and three of those options make it clear exactly what kind of woman this quiz is for. One option is an image of nail painting, another is a woman dressed in pink with her hand up -- that’s a horrible description, but you know the one -- and a third is two dancing ladies. How these represent someone’s love life, I have no idea, but given the amount of pink in these choices, it is clear that the quiz is not for all women, but particularly cisgendered women. Another question is entitled, "pick your celebrity crush," and all the options are males. That’s a bit odd because I’m pretty sure lesbians can be single too. Now, it’s fine to target a certain audience, but when a quiz is labeled "We Know Why You’re Single," and targets women, shouldn’t it target all types of women?

Now perhaps I am being nit-picky here. After all, it’s just BuzzFeed. Really, who gives BuzzFeed that much credit? Yet though BuzzFeed might be dumb and ridiculous most of the time, it is a website with more than 200 million viewers. This particular quiz had 136,558 the last time I checked. That’s a substantial number of people looking at this quiz. BuzzFeed may just be a website for time-wasting, but it is powerful, and the content of the website can subtly enforce or work to destroy many of society’s stereotypes out there. I would argue this quiz, in particular, does both. And though it might seem inane to write an article on one internet quiz, this quiz shows just how alive gender stereotypes are. In fact, a quick Google search of the quiz title "We Know Why You’re Really Single" comes up with 436 million results, and the top sites are certainly geared towards women. In other words, even in 2015, there is still this absurd idea that if you’re a single woman, there is something wrong with you and really, you should be in a relationship.