Portrait of a Happy Lady, via The Onion

She is the picture of happiness and fulfillment. She is always positive and upbeat, regardless of the circumstances. She is happy when she is in a relationship and happy to be out of a relationship.

She's not just happy: she's excited. In fact, she lives in a state of constant excitation. For her the glass is always full.

Her moods are so consistent, her emotions are so constant, that she seems divorced from the reality of her life. One suspects that she has been taking happiness pills.

The only saving grace is that she isn’t real. She’s a caricature, cooked up by the writers at The Onion.

In their psychological portrait of fictional Ann Castlen the writers provide us with a picture of a goal that young people have been told they should attain.

The Onion describes her well:

Just six months after claiming she was ecstatic about moving in with her boyfriend, and a mere eight weeks after announcing that she "couldn't be happier" with their decision to take a brief time apart, administrative assistant Ann Castlen, 26, told friends Monday that she was absolutely thrilled to be single.

"Free at last!" Castlen said, nearly a year to the day after she informed several coworkers that she was emotionally ready to settle down and have children. "It's like this giant weight has been lifted off me and I can finally breathe. I'm just going to enjoy this time alone and do all those things I was dying to do when I was bogged down with [ex-boyfriend] Brandon [Weiter]."

According to friends, Castlen has expressed nearly identical feelings of elation upon returning to the dating scene, entering the initial phase of monogamous courtship, getting back together with an ex-boyfriend, developing a crush on a coworker, going on a series of blind dates, trying an open relationship, trying a long- distance relationship, and meeting a guy in a bar and having a passionate fling that she doesn't expect to go anywhere.

Castlen’s attitude is so relentlessly optimistic that she is devoid of human emotion.

The Onion sums it up:

Having such an optimistic outlook on her love life is not uncommon for Castlen, who since reaching dating age has undergone more than 23 changes in relationship status, ranging from long-term abstinence to a brief but intense affair with a married man. The 26-year-old has also celebrated three serious relationships that lasted the perfect length of time, five just-what-she-needed dumpings, two hookups with ex-boyfriends that "gave her closure," and an abruptly canceled engagement that Castlen said she couldn't have planned better herself.