Love and Marriage

I found a couple of delightful post on the interwebs today about the difficulty of being a truly feminist bride.  This is a topic near and dear to my heart, since I am both a feminist (though I prefer the term anti-gender-essentialism-and-discrimination-ist, it doesn't have the same zing!) and a bride-to-be.

I generally agree with both Broadsheet and Jessica Valenti that breaking from the traditional wedding script is almost impossible these days unless you're willing to offend most of your family and ... yourself.  Some feminist somewhere made the astute point that gender may be a construct, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.  

So maybe I have been engineered by my society to want a big wedding with all my friends and family.  Maybe this urge is deeply implicated in patriarchal power, but it's also something that, damn it, I want!  

And what is truly more feminist?  Doing what others tell you is the appropriate thing (in this case: it's anti-feminist to have a traditional wedding), or doing what you feel is appropriate for yourself and your marriage without deference to overarching power structures (and of course the academy and the feminist movement within is also a power structure that has come to "construct" us as women).

The answer seems pretty clear to me.  The beauty of the feminist revolution is that now we women have the intellectual and civil right to follow ourselves.  I don't want to exclude half my friends and family by having a teeny-tiny ceremony.   I want to dance like a maniac in a wedding dress, which, I believe, requires a reception.  And, oh yeah, I want to wear that big white wedding dress (which, by the way, is fabulous).

And isn't that the best part of life as a 21st century woman?  I'm not, actually, obligated to deconstruct myself and examine how I can simultaneously not even seriously consider just flat out changing my name (the new debate: to hyphenate, or to not hyphenate - discuss amongst yourselves), and devolve into raptures at an organza-chiffon blend that makes me look so hot!

Now, don't get me wrong, I do not want my marriage vows, or anyone's marriage vows, to include the words "obey" - but isn't the point really that it's not my place to force my beliefs on other people, and vice versa?*  To become truly comfortable with that premise, and truly comfortable within yourself and your own ideals and your own person, is such a lovely, lovely place to find oneself.   And when you find yourself in that place with someone who seems to have been cosmically created to fit that self like a loving little puzzle piece, why wouldn't you want to say: you and me.  It is you and me.  Forever...

Until we have babies.  But don't even get me started on that!

Cheers, ya'll!

* Important Note: vigorous discussion and debate is not the same thing as forcing your beliefs upon others.  It's actually the opposite - it's expressing your beliefs and allowing another to express theirs as well.  Cable news: I'm looking at you.  Oh, and while I'm looking, can you stop hiring disgraced politicians to give "political analysis"?  What, are you stupid?  I mean seriously!  That's like asking a cheater how to pass the test: they never actually knew the answers ... that's why they cheated.  Jeez.