Maria Bello’s Anti-Marriage Vows

by Jesse Kornbluth

In this back-and-forth, we see the tension that surrounds the woman who’s single and okay with it—even if she didn’t quite plan it that way. As Anne Marie O’Connor notes in “Portrait of a 21st Century Spinster”, the idea that single women are losers is a media conceit; in real life, more women are getting comfy with the reality of living alone and having the occasional casual relationship to add spice. Marketers tiptoe around this attitudinal shift—a high-placed female executive told me she recently saw research about a category called “women on their own.” Seems condescending. And odd. Single men are offered a neutral descriptor: “bachelor.”

Why is the only one-word noun for single women of a certain age…spinster? “We need to come up with another word,” Bello suggests.

But two language mavens come up blank. “Maybe,” she says at last, “let’s reclaim ‘spinster.’”

But Bello hasn’t wasted her time worrying about labels or status. “I grew up in a family without money,” she says, matter-of-factly. “My dad broke his back on a construction site when I was young. He was never able to work, and we lived on the edge financially. I realized early on that I could survive.” After high school outside of Philadelphia, she moved on to Villanova University, where she studied political science and set her sights on law. But you know the story: All it took was one acting class. And then, as soon as the ink was dry on her diploma, she hurried off to New York. Her worldly goods were in a trash bag. Her bankroll was $300.

Once on the golden isle, Bello tended bar, walked dogs, took classes—the stations of the cross for beginning actresses. At the same time, she was searching, and in the most disciplined way. “When I wasn’t working, I was studying [spirituality]: goddess, Native American, Buddhism,” she says. But when I ask where she found her wisest teacher, her formal reading falls away.