a dark day

someone recently quoted one of those empty, if a little frightening statistics to me, saying, "did you know that 51% of the women in the world are single?" i was unconvinced. what does it mean, this 51%? does that count children? the elderly? lesbians in relationships? i wanted to know more. then i forgot all about it. then my friend lis brought me this map and i'll never be the same.
this map of the US from national geographic is based on US census data. my questions about the age and sexual orientation included in the data remain unanswered, but just take a looksee. the big orange dots represent areas where there are more single women than men. the bigger the dot, the bigger the difference in numbers of single men and women. (Blue dots are places with more single men)
a closer look reveals that the "Largest female plurality" exists in the NYC area with single women outnumbering single men by 185,000. in a city of what, 8 million?, maybe that shouldn't be so startling...but it sure sounds bleak to me. i do see some nice blue dots around my homestate...