This Norwegian Preteen Is ‘Marrying’ A 37-Year-Old For One Important Reason

THEA VEILHere’s an example of why we should not believe everything we see on the Internet:

Huffington Post – by Kate Matthews

Thea is 12 years old. She’s a seventh-grader at her school in Norway, and she loves riding horses and listening to One Direction. According to her blog, she’s also marrying a 37-year-old man this weekend.

But Thea and her impending wedding aren’t actually real. They were fabricated for a viral marketing campaign aimed at raising awareness about the forced marriages of underage girls around the globe.  

thea dress

“Thea” in her wedding dress.

One in nine girls worldwide are married before they turn 15, and one in three are married before they turn 18. The group that launched the Thea campaign, Plan Norway, an offshoot of anti-child marriage organization Plan International, sought to use the fictional girl’s story to highlight this issue for Norwegians.

Olaf Thommessen, national director of Plan Norway, said of the project in a post on his organization’s website:

We want to show how horrible the practice of child marriage is and put it in a context that is familiar and normally associated with love, happiness and hope for the future. Many girls dream about their wedding day and this day is often referred to as one of the happiest days of their lives. But for 39,000 young girls who get married every day, their wedding day is the worst day of their life.

The site set up for the Thea campaign was designed to look like a tween’s personal blog. A writer posing as Thea posted musings about pre-wedding plans, detailed a disagreement between Thea and her mom over the color of the wedding gown and even touched on Thea’s fears about having sex with her new husband.

Thommessen explained that Plan Norway’s goal with the Thea project was to mobilize Norwegians to stop Thea’s wedding before the little girl made it to the altar on Oct. 11.

The plan worked. Concerned Norwegians reportedly called the police to alert them to Thea’s plight.

thea ring

“Thea” showing off her ring.

The campaign was intended to inspire people to get involved in stopping child marriage on a global scale by sponsoring girls in developing countries. Plan International’s sponsorship program connects donors with children in need of aid. In exchange for monthly contributions toward ongoing Plan projects in the child’s community, the sponsor receives updates and letters from the child.

The practice [of underage marriages] violates girls’ human rights, curtails their education, harms their health, and sharply constrains their futures,” Plan International writes on its website. “Girls who marry early are most often deprived of the opportunity to reach their full potential and rise out of poverty.”

The International Center for Research on Women notes that “[w]hile countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage are concentrated in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa, due to population size, the largest number of child brides reside in South Asia.”

New and activism blog RYOT remarked that “if Plan has proved anything, it’s this: It shouldn’t take a blonde-haired, rosy-cheeked 12-year-old to make us care about child brides.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/09/thea-norway-child-bride-plan-international_n_5954802.html

2 thoughts on “This Norwegian Preteen Is ‘Marrying’ A 37-Year-Old For One Important Reason

  1. I hate to break it to people but it wasn’t uncommon in ages past for 12 year olds to get married off. And I’m not talking 2000 years ago either. The later a woman starts having kids the less likely either her or the child are to survive.
    More busybody leftist airheads. Get your own house in order before you start telling other people how to live.

  2. New Hampshire at 13 years with parental consent, South Carolina, females may marry at 14 with parental consent. Many states allow marriage under 15 with court consent.
    Spain 14 years, Sudan 10 years old, why does Europe and America feel that they should set the standards for the world?
    The rest of the world believe that women, (girls) need protection, and that the best persons to do so are fathers, brothers and husbands. Where fathers and brothers cannot provide, then a girl is beter off with a husband. Almost all cultures, (except one or two that I know of) prohibit sex with children before puberty (menarche). This protection of women, was the prevailing culture throughout the world for 20,00 years, only in the last 50 to 100 has the “west” determined that the government has authority over families and people in their daily lives.
    The worst abuses of women and children take place in “State” institutions.

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