What Materialists Gets Right About Being a Single Woman Over 30
Materialists forces us to say the quiet part out loud:
in this world, single women over 30 are not anyone’s priority.
And honestly? That’s 100% my kind of rom-com.
Because for as long as we’ve been handed love stories, women were taught to believe that happiness arrives in the shape of a man — the meet-cute, the plot twist, the inevitable happily-ever-after. But Celine Song cracks that fairytale wide open and gives us something closer to the truth: the ache of wanting love while living in a culture that treats your worth like a depreciating asset.
She takes the tension women feel — the deserving, the longing, the quiet fear of “is it too late for me?” — and shoves it right in our faces. Not to shame us. To free us.
To remind us that there is nothing wrong with wanting to feel valued in a world that keeps telling you you’re not the older you get.
What makes Materialists so striking isn’t the love triangle — it’s the honesty.
The way Lucy’s job as a high-end matchmaker gives us an unfiltered look into how people actually measure each other. No softening, no pretending, no “love is blind” delusion. Just the raw math of desirability.
It’s uncomfortable because it’s true.
Lucy understands something most women learn the hard way: people don’t date based on who you are.
They date based on what you’re worth to them.
Height. Income. Age. Race. Stability. Beauty. Proximity to the life they want.
And whether people admit it or not, dating data is the most brutally honest mirror we have.
I’ve said this before: because of the necessity and format of online dating, apps have unintentionally created the most accurate database of human bias. A place where all the quiet preferences and unspoken prejudices rise to the surface.
For women over 30 — especially Black women — this honesty is painful, but it’s also clarifying.
It means you can finally stop being gaslit about our dating experiences.
You can stop blaming yourself for ”not trying hard enough.”
The system is rigged because people are, and the data shows it.
And in a world obsessed with fairytales, I’ll take the truth over delusion any day. Because honesty gives us back something patriarchy has worked desperately to steal from women:
our agency.
our desires.
our right to stop performing and start choosing ourselves.
There’s a moment in Materialists that cracked something open in me — and in every woman I know who’s lived long enough to stop pretending she doesn’t have needs.
Lucy sits across from Harry, the wealthy, stable man who sees her with an ease she’s not used to. And when he asks why she likes him, she doesn’t say he’s kind or funny or attractive.
She says,
“Because you make me feel valuable.”
And he answers,
“You are valuable.”
That’s it.
That’s the whole movie.
That’s the whole dating experience for women over 30.
That’s the quiet hunger most of us have been taught to swallow.
Because beneath every conversation about “standards” or “timelines” or “not settling,” there is one truth women rarely say out loud:
We want to feel valued.
Not tolerated.
Not chosen out of convenience.
Not appreciated only for what we can give, fix, or stabilize.
Valued — for who we are, and matched for what we actually bring to the table.
And yet the world acts like wanting that is asking for too much.
It tells women over 30 to be grateful for whatever attention they can get.
It punishes women who wait for reciprocity.
It mocks women who want emotional safety.
It pressures women to shrink their needs so they don’t “intimidate him”
So when Lucy says, “You make me feel valuable,” she isn’t being dramatic — she’s telling the truth so many women choke on:
being treated like you matter shouldn’t feel like a luxury. But for so many of us, it does.
This is why that line hits every single woman who’s ever wondered if maybe the problem is her — her standards, her expectations, her timeline, her body, her age.
It’s not you.
It’s the world you grew up in — a world that forgot a woman's inherent value unless it’s attached to someone else.
A world that has never taught women how to feel valuable on their own terms.
Here’s the part we don’t like to admit out loud:
women have always been taught that their value is measured by how useful they are to men.
For generations, a woman’s worth was tied to what she could offer — her beauty, her obedience, her nurturing, her ability to make a man’s life smoother, softer, easier. And even today, no matter how modern or “evolved” we think dating has become, those old expectations still sit under everything.
We were raised to serve patriarchy, not ourselves.
