I’ve been wondering lately (and asking in some of our long chatty comment discussions) if it’s possible that this idea of ‘one perfect day,’ ‘your big day,’ you should look like a princess,’ blah blah blah are maybe all tied up with our concepts of being a wife.
Because the stuff about being a wife that gets drilled into our heads through our cultural noise (hello Oprah) is about how once you become a wife (and mother, since, well, obviously that’s next) ‘you let yourself go’ and ‘you put yourself last’ and ‘after you have kids it’s not about your dreams anymore, you won’t even care about your dreams!’* And if, at least partially, you believe all that…. then don’t you deserve to go out with a bang? Don’t you deserve a day of perfection, a day of everyone catering to you, a day of being a princess? Because if you really believe that your wedding day is the happiest day of your life, don’t you want to make it as grand as possible before you go into the long decline?
What do you think? Are these two lines of cultural chatter connected? Are they totally not? What am I missing? I could be very wrong, but I keep rolling this over in my head, so I wanted to throw it out there. Chat!
*It seems totally unfair to children to put the fact that you gave up your DREAMS for them on their backs. I mean, live your own dreams, show your kids that having a passion is possible, and let them figure out their own damn dreams.
VERY IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION: Didn’t think I needed to say this, but maybe I do. I don’t believe in any of these things (including the kids naturally follow marriage bit), and I don’t expect that most of you do. Nor do I expect that they always or often happen – my mom didn’t live this life, and I don’t plan to! But – these sets of beliefs about marriage and wife-hood are part of our cultural landscape, like it or not. They are, thank god, not the *only* way our culture looks at these roles, but they are two of the prevalent ways. Ok, that’s all, carry on!
