This inquiry examines single women’s replies to the media’s stereotyping of single womanhood. Using the third-person effect framework, the inquiry employs data collected from survey of single women in urban China to explore how they observed stereotyped media message as affecting themselves and two notable stakeholders in marriage choices (parents and unmarried peers). The findings disclosed important third-person perceptions in evaluating the perceived impact of a detrimental ad for a matchmaking service. The third-person effect seemed to be bigger when unmarried peers were selected as the reference group for single women with higher education levels and for single women from families scoring high in conformity communication orientation and low in conversation orientation. The behavioral element of third-person perceptions was more aligned with the impact of the presumed effect, which indicates that single women counteracted as they were concerned with the negative impact of media on parents and peers.