For those of you who are not exposed to it except in the waiting room at your dentist's office, it might be difficult to fathom that People is one of the top five most widely read magazines in North America. I, on the other hand, have a subscription (purely for research purposes, obviously), and I can tell you that my reading of People has given me a glimpse of the heart of middle America that I would probably never have otherwise. I mean, when Rosie O'Donnell finally came out, not every media outlet was entirely supportive of her announcement; however, among the most mainstream publications to comment, People was probably the only one to print a letter in response to its Rosie cover story in which a pearl-clutching reader suggested that Rosie should "pick up a Bible." If you ever think that issues like homosexuality, divorce, and even working mothers have ceased to be divisive or even noteworthy in North American society, a stroll through the pages of the average People issue will set you right again. This is not to say that People is reactionary or that its editorial staff treats these issues as though they are shocking or controversial; it's just that any time any such question arises in a given issue, you can be sure enough People readers will be outraged by it that the editors will make sure to represent that constituency on the magazine's Letters page.

Because People has to satisfy so many millions of readers, of every ideological persuasion, the editors will take a position on a subject, expressed in the form of a cover story, only to contradict themselves a couple of months later. For instance, a "Nicole [Kidman], Julia [Roberts], and Meg [Ryan]: Everything But Love" headline will have to be balanced by a subsequent "Julia: Single and Loving It!" story. Or a story decrying anorexia-related health problems and death among young women will be negated by one touting successful stomach-stapling surgeries. So call me cynical, but I can't help thinking that the current issue of People -- celebrating "Hollywood's Young Brides" -- is just a set-up for a future issue in which the editors cluck their tongues at the eventual failure of, let's face it, at least half of the marriages mentioned in the article.

(By the way, before you send me irate emails to complain at my seemingly derogatory use of the expression "child bride," I am one myself; I was almost twenty-two and a half years old when I got married. I absolutely believe that most young women are perfectly capable of making their own decisions about their love lives, and if the particular ones covered in People's story aren't, or weren't when they married, obviously I'm not in a position to determine that. The only reason I'm even commenting on the age of the married women in the article is that People evidently thought that fact alone was enough to group them together for a package piece.)

I've read the article twice, and I still can't tell exactly what its thesis is. The dek on the cover promises that the story will reveal "[w]hy more and more twenty-something (and even teen) stars are looking at love and saying, 'Why wait?'" The cover also features a giant photo of Reese Witherspoon ("Married at 23"), beaming on Oscar night, as well as three smaller shots: Kate Hudson ("Married at 21"); Brandy ("Married at 22"); and LeAnn Rimes ("Married at 19"). Within, we learn, "Done with dating, some of Hollywood's hottest Gen Next stars make marriage their priority." But despite the magazine's claims in its display copy, the article doesn't say very much of anything.

One family therapist declares, "Young kids want to get married. They are not afraid of divorce. They are more frightened of having no permanency in their lives." While that may be true of the "young brides" mentioned in the article -- and there's no evidence here that the quoted therapist discussed marriage with any of them -- I hardly think that the ten young women in this article represent a complete reversal in the marital habits of women generally, or even of women in Hollywood. Yes, it's a cute hook to point out that Kate Hudson married Chris Robinson when she was only twenty-one, despite the fact that her mother, Goldie Hawn, has been shacked up with Kurt Russell for almost twenty years (and I would like to go on record right now as saying that, in three weeks' time, there will be a missive published in the Letters section from a reader shirtily suggesting that Hawn follow her daughter's example and quit living in sin). However, the reason there isn't a cover story here about Hollywood couples who just live together is that there are so many of them.

There is no question (in my mind, at least) that People has tried to manufacture a trend story where no trend actually exists; they even admit that, aside from the "Gen-Y celebs" profiled here, "the median marrying age in the U.S. is 25 for women, nearly 27 for men." And despite the rosy descriptions of marital bliss among the profiled couples who are (as of press time) still together, People does concede that marriage among young celebrities does, on occasion, fail, as in the case of Kate Winslet's and Macauley Culkin's partnerships, among others.

Why do some young female celebrities get married young? Probably pretty much the same reason regular young women do -- any of a million reasons. Love. Money. Security. Pregnancy. As for the special reasons a celebrity might marry -- like to bolster a flagging career, or to conceal homosexuality -- clearly those aren't addressed in the story. And the pairings that are most intriguing to me -- like Kobe Bryant's marriage to an eighteen-year-old...uh..."woman" to whom he proposed while he was still in high school; or nineteen-year-old LeAnn Rimes, whose reasons for marrying young (still smarting over her parents' bitter divorce) are awfully similar to those suggested as the reason the now-divorced Macauley Culkin got married at the age of seventeen -- are only mentioned in passing. Do I care to hear why Jessica Simpson's dad thinks she's getting married at age twenty-one? No. And if she really is as big a virgin as she's always insisted she is, I think I already have some idea of why she'd decide to get married a bit earlier than some of her peers.

Because there's so little "news" or tidbits of "interest" in the story, it comes across more prescriptive than descriptive. Look, that nice Ryan Phillippe married Reese Witherspoon when he knocked her up. Young women of America, you should make your boyfriends marry you when they get you pregnant, even if they're unemployed or three credits shy of graduating college or gay.

Perhaps I'm giving People too much credit by imputing some political motive to the article: perhaps the editors just noticed that Reese Witherspoon is so hot right now, and contrived a flimsy pretext by which to get her picture on the cover. Or maybe I'm giving them too little credit by reading a pro-marriage subtext into the story: perhaps the magazine's editors are entirely in favour of all kinds of love affairs, and next week they'll put out a cover story on gay celebrities who are living together outside wedlock because the wedlock option isn't available to them.

Perhaps. And perhaps LeAnn Rimes and her dancer husband will turn out to be the next Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Really, who can say?