I have something to admit. I swoon over Josh and Fergie.
I don’t follow their careers, and I definitely don’t consider myself a fan of either of their work.
But I adore them, probably because they strike that hard-to-find balance between the fantasy of fame and sweet mundane-ness of ordinary life.
By some rights, they are the typical Hollywood couple: the pop star diva and the small screen hunk who fell in love on set.
By others, they defy celebrity convention:
- They had nothing to gain politically or professionally by allying themselves in matrimony. [Just like regular people!]
- They dated for years before their engagement, stayed engaged for 13 months, and had a relatively traditional wedding and honeymoon. [The type of sustaining and sustainable romance everyone envies!]
- They did a luscious spread on newlywed - dare I say newlybed? - bliss for next month’s Elle magazine. [Fantastic famous people glamour!]
And here they are, on vacation again, looking pretty normal.
*sigh* Don’t change, kids!
Some hotels in India are putting the kibosh on sex in their rooms, cramping the styles of honeymooning couples.
There’s a battle brewing over happily ever after.
Recent research has told us that love is little more than a cascade of neurochemical reactions. And so, one day, like the story of Tristan and Isolde, love scientists will be able to create a love potion for lovers to use (responsibly, of course.)
Contrast that with fables like Cinderella which continue to cheerily inform our modern outlook, reminding us that marriage is really about having and holding onto your one true love.
Whether cautioning against meddling with destiny or providing a litany of reasons to yield to it, rewarming these gooey fairytales does more than connect us to our ancestral past. Both situations showcase acts of social rebellion masquerading as notions of romance. Both hint at the series of revolutionary changes which will shock and reshape marriage for centuries to come.
Until the middle ages, in Europe and elsewhere, marriages were arranged to consolidate relationships between families and produce heirs, rather than to sate the desires of young, hormone-drenched suitors.
Speed through renaissance, past the Industrial Revolution and into the 20th century. Finally, marriages begin to reflect personal choice and more and more often, are driven by romantic love. Courtships now span weeks and sometimes even months. Popular culture openly mythologizes newlyweds’ and their sex lives.
Fast-forward farther into the post-war era, specifically the 1970’s. Feminism complicates domestic life and (rightly) politicizes personal choices.
Full stop at 1975, the year that CBC interviewed Dr. Benjamin Small, a Chicago divorce expert. (Here, you can listen to the clip online). Said Small, every one of the couples he counseled suffered from “messy marriages” due to romanticized views of love carried over from childhood. There’s also a psychological need to correct a defective childhood self-image he says, as couples are “hoping to get from the person we marry, the good feelings we should have gotten from our parents.”
And with that, the backlash against modern marriage began, ultimately reaching its pop-culture nadir in marriage-hating sitcoms and their big screen equivalents, both teasing bonerless husbands for capitulating to their hot but shrewy wives.
With the official ushering-in of the Obama era just days away, I declare that era to be officially over; let the Newlybed Revolution begin.
Much of the western world now recognizes marriage as a civil and religious institution that allows for a permanent union between two consenting people, whatever their intentions - producing and raising offspring, aligning families and strengthening ties of kin, getting medical/financial/legal benefits, and — yes — even whiling the years away in the throes of passionate, romantic love. In sum, marriage has proven a sufficiently elastic and durable institution to house a broad range of desires.
What remains in jeopardy, however, is newlyweddery. Romantic love is still the central thrust of many an engagement, but weddings have supplanted marriages in their importance and focus. Put another way, too often the end result of months and years of courtship, party planning, and dress-picking is an eight-hour, $28, 000 ego-fest that would make even Cinderella cringe.
In an era of post-nuptial depression, it’s a wonder that newlywed bliss exists at all. The constant prompting by lifestyle mags like The Nest to reallocate newfound spare time (freed up, no doubt, by an obvious want of checklist-checking and tanning appointments) to short-term goals and nest feathering. That, and the expected been-there-done-that familiarity of spouse as a sex partner is enough to take the fun out of being newly married.
This misses many points, namely mine as a blogger dedicated to exploring a lifetime of lust. Being a newlywed is more than adjusting bathroom routines and choosing wallpaper. Ideally, it’s a time to privately celebrate all that you pledged on your wedding day and to revel in the possibility of your marriage. It’s also about incubating and nurturing good habits, many of them in the bedroom.
To recast newlyweddery as the destination and not merely another pit-stop on the journey towards happily ever after, be it resolved that newlyweds are entitled, encouraged and expected to:
- Relax, indulge and decompress
- Spend as much time in their newlybed as humanly possible
- Try on new roles and explore new identities as married partners
- Ignore the lure of home depot
- Read. Especially good blogs.
One of the funnest, bestest things about Mad Men-era mag ads is the narrative thrust to the sales pitches. It wasn’t enough to just show a smiling EveryGirl and throw up an evocative/emotive catchphrase.
No sirree! You needed to ’splain things with a proper setup. The formula changes a bit, but here’s the jist of it, illustrated by the ad below:
1.) Girl/woman is made to feel shameful about some totally natural and usually biologically determined feature, like her period or, in this case, her big hair.
2.) She expresses said shame to an expert, who recommends an appropriate space age remedy. Science to the rescue!
3.) Girl/woman returns to the scene of original shaming to find that she’s! now! socially! acceptable!
4.) Much older daddy figure squires her away.
What’s not explained here is that when Daddy finally carts Mrs. Hayhead to their makeshift newlybed (in this case, the very romantic backseat of the “Haywagon”) he’s rather shocked that her locks don’t hold their lustre very long.
Hey wait a minute! Doesn’t Mrs. Hayhead’s hair look just like it did before? Ohhhhhhhh.
BTW - Thanks, Ad*Access!
I may never have witnessed Steve and Eydie’s onstage shtick, but I can attest to their outright adorableness. I mean, don’t these kids look, ahem, affectionate in this vintage Mad Men era photo for Life Magazine?
Lust abounds! We see it in the way their groins align in this near horizontal pose, the way Steve is nuzzling into her face and chest, and the way Eydie’s wide-grinned smirk seems to be inviting him to take her below deck.
That kind of chemistry is unfakeable; they’re still performing together after 49 years.