Courting Controversy: New Book Says Women Should 'Marry Rich'
AIN'T LOVE QUAINT
Courting Controversy: New Book Says Women Should Marry 'Money'
By N. Stag
THERE'S A NEW BOOK OUT ENTITLED, Smart Girls Marry Money: How Women Have Been Duped Into the Romantic Dream -- And How They're Paying For It.
The authors contend in an AOL interview that marrying up and staying married is the best financial plan for women.
The way I see it, there is almost nothing practical about marrying at all. But then, I think people with babies shouldn't be allowed on planes and that kissing couples in public are tacky.
Here's my question: can women who marry for money be happy? Can they convince themselves that romantic love is unnecessary and not worth pursuing?
According to the authors, "the most important statistic, over the course of your lifetime, is how much do you make." But what they fail to consider is that the idea of being old, rich and loveless sounds terrifying to most of us. No one says, “forget Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, I want to end up like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations.
People get married because they are young and want a wedding while they look good, because they are pregnant, because they think they won’t find anything better, because they are "in love."
People get divorced because they can't stand to be constantly reminded of their own fleeting delusion.
But divorcing women "don't recognize that, as they age, they're less marketable on the marriage market,” according to Daniela Drake, the book's co-author. Do you seriously think women don't know this?
People have always married for reasons other than love, and people have always believed in love, and that love was the reason they lived, or even the reason they got married.
Many people fall in love, and some of those people have fallen out of love, and, more recently, many of them get divorced. Personally, I'm of the opinion that no one is going to write a book that can change the way all of that works out, again and again, for the rest of time.
N. Stag is a graduate of the University of Michigan and winner of seven writing awards for fiction and fashion-writing. She has written for many websites and currently teaches English.
Tags: Pop Culture
