Patting Ourselves on the Back

I love Marie Claire - pre-Joanna Coles, post-Joanna Coles, I don't really care. I just think it's a great magazine. It actually requires neurons, it's not the same thing every week, and I actually learn more than new sex positions every time I read it.
However, this last issue was a little disappointing, particularly their choice of first-person essay. I remember when I had to write a first-person essay for my magazine article class - yes, it's hard to pick a subject, and "my year in a seminary where everyone was anorexic" may not sound like a fabulous topic either, so I suppose I should be able to cut them some slack, but come on - this article was about a woman who (gasp!) got married at 24.
Yup, that's it. That's her thing.
Twenty-four. Can you imagine that being news? So, for once, I decided to actually take Editor-in-Chief Joanna Coles' "write me any time!" seriously, and I wrote her an e-mail telling her how absurd I thought it was to call that newsworthy. I explained that I am 23, getting married in 3 weeks, and that about 30 of my friends invited to the wedding are married, and that the only people where I come from who think that getting married at 24 is news are those who wonder what the hell they're waiting for.
And then I realized just how impressive we are. Not we, who are getting married at early ages, but "we," the crazy little "modern" sect of the chosen people who've chosen to overflow the Upper West Side. We work our asses off in legitimate, 4-year colleges, and force ourselves to do WELL. We do everything we can to have a healthy, successful relationship with someone who's on the same page, with the same values, who wants what we want. We all plan on having families, and we do our best to work out our life plans to incorporate children, and still, we have careers. And so I wrote:

We're not talking girls who were raised to get married at 21 to pop out babies and spend their lives as stay-at-home-moms. We've all gone to and graduated college, some ivy league. We nearly all have careers, which don't stop when we have children. We expect, and are expected, to have it all - young. So somehow, this article just didn't do it for us.

The funny thing is, I didn't think about it before I wrote it; I thought about it after I wrote it. It just came out. I mean God, we work so hard to have the most complete lives, and we don't even think twice about the fact that we're attempting to achieve what some people never do by the time we hit our mid-twenties! We strive to hit the big 3-0 with a diploma on the wall, a ring on the finger, a child in the bassinet, and a job to go to in the morning, and we never take a minute to think about how incredible that is.
Monica, Ross, Chandler, Phoebe, Rachel, Joey, Will, Grace, E, Vinny, Drama, Turtle, Charlotte, Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, Barb, Nicki, Margene, Jerry, Elaine, George, Kramer...whoever your favorite TV character is, they didn't have these things down. The ones with steady relationships don't have jobs, the ones with children aren't really in relationships, and the ones who are the most successful don't even go to college. In fact, in all the major shows I can think of, the only one who seems to have really gotten it down is Ari. And I think we all know what religion he is.

Now, I'm not saying one isn't successful without all these things (Lord knows I'm not exactly 9-5ing it these days), or that Jews are the only ones in this position (although frankly, it doesn't look like the Christians on "Engaged and Underaged" are also working in law firms, investment banks, or going to medical school), but I'm just saying that every once in a while, we should take a step back and give ourselves an A for effort and a pat on the back and realize that just because it's what's expected doesn't mean we had to rise to the challenge.