Get Hitched or Die Trying.
This may sound a little odd for somebody who's been married twice, but I absolutely fucking hate weddings.
Really. I've never understood what's supposed to be so awesome or moving or whatever about the great American wedding. All the weddings I've attended, including my own first wedding, I absolutely hated. Even when it was a friend of mine getting married.
Maybe I hate weddings because my parents had such a dreadful marriage. In fact, until I was grown, I didn't know *anybody* who had a happy or even a functioning marriage. Not a soul.
Or maybe it's just that I don't *get* weddings. I mean, what the hell is the point? You spend shitloads of money and have nothing to show for it at the end except exhaustion, debt, some embarrassing pictures of yourself and your family doing the chicken dance, and this ridiculous albatross of a dress that you can never wear again.
Perhaps the problem is that I really don't like *marriage* all that much. I mean, marriage as it is currently practiced. It's little more than a legal contract, something set up and perpetuated by a patriarchal society. I once read a magazine article that described marriage as a joining of genitals and checkbooks. That seems about right. Only sometimes the checkbooks don't even get joined. I've never merged finances with either of my husbands, and I like it that way.
So I guess what you might be saying is, hey, why the hell did you get married in the first place if you hate weddings and marriage so much? Simple: health insurance. And inheritance rights. And the expectation that society has which says this is the be-all and end-all of human existence. Okay, so that last one only applies to my first marriage, but you get the idea. Also, it was important to me that my children be viewed as legitimate by this society, so of course Eric and I had to get married before procreating.
I love Eric. And I love my children. But I'd be just as happy if we'd never put our names on the dotted line. Although I do like my new last name; it makes me feel like a new person. I didn't change my name last time so that's a really different feeling to me.
So why am I talking about all this? I saw the first of the new "Queer Eye" wedding specials tonight and it absolutely turned my stomach. Normally, the Fab Five can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned, but this was the worst. Everything that is bad and wrong and avaricious and materialistic about the Great American Wedding-Industrial Complex is embodied here.
Joe, the "groom-elect" (I've always hated that term), had my sympathy the entire time, as he was being chastised right and left about how he was evil incarnate for stringing this poor girl along for ten years without making an honest woman of her. He was terrified, and with good reason, because...
Laura, the "bride-elect" (ditto), had that lean and hungry, pinched-about-the-mouth look of a woman desperate for marriage. She had apparently been planning this wedding since the day she was conceived, and she was not going to settle for anything less than complete princesshood.
Lucky for Laura the Fab Five were picking up the tab, since I don't think Joe exactly had the scratch for a professional wedding planner and fancy catering. I felt sorry for Joe every time she got that pinched look on her face when he didn't give the right answer to something. Run, Joe, run!....Too late. The wedding was gaudy and maudlin and awful. Everybody there was crying, probably because they wished they were somewhere else.
My first wedding was a full-on religious ceremony, catered, tons of people I didn't know, and I HATED IT. Eric and I got married in Las Vegas with his family (mine couldn't afford the trip) and our friends around us, and there was no reception, no open bar, no expensive bullshit, no trying to one-up anybody, just an honest celebration of our love. People came to our wedding, not because there was free food and booze, not to see if my dress was as nice as theirs had been, but because they loved us, and that meant more to me than anything.
The wedding is part and parcel of the stupid gender stereotyping that American media and society have been feeding us for over 200 years. It's stupid and wrong and it's too much about material things, and it's all designed to glorify virginity, which shouldn't be the only prize a woman has to offer her intended. Fight the power, that's what I say.
Really. I've never understood what's supposed to be so awesome or moving or whatever about the great American wedding. All the weddings I've attended, including my own first wedding, I absolutely hated. Even when it was a friend of mine getting married.
Maybe I hate weddings because my parents had such a dreadful marriage. In fact, until I was grown, I didn't know *anybody* who had a happy or even a functioning marriage. Not a soul.
Or maybe it's just that I don't *get* weddings. I mean, what the hell is the point? You spend shitloads of money and have nothing to show for it at the end except exhaustion, debt, some embarrassing pictures of yourself and your family doing the chicken dance, and this ridiculous albatross of a dress that you can never wear again.
Perhaps the problem is that I really don't like *marriage* all that much. I mean, marriage as it is currently practiced. It's little more than a legal contract, something set up and perpetuated by a patriarchal society. I once read a magazine article that described marriage as a joining of genitals and checkbooks. That seems about right. Only sometimes the checkbooks don't even get joined. I've never merged finances with either of my husbands, and I like it that way.
So I guess what you might be saying is, hey, why the hell did you get married in the first place if you hate weddings and marriage so much? Simple: health insurance. And inheritance rights. And the expectation that society has which says this is the be-all and end-all of human existence. Okay, so that last one only applies to my first marriage, but you get the idea. Also, it was important to me that my children be viewed as legitimate by this society, so of course Eric and I had to get married before procreating.
I love Eric. And I love my children. But I'd be just as happy if we'd never put our names on the dotted line. Although I do like my new last name; it makes me feel like a new person. I didn't change my name last time so that's a really different feeling to me.
So why am I talking about all this? I saw the first of the new "Queer Eye" wedding specials tonight and it absolutely turned my stomach. Normally, the Fab Five can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned, but this was the worst. Everything that is bad and wrong and avaricious and materialistic about the Great American Wedding-Industrial Complex is embodied here.
Joe, the "groom-elect" (I've always hated that term), had my sympathy the entire time, as he was being chastised right and left about how he was evil incarnate for stringing this poor girl along for ten years without making an honest woman of her. He was terrified, and with good reason, because...
Laura, the "bride-elect" (ditto), had that lean and hungry, pinched-about-the-mouth look of a woman desperate for marriage. She had apparently been planning this wedding since the day she was conceived, and she was not going to settle for anything less than complete princesshood.
Lucky for Laura the Fab Five were picking up the tab, since I don't think Joe exactly had the scratch for a professional wedding planner and fancy catering. I felt sorry for Joe every time she got that pinched look on her face when he didn't give the right answer to something. Run, Joe, run!....Too late. The wedding was gaudy and maudlin and awful. Everybody there was crying, probably because they wished they were somewhere else.
My first wedding was a full-on religious ceremony, catered, tons of people I didn't know, and I HATED IT. Eric and I got married in Las Vegas with his family (mine couldn't afford the trip) and our friends around us, and there was no reception, no open bar, no expensive bullshit, no trying to one-up anybody, just an honest celebration of our love. People came to our wedding, not because there was free food and booze, not to see if my dress was as nice as theirs had been, but because they loved us, and that meant more to me than anything.
The wedding is part and parcel of the stupid gender stereotyping that American media and society have been feeding us for over 200 years. It's stupid and wrong and it's too much about material things, and it's all designed to glorify virginity, which shouldn't be the only prize a woman has to offer her intended. Fight the power, that's what I say.