As a family therapist who also specializes in treating single men and women, my concern is different. Temptation Island has a detrimental effect on society's image of singles. We are a society that values marriage and, at best, is ambivalent about singles. Up until the last few decades, single women were seen as old maids and spinsters. As recently, as 1958, a study found that 98% of Americans thought a woman was single because she was "ugly, immoral, or neurotic."

Certainly, America has come a long way since then. In the past 25-30 years, with the help of television, the image of the swinging single has emerged. However, have we just swapped one stereotype for another? Has the old stereotype of the stigma of being single been replaced by the modern one of the glamorization of being single?

Starting with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, moving through Murphy Brown, Designing Women, to Sex in the City, Friends, and a host of other current shows, single women are idealized in television as living the good life, having lots of friends, professionally successful. Yet, even with this glamorized image, most of these media women are responding to the same underlying message that women have received for centuries -- find a man. My study on single women, along with a number of other studies, however, have found that men are only one part of a single woman's life. In fact, aside from the issue of wanting a man, the single life is quite satisfying for most women.

Women have struggled hard to be recognized as having fulfilled lives -- with or without a man. Unfortunately, in the year 2001, we now have a television show that undermines the progress they have made to be accepted as full fledged adults -without either stereotype.

There are at least three ways that Temptation Island is detrimental to singles. First, this show discounts the commitment that a man and woman make to each other -- just because they haven't legalized that commitment. The producers of Temptation Island are reported as having said they would not do this virtual show with married couples. When it was discovered that one couple's commitment was strong enough to parent their child, they were dropped from the show. Again, what does this say about singles: Only if you are parents is your commitment valid? Perhaps the producers don't know about the national organization, based in Boston, called Alternatives to Marriage Project.

Second, Temptation Island depicts singles as people looking to steal someone else's partner. Single women in particular complain they are confronted with this myth. For instance, when they are not invited to a dinner party where everyone else is married because (as the hostess willingly admits) the wives might feel threatened. There are probably very few singles who would "steal" a spouse over cocktails and coq-au-vin.

The producers may not have heard about The American Association for Single People (based in Los Angeles). Part of AASP’s agenda includes a public education campaign to dispel myths and stereotypes about single people so that unmarried Americans are viewed in a more realistic manner. Temptation Island certainly does just the opposite by depicting single people in a narrow and unfavorable way.

Third, the premise of the show, to see how committed a couple is by confronting them with a highly publicized temptation, besides being nasty, is flawed. Using singles as that temptation is unfair to the majority of singles who have a higher moral standard. If one of the partners on the show does fall for the artificial temptation, though, that is not necessarily a statement about the couple's lack of commitment. What it does do, though, is send this image of singles to the TV viewers, and studies have shown that television has been influential in changing Americans view of single women.