Fashion Board 6-9-04 to 7-13-04

[Jack Manfred]

I've been thinking about weddings recently. Friends are getting married. Members of my family are getting married. Members of both camps are going to other peoples' weddings and feeling compelled to discuss them with me. So I've been thinking about them.

Despite recent efforts in Massachusetts and San Francisco, I think there should be fewer weddings. We all know that an entire industry has sprung up around weddings. There are glossy magazines for brides, bridal fairs filled with distributor booths not unlike those tech fairs of the boom days, etcetera, ad nauseum.

What drives this machine? Is it that our society truly cherishes the notion that two people love each other so much that they wish to stand together and declare their undying love for each other before God, State, Family, and Friends? No. That's not it. People talk about marriage and weddings in terms like "right" or "privilege" or "event" or "Her special day" or "more exciting than the most exciting Rose Ceremony ever." None of those things have anything to do with love or commitment.

So then what if anything should be done? Well, if we can agree that there seems to be a disconnect between what weddings signify and what marriage signifies, maybe we can modify the former to strenghen the latter. I actually do think that the institution of marriage needs strengthening. Of course preventing gays and lesbians from marrying does nothing to achieve that goal, but only the most cretinous truly believe that notion anyway. Weddings are injuring the institution of marriage far more than same-sex marriage ever could.

Now some of you may be thinking to yourself, "Well, I was going to be mad at Jack because I thought he was against gay marriage and this isn't even the politics board, but now I've found he's cool with it, but not with weddings, and this seems like a pretty damn long post to argue for more elopements, and if Jack was Jackie, he'd realize that even though a woman may be a feminist and a lawyer and self-aware enough to know that weddings are part of those fairy tale myths that define women even while they injure women, we still want those things. Sometimes we think we shouldn't want them, but we just do. So Jack and all of the other men on the board (and off the board) should just give us those things because the sooner men start giving women what they want, the closer we'll all be to a perfect world."

Well, I can't promise a perfect world, and I don't propose to change society overnight. But we can agree that women are sold a fantasy that their wedding day will be a day devoted solely to them. They'll wear an elaborate dress, more expensive than any other piece of clothing they'll ever wear again. People will attend to their hair and makeup. Pictures will be taken to record their beauty and placed into silver frames to display to all. There will be feasting and dancing as if at a royal banquet. Anything she wants will be given to her. In fact, if someone doesn't know what to get her, they can check a list and chose something she's already picked out. This is starting to sound familiar, right? But while this has a lot to do with how we think of weddings, this has nothing at all to do with what marriage is. While I've not been married, I've been around married people all of my life, and I've not seen a lot of feasting, dancing, or opportunities to pass out lists of requested gifts to family, friends, and people who know your Aunt Millie, happen in regular married life. It's much more about balancing the checkbook, and putting away the laundry, and coordinating how both of us can take time off work for that vacation and agree on a destination. Weddings are elaborate and momentous. Marriages are mundane and perpetual. I think they work at cross-purposes to each other.

But I don't want to be a spoilsport. Remember, I know that women (and of course when I write the word women, I mean some women and not all women, and some of you may have had hippie parents and don't value material things at all and think that weddings should occur only at dawn of the first harvest when Saturn is in the first house, and others of you may think that all weddings should be banned as fascist tools of the patriarchy or capitalism or Rupert Murdoch.)

So I have a proposal.

(Some of you might want to just skip to this part of the post.)

We need to have "coming out" parties for women again. Yes, I'm sure that some people still have cotillions and debuts. After all, I saw Metropolitan and Whit Stilman doesn't seem like he made all of that up from scratch. But that's just some women/girls, in some parts of the country. What if, in lieu of the monstrosity that weddings have become in the last 15-20 years, we said, "Hey, girls, you're still going to get a special day. The big party just for you? The dress? The presents? The dancing? They're all yours. But we're not going to tie any of this to a man.* Or to marriage. Or to romance or love or any of those other concepts that weddings seem to shape and/or influence.

Now Atticus might be thinking, "Hey Jack, just hold on a second while I google up some interesting information about Quinceaneras and Bat Mitvahs and other similar coming-of-age rituals." But of course, that's not necessary, and I've already pointed out that this is supposed to be universal, which those ceremonies are not.

Doesn't this make sense? A woman reaches some set age or milestone, an elaborate party is thrown for her, and weddings revert to simple ceremonies that require a priest/rabbi/minister/justice of the peace and a couple of forms in triplicate, and not much more. Wouldn't this be better for all concerned?

Thoughts? Comments? Sharpened daggers?

* or a woman, where legal and while supplies last. YMMV. NTTAWWT.