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While the Olsen Twins' passage into civically recognized womanhood three years ago was a cultural event so significant that countdown clocks ticking down the seconds until their shared 18th birthday were erected in every corner of the internet and Barely Legal magazine famously sponsored a three-week party in a handful of major American cities commemorating the occasion, today's ascent to drinking age is passing with little, if any, fanfare.

Perhaps it was their tabloid ubiquity between their 18th and 21st years, a period during which they allegedly struggled with addiction, eating disorders, and experimental bag-lady fashions that has dampened the public's enthusiasm for this largely meaningless milestone, or that more spectacularly self-destructive peers have stolen the spotlight, but who can know for sure? We speak only for ourselves when we say that much of their intoxicating mystique was diminished back on January 28, 2005, when the still-conjoined pair seized control of their DualStar Corporation from longtime Svengali Robert Thorne, a move that allowed them to finally go through with the controversial surgical separation procedure the sage manager had long counseled against, freeing them to pursue a far less interesting range of solo pursuits.