Spinster focused on a single lost love, destined to go unmarried unless the lover returns. Tina Fey's portrayal of her character Liz Lemon, on the hit NBC series "30 Rock", exemplifies another classic spinster stereotype. Lemon, a 40-something single woman whose relationships never seem to work out, has unrealistically high expectations for a male partner: her dream husband is the archetypal "Astronaut Mike Dexter", and for much of the series her character is holding out on settling on a man until she can score an astronaut. Unpopped popcorn kernels have been dubbed "old maids" in popular slang, since like unmarried women
The Spinster and Her Enemies The Women's Forum". "The Spinster and Her Enemies" received positive reviews from the biographer Phyllis Grosskurth in "The Times Literary Supplement", the historian Lillian Faderman in the "American Journal of Sociology", and Penny Summerfield in "Victorian Studies". The book was also reviewed by Anne Summers in "Sociology of Health & Illness", Judith Wishnia in "Contemporary Sociology", the historian Marilyn Lake in "Signs", and Ruth Doell in the "Journal of Homosexuality", and discussed by Margaret Hunt in "Feminist Review". Grosskurth, writing in 1986, called "The Spinster and Her Enemies" one of the best studies on the "struggle of women in history"