From girlhood, we learn that being chosen is an achievement.
That being accommodating is a virtue.
That being desired is the highest form of validation.
That being self-sufficient makes us “too much,” and being discerning makes us “too picky.”
How well you make things easier for men has always determined your place in the hierarchy.
But what happens when you don’t want to trade your career, your craft, or your sanity for a partnership that expects you to carry all the emotional labor?
What happens when you’ve survived enough disappointment to grow a healthy skepticism?
What happens when you know you deserve beautiful, honest love — but not at the cost of your dignity?
You become a woman who carries two truths at once:
you trust yourself more deeply than ever, and you’re tired of doing life alone.
You crave connection, but not if it means abandoning yourself.
You want companionship, but not if it requires becoming smaller.
And still — society pathologizes you.
It calls you “too independent.”
It calls you “intimidating.”
It calls you “picky.”
It calls you everything except what you actually are:
a cultural tastemaker, a kinkeeper, a woman who refuses to collapse her value to fit inside a man’s expectations.
So how does a woman continue to bloom in a world that keeps trying to shrink her?
Materialists doesn’t answer that with a fairytale romance — it answers it through the relationships women build with each other.
Because for all its talk of love, the real tenderness in this film isn’t in the love triangle.
It’s in the moments when Lucy shows up for women.
Like the bride with cold feet, spiraling minutes before walking down the aisle. In her panic, she blurts out one of the pettiest, most vulnerable things she’s never admitted out loud — that she’s partially marrying this man because he’s a better catch than her sister’s husband, and she likes knowing it makes her sister jealous.
It’s messy.
It’s human.
It’s the kind of confession women only trust other women with.
And Lucy doesn’t flinch.
She doesn’t shame her or moralize it.
She validates the complexity of it — the insecurity, the comparison, the tenderness underneath the pettiness — and somehow that helps the bride walk down the aisle grounded in her full humanity.
Or the client who was sexually assaulted on a date Lucy set up — who didn’t call the police, or her parents, or her friends.
She called Lucy.
And what did Lucy do?
She came running.
She stayed over.
She made her the priority.
She helped her feel safe again.
She rebuilt trust in a world where women are too often left holding their fear alone.
These are the real love stories of the film — not the ring, not the love triangle, not the reunion with her ex.
Lucy wins because she becomes a woman rooted in purpose and integrity.
A woman who levels up in her career without abandoning her values.
A woman who protects women in a system designed to protect men.
A woman who keeps choosing honesty in an industry built on fantasy.
Her engagement is the least interesting part of her arc.
Her commitment to women is the most.
And that’s the truth so many women forget:
We bloom when we are held by women.
We expand when we’re seen by women.
We grow when we’re in community with women who remind us of our value — not because we are partnered, but because we are human.
Women don’t bloom alone.
They bloom in the presence of other women who say:
You matter.
You are valuable.
You don’t have to shrink here.
If you felt something reading this — that tug in your chest, that exhale you didn’t realize you were holding — it’s because you recognize what Lucy teaches us:
Women don’t thrive by shrinking themselves for love.
Women thrive when they’re seen, held, and valued by other women.
And the truth is, so many of us are doing this life alone when we were never meant to.
We’re carrying the weight of our dreams, our healing, our ambitions, our loneliness, our hope — quietly, privately — while the world keeps telling us our value depends on being chosen.
But we are allowed to choose ourselves.
We are allowed to choose each other.
And if there’s a part of you craving that — a space where you don’t have to perform, or pretend, or fight to be taken seriously — I built one for us.
A space where being a single woman isn’t a problem to solve.
A space where your value isn’t debated.
A space where you can come as you are — messy, hopeful, exhausted, growing — and still feel held.
It’s called The Village.
A community of women who are blooming on their own terms, together.
If you want to be surrounded by women who remind you every day that you are valuable — not because of your relationship status, but because of your humanity — you’re invited.
Come join us.
Come be seen.
Come bloom.
