reasonable person, or bitter and cynical?

I tend to be somewhat underwhelmed about all the "celebrity news" that's out there. You know: "Starlet births baby!" or "Pretty couple marries!"

Yeah, yeah, great. Like no one's ever popped a sprog before or no one's ever got hitched before.

The breathless tone is what gets me - like we should all bow down in wonder, because these are Our Betters. (Considering some of the "correspondence" that some of them have written, considering some of the things I've heard them say, not all celebrities are Our Betters in the brainpower department. Some of them, in fact, seem to be as dumb as the proverbial sack of hammers.)

(An aside: I love that phrase. I also love all of the various phrases to indicate someone's not all there:

a taco short of a combination platter
the elevator doesn't go all the way to the top
three fries short of a Happy Meal (that one is my all-time favorite. One of my father's grad students used to use it a lot)
a few skeins short of a sweater
not the sharpest knife in the drawer
not the sharpest stick in the bundle
not the sharpest tool in the shed)

Anyway. Like I said, I'm largely underwhelmed hearing about people who are pretty and surrounded by sycophantic yes-men and who have armies of make up people and hairdressers spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a wedding. Yawn, whatever. You got the money, go ahead and spend it. Just don't ask me to be excited by it.

But this morning - I got a little testy. Seems Kid Rock and Pam Anderson are divorcing. After having had no fewer than three wedding ceremonies (What? The first two didn't take? I guess the third one didn't, either).

You know, maybe I'm just a bitter spinster who has to buy her own damn towels but the first thought that crossed my mind was, "Wow. I hope they gave back all the wedding presents." Because they were married for, what, three months?

(And again: I just get a little sickened by the burgeoning attitude of "I'm getting hitched, now gimme!" that seems to be arising in our culture. I have no problem with giving a nice wedding gift, especially to a couple that's just newly starting out, but I've seen cases of people invited to MULTIPLE bridal showers. Or cases where the couple asks for "money but not gifts," or where your getting to eat at the reception is largely contingent on how much the couple figures you'll cough up on a gift or check for them. Or cases where people actually RENEW THEIR DANG VOWS and ask for gifts. And I'm kind of opposed to the idea of people who are combining households - people who have had their own places for a long time - begging for stuff. And yeah, that would apply to me if some dude were stupid enough to ask me to marry him and if I actually decided it was a decent idea. I wouldn't expect people to buy me a whole set of dinnerware and flatware and sheets and stuff like that.)

And you know? I wonder at the whole celebrity-marriage thing. There are a lot of "romances" that start on the sets of movies and things - some that lead to marriage and others that break them up. I'm sure it's hard in such an emotionally charged atmosphere, but still.

And I wonder why some celebs marry for like three months at a time - this is not like the Olden Days where the woman might get knocked up (there's reliable birth control now, and besides, there's no longer any real stigma to having a child "out of wedlock" as the ancient phrase goes). Do they really think "this is the one that will work"? Are they blinded by the idea of "this is a good PR move, it will get my name in the papers"? (I suppose divorces do the same thing). Or are they just so blinded by passion and infatuation and not-having-known-the-person very long to fool themselves into thinking it will work?

Or is it that a lot of Hollywood marriages fail because the parties are too used to having the sycophantic yes-men and when they find their spouse is a real, three-dimensional person with a mind of their own and conflicting desires and they can't send them home at the end of the day, they freak out and can't deal with someone in such close proximity?

I don't know. All my knowledge of marriage is as someone on the outside looking in. But I have noticed certain things that may or may not be true, but seem to be in my experience:

1. Marriages do not seem to work well when one or both parties are immature. Where I live, there are a lot of really young (like 19-years-old young) marriages. But there are also a lot of divorces and a lot of multiply divorced people - I know people under 40 who have three marriages and three divorces under their belts.

2. Marriage takes a lot of work. You have to be able to compromise. You have to sometimes do things you might otherwise not want to do because it will make the other party involved happy. (And I think over time, in successful marriages, the "making the other party involved happy" becomes a joy that far outweighs any resistance to doing the thing).

3. You need to know the person pretty well. Yeah, yeah, I've heard about arranged marriages. I had a friend in high school whose parents came together as a result of an arranged marriage in India and they seemed happy. But I've also seen an awful lot of cases of people meeting, marrying three months later, and then divorcing. "Marry in haste, repent at leisure" is a proverb for a reason.

4. Selfish people probably have a harder time in a marriage. (Or at least if both parties are selfish).

5. Feeling martyred is not a good way to keep a marriage going. I've had too many friends who used me as a dumping ground for their "poor me, my husband is such a slob/jerk/workaholic stories" and it always seems to me that focusing on the bad like that isn't the way to be happy in a marriage.

6. Probably some people are best off not married. I think I am. I tend to be resentful of what seem to me to be unreasonable impositions on my time. I can do lots of things for a person I love, but I expect to hear some thanks once in a while and I get resentful when I feel taken for granted. And I'm so busy. I do not know how I would change the shape of my days to fit a boyfriend, let alone husband, in. And I like my solitude. I am constitutionally well-suited to being alone. I don't get bored and I don't often get lonely.

And I think maybe some of the serial-divorcers are people who are just consititutionally better-suited to being alone. But they either won't believe that (because being a loner means you're weird and just one step away from being either the Crazy Cat Lady or that person whom everyone says about, "I can't imagine he was a serial killer; he was so quiet and kept to himself."). Or they get so caught up in the idea that you're "supposed" to be married that they force themselves into a mold that may not work for them. Or they're afraid of looking gay.

And you know? I deal with those issues every day of my life. I've had people look at me in outright horror when they learn I am over 30 and single. (Perhaps I should take that as a compliment; maybe they are thinking, "but you are so smart and such a good cook and so lovely a person, why hasn't a Quality Man plucked you up yet?"). I've been in cases where I was the only one in the room without a spouse and kids in the middle of a conversation about the Cute Things Our Hubbies and Kids Do and I've sat there and thought about how I'd rather be home reading a book, seeing as the conversation has no interest for me and there's nothing I can contribute. Or, yeah, I've dealt with the "so are you gay or something?" question both directly and indirectly. (The answer: no. The elaboration: why should you care? If I said "yes" does that mean you're legally allowed to club me to death or something? I mean, that's an awfully intrusive and personal question to ask a person.)

But anyway. The whole "marry and then discard" thing just seems kind of silly to me. I mean - it's not like we stigmatize premarital sex any more (it's not like anyone even KNOWS for sure unless you're out scrumping on the steps of the Capitol building or something - in which case you should be arrested, not for having relations before marriage but for being a public eyesore). So there's no point in marrying someone solely so you can bed them.

I don't know. Cynically, I am leaning towards the "marriage-go-round is a way of keeping oneself in the Public Eye." I mean, don't get me wrong: I'm sure that celebrity divorces lead to a lot of heartache and such for the parties involved (especially if there are children involved who wind up getting screwed over yet again). But I'm also a little cynical about people who seem to marry without much maturity or knowledge of the other person or who seem to do so just as their careers are lagging.