It takes two to tango, horizontally and at your wedding reception

Posted at 7:23 AM Aug 28, 2008

By Andrea Grimes

It's unofficial Nuptials Day here at HD...you guys hang on a sec, I'm trying to book a bad DJ to play a lot of '70s pop.

Avril Lavigne was just 22 years old when she married that Sum 41 dude. Scarlett Johansson is 23 and engaged to Ryan Reynolds. Newlywed Jessica Simpson (remember those days?) married Nick Lachey at age 22. Even Brandy married some guy at age 22, then had his kid later that year. Young celebrity marriages have always kind of blown my mind -- why do the perma-shack-up when you're young, beautiful, and wealthy beyond belief?

Probably because you're young, beautiful and wealthy beyond belief, if you've read yesterday's AlterNet article by Eriche Goode of Sirens mag on why young women no longer marry young. Apparently us go-getting twentysomething gals are too busy with our careers, our social lives, our cats, our travels, hell -- everything -- to worry about walking down the aisle, helping raise the average age of marriage for women from 20 in the 1950's to 26 in 2006. Celebrities who've already done the traveling, the careering, the social living are probably prematurely ready to hunker down and play house.

What struck me about the article, other than the revelation of explaining why anyone would want to marry Avril Lavigne, was that it totally ignored the extremely obvious fact that it takes two people to get married. Young men aren't any more interested in getting married, and they've delayed their marriage age by the same six year gap. They do have a longer fertile period than women, which might explain why men in their thirties and forties would be less inclined to marry, but in the case of twentysomethings, I don't think the issue is relevant at all.

The whole concept is a non-shocker. We do everything at a later age these days, so why would marriage be an exception? Or, maybe us raging feminists just don't hitch up because we can't make cupcakes. And men do love cupcakes.