don’t just want this in relation to the small stuff, but across the board. Less restriction and more freedom. Fewer penalties, more value for money. They want a life that’s high definition, good quality and convenient, without endless, disproportionate financial penalties for putting their tape in somebody else’s machine.
Ironically, even in Hollywood, where all these dreams are bought and sold, marriage rarely ends well. Actor Robin Williams wed/divorced twice in good faith but – despite working solidly for decades – faced near-financial ruin after both separations cost him an estimated $30 million in settlements. In a bid to offset the damage, he ended up coming out of retirement at the age of sixtytwo to work full-time on TV series
The Crazy Ones,
but we all know how that ended. ‘Divorce is expensive. I used to joke they were going to call it “all the money”, but they changed it to “alimony”,’ he mused. ‘It’s ripping your heart out through your wallet.’
Yet, by Tinsel Town standards, divorce is still a credible career move. Look at Goldie Hawn’s film
The First Wives Club.
Billed as a family comedy about rinsing your ex for all he’s worth, it’s actually just a group of women prostituting themselves with the backing of the law. The moral of the immoral story? Men are untapped resources to be extracted, like crude oil in Texas. Girls: dig in and strike rich.
But when women leave their husbands in films such as
The Hours
or
Thelma and Louise,
it’s all good. They’re heroines. Even when the men do nothing wrong.
OK, these are just movies – I get it. But it captures an ethos. A cultural trend. A way of thinking around men, their industriousness and their money.
Look at former Arsenal footballer Ray Parlour. When he married girlfriend Karen in 1998, it all started out rosy, as it always does. But, by the time it fell apart in 2004, the former optician’s nurse didn’t just get two mortgage-free houses, £38,500 in annual support for their three children and a £250,000 tax-free lump sum. Oh no, she also got personal maintenance of £406,500 from his
future
earnings too. This, she argued, is because she ‘encouraged’ him to be a good midfielder.
He shoots, she scores, you might say.
Which is precisely why WAG culture now rages through our country like an aggressive venereal disease. Girls of sixteen aspire to be glamorous girlfriends because it’s an easy life, not because they love the game – or even the men playing it. Young women who wear so much make-up they have to tip their heads back to get their eyes open are encouraged to hunt in packs until they snag a rich footballer, who’ll play, play, play to pay, pay, pay. Why? Because it beats getting up at 7 a.m., doing the daily commute and actually thinking about somethingother than themselves. When Pot Noodle summed this up in one of their adverts, the tag line was: ‘Why try harder?’ Indeed.
There’s even a technical term for it: hypergamy. The act of ‘marrying up’ by securing a rich man. It might not be PC, but it’s still real. Just ask James Taranto from the
Wall Street Journal.
According to him, it’s steeped in nature. ‘Any evolutionary psychologist will tell you that female hypergamy – more broadly defined as the drive to mate with dominant males – is an animal instinct,’ he tells me.
But what would happen if Ray Parlour – or, let’s be honest here, you – got married and divorced four times? Would he, or you, have to give all his money away to four different exes who were each capable of earning their own salary? I put this theory to Camilla Baldwin, divorce lawyer extraordinaire, who’s based in Mayfair. Her no-bullshit approach has seen her hired by celebrities, sportsmen and bankers on countless multi-million-pound bloodbaths. Thankfully, she didn’t charge me her standard £450 per hour rate. Further proof, in case you needed it, that marriage and divorce are financial enemas.
‘The
Ironically, even in Hollywood, where all these dreams are bought and sold, marriage rarely ends well. Actor Robin Williams wed/divorced twice in good faith but – despite working solidly for decades – faced near-financial ruin after both separations cost him an estimated $30 million in settlements. In a bid to offset the damage, he ended up coming out of retirement at the age of sixtytwo to work full-time on TV series
The Crazy Ones,
but we all know how that ended. ‘Divorce is expensive. I used to joke they were going to call it “all the money”, but they changed it to “alimony”,’ he mused. ‘It’s ripping your heart out through your wallet.’
Yet, by Tinsel Town standards, divorce is still a credible career move. Look at Goldie Hawn’s film
The First Wives Club.
Billed as a family comedy about rinsing your ex for all he’s worth, it’s actually just a group of women prostituting themselves with the backing of the law. The moral of the immoral story? Men are untapped resources to be extracted, like crude oil in Texas. Girls: dig in and strike rich.
But when women leave their husbands in films such as
The Hours
or
Thelma and Louise,
it’s all good. They’re heroines. Even when the men do nothing wrong.
OK, these are just movies – I get it. But it captures an ethos. A cultural trend. A way of thinking around men, their industriousness and their money.
Look at former Arsenal footballer Ray Parlour. When he married girlfriend Karen in 1998, it all started out rosy, as it always does. But, by the time it fell apart in 2004, the former optician’s nurse didn’t just get two mortgage-free houses, £38,500 in annual support for their three children and a £250,000 tax-free lump sum. Oh no, she also got personal maintenance of £406,500 from his
future
earnings too. This, she argued, is because she ‘encouraged’ him to be a good midfielder.
He shoots, she scores, you might say.
Which is precisely why WAG culture now rages through our country like an aggressive venereal disease. Girls of sixteen aspire to be glamorous girlfriends because it’s an easy life, not because they love the game – or even the men playing it. Young women who wear so much make-up they have to tip their heads back to get their eyes open are encouraged to hunt in packs until they snag a rich footballer, who’ll play, play, play to pay, pay, pay. Why? Because it beats getting up at 7 a.m., doing the daily commute and actually thinking about somethingother than themselves. When Pot Noodle summed this up in one of their adverts, the tag line was: ‘Why try harder?’ Indeed.
There’s even a technical term for it: hypergamy. The act of ‘marrying up’ by securing a rich man. It might not be PC, but it’s still real. Just ask James Taranto from the
Wall Street Journal.
According to him, it’s steeped in nature. ‘Any evolutionary psychologist will tell you that female hypergamy – more broadly defined as the drive to mate with dominant males – is an animal instinct,’ he tells me.
But what would happen if Ray Parlour – or, let’s be honest here, you – got married and divorced four times? Would he, or you, have to give all his money away to four different exes who were each capable of earning their own salary? I put this theory to Camilla Baldwin, divorce lawyer extraordinaire, who’s based in Mayfair. Her no-bullshit approach has seen her hired by celebrities, sportsmen and bankers on countless multi-million-pound bloodbaths. Thankfully, she didn’t charge me her standard £450 per hour rate. Further proof, in case you needed it, that marriage and divorce are financial enemas.
‘The
Similar Books
Transforming Care: A Christian Vision of Nursing Practice
Mary Molewyk Doornbos;Ruth Groenhout;Kendra G. Hotz
