I’ve spoken before about how Amanda Bynes’ tweets make me kind of sad and they seem to be those of someone that just wants desperately to find The One and won’t be happy until she does. It seems that she’s only happy when she’s in love.
This one really stuck out to me:
Like, really? Immediately? What’s the rush? I mean, if you want to get married, great, but what’s so bad about being with someone, being in love with them, and taking your time with the getting married part? I don’t see why that piece of paper needs to be the focus. You don’t need a piece of paper to make your relationship meaningful and legitimate.
Well, then came this one:
Eesh. She’s 24, you guys. TWENTY-FOUR. Is being unmarried at 24 really that terrible? It’s not the 1950′s anymore. People don’t expect 24-year-olds to be married.
I guess these tweets just make me sad. It’s sad that she seems to put that much pressure on trying to get married. Marriage is great, if that’s what you want, but I feel like being so desperate for it is a really unhealthy thing. It shouldn’t be the end all and be all of how you define whether or not you’re successful in life.
I'm Britni, a snarky bitch and generally awesome person. I write about sex, love, and bullshit. If sex-positivity, discussions about BDSM and kink, queer issues, and topics that are completely inappropriate by society's standards make you uncomfortable, then this blog is not for you.
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In my opinion, being so desperate for marriage can only lead to an unhappy one. Sometimes love can blind you to who a person really is. You shouldn’t rush right into marriage. Take some time and learn more about the person first. If she’s so desperate, she can just get engaged or even have a promise ring to make her feel better for right now. She sounds so lonely and it could go deeper than just wanting a mate. If that’s so, getting married won’t fix anything. And it’s never good to bring baggage into a marriage. Thanks to hubby and all his luggage, we’ve learned that.
Dude, I had friends like this. It seemed really pathetic how they like, NEEDED TO BE MARRIED IMMEDIATELY at 23. And one admitted she was just marrying the guy because he’d “be a good provider for her children.” Ugh.
People who want to get married just to get married make me sad.
I’ve been reading a bit recently about the concerns about delayed maturity and Generation Y. Even those more thoughtful articles that emphasize the economic realities that might cause twenty-somethings to come later to financial independence and career security than previous generations still make one infuriating assumption–that getting married and having kids always equates with maturity. The posts you highlight here remind us that there is no such connection–a desire for marriage can just as easily be a sign of a lack of emotional maturity.
The part of these generation narratives that always seems to go unquestioned is the notion that choosing not to engage in a state-sanctioned (and sometimes Church sanctioned) union equates with immaturity; that making a considered decision not to reproduce (for those who can, without technological intervention, reproduce) is also evidence of immaturity. I’m with Kant who stated in “What is Enlightenment?” that the definition of immaturity is uncritically following the path laid out for you intellectually and socially by previous generations and abdicating the right to think about these issues for yourself.
I also wish more people would think critically about marriage in general (shout out to Laura Kipnis) and gay marriage in particular. I like to think of Michael Warner as the conscience of the mainstream LGBT movement in this regard, a gadfly who raises uncomfortable issues in the public square. What follows is from an interview several years ago about his wonderful book The Trouble With Normal, but it’s still trenchant and relevant today:
“Marriage is the perfect extension of that politics [of assimilation]. It confers status on people by rendering sex invisibly private and presumptively normative. And it gives people that status at the expense of others, while pretending merely to honor their private love and commitment . . .
The current system of marriage will continue to be one of privilege even if same-sex couples are admitted. The line will be drawn at marital status, rather than sexual orientation, but is that really the ideal we’re fighting for? Because marriage has become the vehicle for a great load of privileges, and because it confers status that has a great deal of normative force, it is an inherently discriminatory system. Many conservatives will have the courage to say that frankly. To them, it’s the good thing about marriage. What seems less defensible to me is the position of so may gay marriage advocates, who still pretend that marriage is just a private choice, or a personal right, as though participating in this institution has no consequence for others.”
I totally get what you’re saying, but I think we all do a lot of unhealthy things and I feel weird criticizing the way one particular person wants to live their life. That’s just me though.
I also wanted to say that we have no idea why Bynes wants to get married or how she views marriage. Maybe she doesn’t look at it as just a piece of paper. Maybe she just wants to find a life partner and she thinks that marriage is the way to go about it (which I think is the bigger issue here). Does that make her tweets less creepy? Not really. But we can’t forget that our views are not necessarily her views.
If I’d followed the advice in her first tweet, I’d have married my first boyfriend. I wouldn’t BE married to him now — it would probably have lasted about 2 years. Terrible advice, and I feel bad for her that she honestly seems to think that way.
I have a friend like this. She’s only 4 days older than I am and she’s constantly talking about her wedding. When she asks about my “wedding plans”, and I say that I don’t really have any interest in marriage, she looks at me like I have 2 heads.
It’s gets to be just a tad annoying.