Anyway, Back to the Patriarchy
A Case For Christian Marriage No Matter The Age Of The Happy Couple
Somehow this long thing went by me a few weeks ago. I saw people talking about it, but didn’t ever click. But now that I have, I thought it was quite interesting and worth a bit of attention. It’s written by someone named Grazie Sophia Christie who is 27 and who, by her cleverness of first getting into Harvard, and then deciding she didn’t want to kill herself with work, took the measurements of our society, and decided to marry someone much older.
She put on a revealing dress, summoned the spirit of Elle Woods, and snagged “an older man” before you could shake your cane at her and be diagnosed with osteoporosis. The lucky guy is ten years her senior, which, in my book, makes him still pretty young [get off my lawn, I mutter under my breath with my toothless gums]. Let’s dive in, shall we? Here is how she laid out her calculations:
I could study all I wanted, prove myself as exceptional as I liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. My youth. The newness of my face and body. Compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. I shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. The thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: I could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. Or I could just marry it early.
It’s the “it” there in the last line that sort of makes me shudder. It should read, “Or I could just marry early,” which is a very sensible thing to do, and, I would add, made even more sensible by having several children right away while you still have the energy. La Christie, at the time of writing, is 27 and is still “thinking about it” which makes her not that smart. But yes, she has noticed something true and essential. The whole business of having to bash on at Harvard and then get some soul-crushing data entry job is cruel. The very years that would be best for bearing and raising children are swallowed up by the locusts of corporate mindlessness. She is only thinking of her beauty—but what is that even for, if not to also have children? Anyway, she found her guy with very little trouble:
Of course I just fell in love. Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal, and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.
I mean, oh my word, I would love to consider a thing called “ease.” What even is that? No one knows. Well, maybe she has a bit of an inclination. But as the reader encounters all the psychological work she has to do to justify herself, “Ease” isn’t exactly the word that springs to mind. More like “Cope.”
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