Let me preface this article by making it abundantly clear that I do not worship at the altar of celebrity. In fact I’ve reached a point where if there’s even a hint that a woman has a liking or admiration for a Kardashian, my manhood goes softer than a block of cheese in the sun. That being said, I saw two things in the celebrity realm recently which got me thinking. Before you ask, no, I didn’t wonder if I could pull off the plunging scoop-neck t-shirt look like Kanye West…because neither can he. I’m talking about the George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin wedding, and Emma Watson speaking at the UN on gender equality.
Clooney’s status as the perennial Hollywood playboy bachelor has been unrivalled since, well, since he became George Clooney. He’s a dual Academy Award winner. Dual Sexiest Man Alive winner. With that, came a steady line of would-be Mrs Clooneys, that never quite fit the bill. He still lapped it up, and why wouldn’t he? Sure, it’d be easy to think of him as an egomaniac for the reasons I’ve just described. He probably is. But if you remove Clooney from his Academy Award acceptance speech, which was so self-righteous it inspired its own South Park episode, you’re left with a man whose passions and convictions run deeper than his pockets. He’s a committed human rights activist, and not one of those pretend celebrity activists either – the man did get arrested for protesting outside the Sudanese embassy, after all. So it stands to reason, after vowing to never take marriage vows ever again, he’d decide to empty his harem of actresses and models, and spend his life with a world-renowned human rights barrister, author, and activist. On that point, you could just as easily take the position that indeed it’s she who bucked the trend – the world-renowned human rights barrister who married a celebrity. But I digress.
Also see “The First Date” by Mr. J
The point is, people say your options for a life partner decrease as you get older. But that has less to do with your receding hair line, and more to do with the people we’ve met in our lives, who’ve shaped our experiences and expectations of humanity itself. With age, comes experience. And with that experience, comes an understanding of what matters most. If someone doesn’t embody the qualities you respect, why settle? Personally, I’d sooner crawl across a public bathroom floor with open cuts across my chest, than have to sit and pretend the Kardashians are remotely relevant or enviable. With each year I grow older, the more resolute I’ve become in what I would expect from a partner – a woman of substance, of conviction, of style, of grace, of humility, of empathy, and of course, beauty. She doesn’t have to be able to give a speech on the importance of gender equality to the UN General Assembly, nor does she have to have been Julian Assange’s legal representative. But she does need to have an understanding her self-worth isn’t measured by the amount of Instagram likes she gets. That idolising a woman whose springboard to fame was a leaked sex tape, sets the bar so low there’s a risk of tripping over it and smacking our faces on the floor. She needs to have an understanding of what matters, and if she shares your passions and ignites a fire in you, marry her. If I can’t have that now, then like Clooney, I’ll wait. I’ll also wait for my two Academy Awards and Sexiest Man Alive awards. Let’s see which comes first.
Read more of Mr. J’s article here!
