The so called “Ideal Age” ©

Sitting with friends over a hookah (technically that was a couple of hookahs) the topic moved to marriage. This was a much talked about topic on many conversations with girlfriends over the last year. We had all reached that time in life when we were done with our studies, the post grads and had been working  and the next question which most people would ask us was- what plans for marriage. So inevitably this topic did shift into most of our hookah table conversations. This conversation was like the others nothing different- discussed the same thing. Arranged vs. love marriage, family adjustment, adjustment for women, living with family vs. living alone and then ofcourse the ideal age to get married. The entire ‘ideal age’ of marriage part stayed with me. Possibly because the consensus was that it was around 25 to 26 and I was already 25; soon turning 26 and definitely not getting married anytime soon. The other thing that stayed with me was the consensus that guys had no ideal age to get married and they could get married anytime.

I kept pondering on these two things even after I was home to much later in the night. Why was it that women had an ideal age and men could walk away with “when they felt like”?

Most of it does have to do with our society. In India, a woman’s life is only supposed to begin after she is married while a man must fully enjoy his life before he commits to marriage. It’s like for women marriage is supposed to be ultimate dream come true while for men it is the life they must run away from as long as they can. Then there is obviously the biological reason. A man is born with a lifetime supply of his sperm (well mostly lifetime). But a women’s stock is limited. It’s like Adam and Eve had a race where the prize was lifetime supply of the ‘get preggers’ stock and Eve lost, so now we all suffer the brunt of her failure. Imagine if this would have been reversed and men would actually be the ones with the ‘limited validity’? Would it not be so much fun? In every relationship it would be the guy who would say “Baby, I am getting old we should get married.” Or how about “Honey, let’s have a kid soon before it becomes difficult for me?” Then it would be men chasing the ‘good ripe’ women before they got hooked up so as to get settled and make babies. Just close your eyes and imagine this for 2 minutes. I bet you will be “Laughing out Loud!”

So are these the only reasons? Ofcourse apart from these there is the ‘shallow cosmetic’ reason. Every girl wants to get married when she is her youthful best looking, before the white hair and wrinkles make an onset. Now most men age like wine and they could not care less either ways. Every young male heartthrob has just become hotter as years went by. Even your college crush has just become hotter. But for us women, it’s like a downward slope as we grow older unless you are a beauty queen and constantly in the eye of the media with 100 people helping you with your fitness regime, 200 people helping you cover up what even the fitness regime can’t change and 1 very important doctor who can undo the work of even 300 years on your skin, ass, boobs and any other place you thought no one would even look at. So unless you are the rich and the famous you are bound to age in the not so “Jennifer Aniston” fashion.

So as a conclusion there are 3 main reasons that make us define our ideal age- society cum parents, ‘preggers’ stock and we ourselves. If we look at it logically, 2 out of these 3 are indirectly or directly in our control. And if we control the majority we could actually push and define this age like we wanted. And should we not? I know this is not a change that would happen so easily, but even if few of us change our thinking would it not affect our future generations and so on? Ofcourse there would always be those annoying aunties and uncle who have no better work than to ask you when you want to get married but atleast one would not feel pressurized by it since there would no so called ideal age.

People want to start big revolutions but can we also start this ‘small sa’ revolution so that one day no 25 year old girl will feel that now it is her age to get married so she should start wanting to and planning for it even if she did not feel ready for it? And that marriage even for women becomes something to be done when they are  so in love that they want to be married or maybe when they themselves want their parents to start looking for the perfect guy because they themselves want to begin the next chapter in their lives and not cause it is the ideal age to.

Revolution ‘No Ideal Age’ anyone? ;D