  Just look how having a child has enabled the once-wayward starlet Nicole Richie to completely make over her image. |
For awhile there, a good decade or so, being single was the thing to do.
We dissected everything associated with the concept, from dating to sex to right-hand rings to how singletons affect the travel industry and the real estate market.
Even Dr. Phil chimed in with a heinous how-to and equally offensive prime-time special.
It was a trend sparked when Candace Bushnell began writing her Carrie Bradshaw columns in the New York Observer back in 1994, turning them into a book a year later and, from 1998 to 2004, a seminal HBO series, Sex and the City.
At around the same time, Brit writer Helen Fielding had created Bridget Jones for a column in The Independent in 1995, later spawning a book, two movies, and hundreds of copycats. In the middle, from 1998 to 2004, there was Ally McBeal.
"Single life" became a legitimate newspaper beat, and the rise of Internet dating brought even more of a spotlight. If only the expert attention paid to singles were turned to say, the Middle East, things might have been pretty much fixed over there.
American comedian Greg Behrendt was there when our obsession hit a fever pitch, working as a consultant on Sex and the City when he uttered the catch phrase "He's just not that into you." It was famously inserted into a 2003 episode and became a 2004 best-selling book. Later this year, He's Just Not That Into You hits the screens as a star-studded feature film.
In hindsight, one could argue Behrendt's famous words proved the apex of the public's fascination.
His third book, due out later this year, seems to call out and cut through the very industry which made him very rich and somewhat famous.
After all, it's called It's Just a F---ing Date.
Behrendt says the book is his attempt to cut through all that's been written and said in a genre he calls "overthought and overanalyzed."
"It's basically about actually using dating as a way to get to know people," he said. "It's a remarkably new idea, but people don't date, they hook up, they have sex on the third date. They don't spend time actually dating, and actually dating other people at the same time, while also saying to people, 'you know, it's just a date, don't make such a bit deal out of it.'"
It will be interesting to see if another dating book, even by the likes of Behrendt, will sell in a society which has clearly moved on. Because these days we have entirely new obsessions: Couples, weddings, pregnancy and babies.
Just look how having a child has enabled the once-wayward starlet Nicole Richie to completely make over her image. Celebrities such as Halle Berry and Salma Hayak upped their wattage simply by conceiving.
Waddling Canuck Ellen Page in Juno is currently ruling the box office, hot on the heels of last year's hot comedy Knocked Up. Now that a couple of weeks have passed, it doesn't seem all that weird anymore that Jamie-Lynn Spears is pregnant. Even May's release of the Sex and the City movie will reflect our boredom with singles. After all, when the series wrapped, all four main characters were firmly ensconced in serious relationships.
Trends come and go, but it's no wonder pop culture is reflecting how bored we are by single stories.
They've been done to death.
Behrendt knows he's partially to blame, which may be where It's Just a F---ing Date comes from.
"There are days where I actually feel guilty about putting more into the workplace," he said. "I'm, like, maybe we'll just have these two books and then leave it alone."
