[We'd like to take this opportunity to welcome our favorite love, sex and relationship blogger - Lena Chen - to the CollegeCandy team. Lena is smart, funny, and her perspective on all things relationship is incredibly thought provoking. We're so pumped to have her here, so be sure to let us know in the comments what sorts of things you'd like Lena to discuss!]

Marriage isn’t a right; it’s a privilege. Depending on the time, place, and partner, getting married could be harder than getting into Harvard, if not downright impossible. As recently as fifty years ago, miscegenation laws would have forbid me from marrying my boyfriend (or any man not my race) in certain areas of the United States. Before that, the legal and social benefits to getting married were denied to minorities, immigrants, and the poor for centuries. Marriage is, for lack of a better analogy, membership into the biggest country club in the world.

For me, getting married would be a personal endorsement of some of the worst societal norms in existence.

The supposed “right” to marry has never been much of a right at all, and our understanding of marriage as a basic liberty is unique to contemporary times. Thanks to my predisposition for heterosexuality, it’s a liberty I could easily exercise, but I’d much rather march in a rally than down an aisle, because I find it difficult to take part in a practice that is denied to others (plenty of them my friends). Even with the best of intentions, I can’t imagine that my own wedding will serve any purpose but to reinforce existing norms, such as the idea that a relationship is only valuable if recognized by a third-party institution. Read More »

Guess what? Now all you socially conscious brides-to-be (and lovers of bling bling) can get a diamond ring after all!

That’s right, friends. The good people at Apollo Diamond will now grow you a perfect diamond for about the same price as a real diamond. Plus, it comes with its very own birth certificate!

Okay, I know I sound like I’m mocking this, but actually I think it’s a really great thing.

As most people know, diamonds come with a heavy price-tag (and I’m not talking about your bank account). Remember this movie? Yeah, it stirred quite a controversy, mostly because people over here in the U.S. of A. didn’t (want to) know the truth behind diamond mining. But the truth is, diamonds cause a lot of blood shed in parts of Africa, especially in Liberia and Cote D’Ivoire, but also in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), and Sierra Leone. Read More »

I’ve officially entered a stage in my life that I didn’t think would come for another five years at least—-the “everyone I know is getting married and I’m their token single spinster-with-cats friend” stage.

And when I say everyone is getting married, I really mean everyone. The high school sweethearts from your freshman year math class. Your slutty friend who met her fiancé at a rave, high on E. Your crazy divorcee aunt who’s on her fifth marriage—sixth if you count the annulment after that weekend in Vegas.

The other day I read an article that really put the icing on the wedding cake. Apparently, two strangers who once posed together as a couple getting married for a hotel’s brochure are now actually getting married. The couple, Amanda Semmence and Kieron Dudley, who were hotel employees at the time, fell for each other during the photo shoot and are getting married for real and holding the reception in that same hotel. Read More »

As I was browsing the internet on a snowy Sunday, I came across something that really made me wonder if AIM usage has reached a new level. Each Sunday newspapers such as The New York Times and The New York Post publish a section on weddings and highlight different couples. And I’ll admit it, I’m a devout reader of the NY Times wedding section. Not because I plan on getting married ANYtime soon, but because it’s more of a fantasy aspect in college to read about couples that found each other while both working on PhD’s at Ivy League schools or met while searching for a cure to cancer, yada yada yada. I mean, a girl can dream right?

Carrie Bradshaw once said the wedding announcements in the Times are “the straight woman’s sports pages,” and I would have to agree.

But, the Post has also started a wedding section that features more, ahem, “normal people.” The couple highlighted this week met on the internet (okay, thats fine and becoming more acceptable recently). So, for some reason, the husband thought it would be okay to propose over the internet! On AIM! Read More »