{"id":2089,"date":"2011-01-30T11:39:46","date_gmt":"2011-01-30T16:39:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/?p=2089"},"modified":"2011-01-30T11:39:46","modified_gmt":"2011-01-30T16:39:46","slug":"love-marriage-and-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/2011\/01\/love-marriage-and-status\/","title":{"rendered":"Love, marriage, and status"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was thinking about Katie Holmes Thursday morning while I was shoveling snow. Strictly speaking, that’s not actually true. I wasn’t really thinking about anything but because I’d read a blurb about Michelle Williams who starred in Dawson’s Creek<\/em> with Katie Holmes my brain made one of those weird leaps it makes while I’m doing repetitive work.<\/p>\n

Speculation about Tom Cruise’s sexuality is no great secret. A relatively benign search of the Interwebs yields a wealth of theories some of which are even vaguely supported by actual evidence<\/acronym>. When you combine the Church of Scientology’s shaky position on homosexuality<\/a> with Cruise’s high ranking position in that institution, it wouldn’t be so shocking to believe that his marriage to Katie Holmes is less about love and more about business.<\/p>\n

And from here things got weird in my brain.<\/p>\n

Let’s accept the idea that their marriage is not the modern love match their publicists would have us believe. It’s not a big stretch; at the time they were in the news daily even Holmes’ parents were worried<\/a> about such an idea. Given that no one can really say how the two connected in the first place<\/a> – he’s 16 years older than she is and they didn’t exactly run in the same social circles given his A-level celebrity and her “oh my god, the only thing I’m known for has been off the air for two years and my career is stalling” celebrity – they probably didn’t meet in an organic way.<\/p>\n

Let’s also accept the idea that for one reason or another Tom Cruise felt the need to remarry and in some way produce a biological child<\/acronym>. The conclusion that Holmes made a deal to marry this man, be his wife, and bear a child for him in return for a certain lifestyle and, perhaps, certain career advancements, isn’t doesn’t seem farfetched.<\/p>\n

The modern reaction to this conclusion is, of course, horror because somewhere along the line we’ve gotten the idea that marriage is about love, an idea totally unsupported by history. But put in an historical context, how is such an arrangement between Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes really any different than what commonly happened to girls of royal-adjacent or merchant families right up through the 1800s<\/acronym>? It’s really not, the only difference is, theoretically, Katie Holmes made the choice herself rather than having had it made for her by her father.<\/p>\n

The question I couldn’t answer, though, as I shoveled away, was whether or not there’s anything wrong with making an agreement like this.<\/p>\n

True, whether or not you advance in the world has less to do with what family you’re born into<\/acronym> than it did in the past so “making a respectable marriage” and birthing your children into a good standing in society isn’t nearly as important as it was even when Jane Austen was alive which means there’s really less justification for this type of arrangement.<\/p>\n

Yet, the theory promoted by cultures that still engage in arranged marriages is that having a solid foundation of a common culture and common beliefs allows love to grow over time to form a good, working partnership. There may be some credence to this theory given that the divorce rate in cultures that marry for love hovers somewhere near the 50% mark<\/a> (pdf)<\/span>.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure I have a conclusion but it’s something that bears thinking about in a country that still can’t give a justification for why legal rights under the law aren’t available to all. And for those that object to this lack of conclusion, I refer you to this blog’s title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was thinking about Katie Holmes Thursday morning while I was shoveling snow. Strictly speaking, that’s not actually true. I wasn’t really thinking about anything but because I’d read a blurb about Michelle Williams who starred in Dawson’s Creek with Katie Holmes my brain made one of those weird leaps it makes while I’m doing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-thoughts","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2089"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2096,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089\/revisions\/2096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}