Bristol's Wedded Bliss

Bristol Palin just called off her wedding to Levi Johnston, the father of her two-year-old and now (apparently) the father of another woman’s baby. This was their second engagement, and they were so scared to tell her parents that they chose to have a gossip magazine make the announcement for them. They had a right to be scared. Between engagement number one and two Levi had publicly badmouthed his future in-laws, starred in a porn movie, and sired other children. Which makes you wonder why Bristol was so hell-bent on marrying the boy in the second place. Actually, I’m not surprised. The feminist movement may have given women permission to active sex lives, but not all of us are cut out for the heart-stomping that comes with that sexual freedom.


I’m convinced that if you could dissect the spirit of a woman’s heart you’d find that it makes a strong, sometimes irrational, connection to the man we share a bed with. This connection leads to all sorts of funky predicaments, especially if you choose the wrong man. Why else would a girl run away with a boy who has no prospects, no money and no facial hair? Why else would she trust that the nude picture she just sent her boyfriend won’t wind up as wallpaper on every screen in the computer lab? Teenagers aren’t the only ones effected by the brain-sex connection. Women routinely spend years with men who will abuse them or cheat on them. And when Levi put that diamond ring on Bristol’s hand, she believed that she could trust him to never star in another porn film. (He didn’t, he just ran off to star in another film—one that mocked her family.) The heart really is blind, and sometimes downright off its rocker.

Watching Bristol claw her way through a swamp full of Levi’s bad behavior in an effort to marry the father of her child makes you realize that feminism comes with a cost. It’s no longer taboo to have sex before you can drive, cohabitate for years before you get married, and have children out of wedlock but those freedoms come with a high price. Our grandmothers may not have been liberated, but they were uncanny. They knew that, in the words of author Caitlin Flanagan, they “didn’t put out until after they had tossed the bouquet [because] they didn’t want to have to put the kibosh on icky sexual fantasies before they’d established joint checking.” I hope that Bristol finds her happiness and gets the white wedding she so obviously desires, but you have to wonder if it’s even possible at this point in the game.