She presses the button on her answering machine, knowing her mother surely has left another message. “I met the perfect man for you the other day,” echoes the voice of 64-year-old Alice Herold on the machine. But the filmmaker, Kara Herold, an alum of the SF State cinema department doesn’t want to listen—not only because her mother’s suggested suitor is an already-married Republican, but because she is entirely content with being single. In her new film, Bachelorette, 34, Kara documents this on-going struggle to convince her mother that she is happy.

Kara’s lifestyle is not odd. In fact, earlier this year The New York Times reported that there are now more single women than married women in the United States. Divorced and widowed women are included in this figure, but it is clear that many women are also choosing to marry later in life—the average age of first marriages has increased from 20 in 1960 to 26 today. Kara, along with countless other women, is out to prove that marriage is not a necessary component for happiness. “It’s more like icing on the cake as opposed to the full meal,” she says.

The American female role has changed dramatically since Alice married her husband when she was 19. Alice says her marriage is going strong, but in a world filled with divorce and unhappy marriages, even the children of the happiest couples lose trust in marriage, according to divorce expert Dr. Julia Lewis of SF State.

After the feminist movements of the ’60s and ’70s, it is now socially acceptable for women to seek careers and become self-sufficient, eliminating the need to marry. Birth control pills have also helped prevent women’s lives from being dictated by unwanted pregnancies. “I think women want more options,” Kara says. “They realize it’s better to be single than it is to be in a relationship for the sake of it.”

When Kara set out to make Bachelorette, 34, she wanted to explain this cultural phenomenon to the masses, but struggled to find an interesting storyline. The narrative wasn’t always centered on Kara’s often-funny arguments with her mother. The original idea, in fact, was to cover the movement of the “quirkyalones”—a name given to happy, single women like herself. Kara toyed with the idea of focusing on other people’s experiences for months, but discovered that her relationship with her mom is the perfect allegory for the film.

Kara says that when she first read the now-famous short essay “Quirkyalone,” written by her close friend, Sasha Cagen, it immediately struck a chord. And the concept has quickly spread. Cagen says she received hundreds of emails, letters and even some mix tapes in the mail thanking her for what she wrote in the essay. In 2004, she released Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics—a book further explaining her ideas. Cagen declares that single women are not “old maids,” but rather the ultimate romantics—people who refuse to cheapen love or marriage by rushing into it.

To share the film with her friends, Kara has set up a screening in a basement-level room of the Grace Cathedral. While she works the crowd before the screening, her mother sits alone a few rows from the screen.

Primarily, Alice is just tired, and the dim fluorescent lighting isn’t helping. But she’s also anxious about what the San Francisco audience will think of her role in the film. She has laid down on the tracks for her daughter by allowing her daughter to share their private interactions in the film, knowing that her opinions about marriage are antiquated. But she is brave enough to show her face amid a room filled with people who are certainly on the other side of the issue.

After watching Bachelorette, 34, Cagen stands in applause and the Herolds take the stage for an audience Q&A. “Is anyone available?” Alice blurts out with a smile, clearly not fazed by the practically all-female audience and still half-hoping for a response. She claims that the film hasn’t swayed her and the quest to find her daughter a man continues. After a few questions from the audience, Alice flees the scene—still worried about what the audience’s criticisms.

But Alice really isn’t as hell-bent on finding her daughter a husband as she appears in the film, or at least not anymore. It’s true that she still pesters Kara on occasion, but when pressed, she says that all she wants is for her daughter to be happy and safe and that marriage is not a sure-fire solution. “It wouldn’t matter whether it was male or female, married or unmarried,” she later says privately. “I just want someone who will care about her after I’m gone.”