从碧昂丝和泰勒·斯威夫特歌曲中的单身女性，到菲比·沃勒-布里奇不羁的电视剧Fleabag（2016-2019），甚至更早的Great Expectations中的郝薇香小姐，受伤单身女性的刻板印象早已渗透到音乐、书籍、电视和好莱坞电影中。老处女的比喻、焚烧女巫的场景以及十九世纪对歇斯底里的诊断，都反映并持续影响着社会上关于单身人士的故事，其中最臭名昭著的是原版Fatal Attraction（1987），而广为人知的则是Single White Female（1992）和Promising Young Woman（2020）。

在《单身就是罪》一书中，作者Caroline Young探讨了更广泛的社会趋势，例如20世纪80年代的反女权主义浪潮、当代关于“传统妻子”和“无子女猫女”的争论，以及荧幕上少数有色人种单身女性的缺席，这些趋势塑造了女性被（错误）看待和（不）受对待的方式。杨将刻板印象的历史与她作为单身女性对抗污名的抗争以及与不孕不育的斗争交织在一起，在这部平易近人、精辟的揭露主流媒体最经久不衰的陈词滥调之一的著作中，将深刻的分析与个人经历融为一体。

《单身就是罪：流行文化如何造就了不稳定的单身女性》为围绕#MeToo 运动和社会对女性的期望的持续对话增添了活力。

好评：

Both academics and pop culture enthusiasts will find this skillful analysis of 'horrifying' single women insightful and thought-provoking.

~Tamy Burnett, coeditor of The Literary Angel: Essays on Influences and Traditions Reflected in the Joss Whedon Series

What a wonderful book! As an 'unstable single woman' myself, I thoroughly enjoyed Caroline Young's can't-put-it-down look at how pop culture (movies, TV, music videos, etc.) has chastised or encouraged over-thirty single women for the past sixty years. This is not an angry, humorless rant—it is a sometimes nostalgic, sometimes funny, sometimes infuriating trip. Young also achieves the impossible: she weaves in stories of her own life, and they fit the book naturally and unobtrusively, like the songs in Oklahoma! Pop culture fans, women, and men as well should snap this one up.

~Eve Golden, author of Strictly Dynamite: The Sensational Life of Lupe Velez

Timely and perceptive, Caroline Young's Single & Psycho is a fascinating exploration of pop culture—and of the way Hollywood's eternally limited depictions of women have impacted all our lives.

~Elizabeth Weitzman, film critic and author of Renegade Women in Film and TV

An insightful and deeply personal journey through movies and TV, one single lady at a time.

~Becky Darke, film and pop culture critic

Young's fascinating overview of attitudes to single women outlines all the stereotypes—sad spinster, conniving and sex-obsessed witch, psychotic bunny boiler, selfish career woman. She navigates this social history via a rich catalog of films, from The Best of Everything (1959) to Promising Young Woman (2020), alongside a moving personal memoir that describes her own struggles with being a single woman.

~Cathy Lomax, artist and editor of Arty and Garageland

A compelling assessment of the monsterfication of the single woman. Young combines an examination of the archetypes imposed on women, including the old maid, the witch, and the hysteric, with candid and personal confessions about her own experiences that illuminate her study.

~Rebecca McCallum, writer and host of Talking Hitchcock

A galvanizing exploration of how exactly the single woman became pop culture's favorite villain. Author Caroline Young deftly shows us the humanity behind a pervasive pop culture punching bag.

~Anna Bogutskaya, host of The Final Girls podcast and author of Unlikeable Female Characters and Feeding the Monster

关于作者：

Caroline Young is the author of several books, including The It Girls: Glamor, Celebrity, and Scandal, Hitchcock's Heroines, and Crazy Old Ladies: The Story of Hag Horror, which was nominated for both the Rondo Hatton Award and Richard Wall Memorial Award.