by Anastasia Strgar

I wouldn’t say I was surprised when I discovered Kim Kardashian’s divorce the other day, but I will say I was a little disgusted. Any respect that I had for her previously (which was very little, mind you) disappeared in a pouf when I read her statement about the divorce, which said something along the lines of expecting a fairytale… Although we’d all love to be Cinderella, the truth is that fairy tales are fairy tales for a reason- note the word “tale.”

Now, I don’t normally follow the messy realities of what celebrities call their lives because I’m mostly just interested in what their next show, movie or album will be. I don’t really like to buy into celebrity hype. They’re just people, after all, which is why I laugh whenever I see those “Celebrities Are Just Like Us” pages in Us Magazine that say things like, “See! Celebrities wear their hair the same way you do when they go to the grocery store!” But with a media that celebrates their messy lives and half-lived relationships and reality TV marriages, it’s nice for the occasional reminder that I was right all along. Why do we buy into the celebrity hype? Is it because we don’t love ourselves enough to lead our own? We like trash talking pretty much anyone? Regardless of the reason, it’s easy to see why our divorce rate is so high.

When we look at celebrities behaving irresponsibly, having babies really young, or getting married 5 times in a 7-year period, we often say to ourselves- well, Kim Kardashian did it, why can’t I? If, instead, celebrities banded together and actually tried to have a real marriage or actually, committed to anything, we’d probably say to ourselves, “Well if so-and-so can do be married for 25 years, so can I.” And not to say there aren’t celebrities hosting long-term monogamous relationships or marriages- think Mark Wahlberg, Will Smith and Tim McGraw, but why don’t we look up to these couples instead of the ones screwing up all the time?

Marriage is hard and it’s not for everyone- but we could cut the divorce rate way down if people felt absolutely sure before they entered marriage, went to pre-marriage counseling and knew what we were getting into. Being married should not be taken lightly. It’s not a fairytale. After all, you never actually find out how Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty ended up after they got the princes.

So let’s take a step back and get out of their lives and into our own. Let’s learn to love ourselves and take gossip for what it is- gossip. Maybe if we stopped watching reality TV (which isn’t real, mind you), reading celebrity-laden magazines (which are often photo-shopped) and gave up how much we care about what they do or don’t do, maybe they’d start acting differently. If not, then we can at least stop being influenced by their messy personal lives. We’ve got our own to manage.

Anastasia Strgar, a recent graduate from the University of Oregon with a B.A  in journalism, has been writing about love and relationships for several years. She has written short stories and romance novels, penned the love and sex column  in the  school newspaper and wrote several blogs. As the eldest of founder Wendy Strgar’s four children, she has been inspired by watching her parents’ marriage and strives to put those lessons to use in her own relationship. She believes that teaching her peers early on about how to maintain healthy relationships  is essential to creating a future generation of loving partnerships. She currently works as the Director of Public Relations and Magazine Editor at Good Clean Love.