Member-only story
Weddings are Set-Ups
Your special day is doomed
This isn’t about Bridezillas. Well, it is. But it’s not just about them and it’s about why Bridezillas end up like that. Think of this as a Bridezilla origin story. Because basically, there’s no other possible outcome. Sure, there are brides that manage to put together a beautiful day and navigate the planning, the day, and even the resultant marriage with grace, but that’s not what’s meant to happen for most women. It’s what most women wish for in one form or another, it’s considered the only way a woman can be successful, and if that doesn’t happen then the woman is deemed a failure at least in part, but it’s also not supposed to go right for most women.
Weddings as they exist right this very instant are a means to make women fail.
There’s no one cause for this but rather a lot of causes. It is about women’s worth being contracted to what her labour means to a man and about shows of wealth and consumption and about patriarchy, domesticity, the performance of femininity, innocence and purity and what those mean from a social perspective, but it’s not any one of these things. It’s all of them at once. All of these things are claustrophobic and entrapping and limiting and they’re meant to end with the wedding. Sort of.
