Friends:

Ok, ok, so I missed one week… shoot me.  I have a very good excuse:  our computer at home fried and I did not have access to a computer or the internet to create my weekly post.  So hopefully you missed it, your week was unfulfilled because of it, and you have been counting the hours until Monday morning to see if it was an aberration or a monumental change in your life.  Rest assured, it was just an aberration.

As I was waiting in the check-out line the other day, a headline on a magazine caught my attention and I felt that it could not go without comment.  At the outset, I feel I would be remiss if I did not offer my congratulations to Jennifer Aniston on finally finding the love of her life and accepting a proposal for marriage.  As a devoted fan and concerned party, America’s Sweetheart deserves love and happiness and I could not be happier for her.  May she and Justin find the same undying love that Angelina and Brad found… ooh, too soon?

Anyway, the latest issue of US Magazine (I think, or maybe one of the other rags) had Jen-Jen (as I like to call her, my own little pet name) on the cover, celebrating her engagement, with the following headline across its cover:  “Why She Said Yes.”  Such compelling reading, don’t you think?

So why did Jen-Jen say yes?  How about because she loves him???  How about because she and he are soul-mates, are MFEO, and are each other’s best friend?  Aren’t those reasons why people get married?  Maybe not, because the question posed by the magazine assumes that there are reasons other than true love for why people get married.  I know those are the reasons why I married my wife but maybe celebrities are that much different than us, the regular people, that an explanation is required for why they get married. 

Without reading the story in the magazine, perhaps I can hypothesize as to the answer to the question posed on the cover as to why Jen-Jen said yes:

1)      Because Jen-Jen is 43 years old and all the world has been pulling for her to find someone to settle down with that she caved to the pressure and said yes to the first guy she dated for more than a few months; or

2)      Because she hasn’t had a hit movie in quite a few years and she was worried that her popularity would be waning without some new reason to be in the public eye; or

3)      Because her fiancé is pretty well unknown and he is looking to catapult into the upper echelon of Hollywood’s elite; or

4)      Because E! Entertainment Television is paying her millions of dollars to televise her wedding… wait, that one has been done before; or

5)       Because she has dated every other single man in Hollywood and this was the last one available.

I know that I am being far too acerbic but what do you expect when you have a headline like that?  It just seems so asinine and begs the question of what is wrong with society if we need to question the motives behind why people marry.  Instead of the headline of why she said yes, perhaps it could have simply declared that Jen-Jen’s search for true love has finally ended with Justin and oh how happy we all should be for her.  But the wording of the headline made it seem as if there was some reason other than true love that led to her acceptance of the proposal… especially when the reports from a few weeks ago were that they had broken up. 

Look, I understand what the headline was intended to do; it was attempting to draw in the reader with promises of all of the great things about Justin that makes Jen-Jen swoon, what it was about him that she fell in love with, and things of that nature.  But my mind doesn’t work that way and whereas enquiring minds may want to know the truth, the headline made it seem as if there was something else.

In an age when the divorce rate continues to rise, shouldn’t we simply be focusing on all of the great things about marriage and the happiness and lifelong companionship that can be enjoyed in a mutually loving relationship?  When there are couples out there who are legally prohibited from marrying, do we really need to be bombarded with the headline of why she said yes??  How about just the fact that she said yes and she could not be happier.  I think that would be much less ridiculous.