Single ladies a menace to society?

"Must love dogs!"

"Must be generous!"

"Must be tall, dark and handsome!"
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OK, so women have some pretty stringent lists these days. But settling for a dude who doesn't comply with every one of our shopping list items might just be a better option than going at it alone. Especially since apparently single women are a "menace" to society.

Well, at least that's what Bill O'Reilly seems to think. Yep, according to an article in last weekend's The Sunday Life magazine, The Fox News host believes that single women who don't value the traditional family model have got it all wrong.

How dare they not want to be coupled-up and live in domestic bliss? How dare they not want to have a family! Kids! A house and a dog named Spot!

His anti-single-women sentiment was expressed after a comment was made by Hollywood star Jennifer Aniston while being interviewed about her latest flick The Switch, about a single woman who doesn't want to settle for just any man … yet still wants kids. And still attempts to have them … without doing the horizontal hanky panky.

"Women are realising more and more that they don't have to settle, they don't have to fiddle with a man to have a child," she told O'Reilly during the interview.

His response? He pooh-poohed her comments to the world, deriding women like her for being a "menace to society". Say what!?

Feeling the same wrath that comes with being a single girl about town, I know all too well how it plays out. The constant barrage of questions that come from everyone from single men to over-zealous grandparents, which go along the lines of, "You're single? What's wrong with you?" don't exactly make things any easier. And it seems I'm not the only one.

Case in point is the tale of my gorgeous model girlfriend who, after dating a string of bad boys and being in the tabloids for all the wrong reasons, found herself single, alone and over 30. Suddenly, she was more viciously attacked by the public and gossip columnists than ever before, forced to stay indoors with DVDs and rocky road ice-cream for one.

Fast forward to today - two years later - and she is about to get married to the man of her dreams. And suddenly the press and public alike have turned. Positive articles about her upcoming nuptials ricochet from glossy mags to tabloid rags, all gushing over her extravagant wedding and details of the man who stole her heart.

But here's the catch: he's nothing like the Brad Pitt look-alike she once thought she'd end up with. While some might be questioning their union, (obviously only the single ones who can't find their own Prince Charming), apparently there's a scientific reason as to why they do work.

Research has come out of the University of Sheffield and the University of Montpellier in France, announcing that we might want to forget this whole notion of the magic "ideal man list", because the study found that our actual partners are of a different height, weight and body mass index than those we would ideally choose.

Dr Phil would concur. If he is anything to go by, then we should never be in search of Mr 100% because then we're all going to be doomed. Instead, he says that, in order to be satisfied in our relationships, we need to pick a partner who ticks 80 per cent of the boxes on our checklist.

"The 100 per cent candidate doesn't exist," he says. "Instead of wasting time searching for an exact match, look for the guy who is free of the deal-breakers and has 80 per cent of what you do want in a partner. The other 20 per cent you can grow. If the guy has 80 per cent of what you want and potential to grow the extra 20 per cent, you have found your match."

It was American author Tom Robbins who once said, "We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love."

And he might just have a point ...