Weddings

I promised three posts. Since I don't have the books with me (and I acquired two more -- One Percent Doctrine, which is so self-consciously Tom Clancyesque as to be unreadable, and Gun Show Nation, which is fun and has cowboys in it), today it's going to be the post about weddings.

I spent all of last weekend at wedding festivities, for the aforementioned friends of mine (yes, it's been that long since I started this thing, and yes, I ignored it for that long). Both of them wanted all the traditional flourishes for their wedding and it was absolutely gorgeous.

I've been thinking a lot about weddings, since I tried to be as involved as I could in helping the bride plan and execute this one. I was never one of those girls who daydreamed about my perfect princess wedding. Bridal magazines, like fashion magazines, exhaust me -- I hate paging through advertisements to get a little snippet of article. I realize that for both bridal and fashion magazines, the point is to look at the advertisements and drool over the pretty clothes. I think this says something about what kind of person I am. But when you're helping with a wedding, you can't help but start thinking about how you'd do it if it were yours.

I read two books recently that critique and analyze both marriage and weddings: Young Wives' Tales, and I Do But I Don't. And I read a fair few posts on Pandagon, in which the entire concept of weddings was questioned, criticized, mocked, and insulted (by varying posters and commenters). Young Wives' Tales on its own is multivocal enough; adding the other sources forced me to think about it from every possible perspective.

I Do But I Don't made me angry. It's good, but it made me mad. And that's what really prompted this post. Kamy Wicoff agonizes and analyzes over her desires to have the traditional wedding, from her desire to have her boyfriend stage a romantic proposal without her having to ask for it, to her desire for a big poufy wedding dress, to her desire to have the perfect body, hair, and makeup for her wedding day so that she can look like the perfect bride. She knows exactly what's wrong with each of these things from a feminist perspective -- why each of them makes her angry and uncomfortable, why she feels fake. And yet she goes and does them anyway. Why? Because when it comes down to it, that's what she really wants.

And I've been thinking about that a lot. I have a great love for couples who simply marry at City Hall, or in a small religious ceremony, and dispense with the whole fooferaw. It's marketing, it's ridiculous, it doesn't make you any more married.

And yet.....

There was a reason my friends wanted a little fooferaw, and I love them for it. It goes back to some of my religious-studies analysis. It's about ritual. It's about people creating meaning. As marketing-created as much of it is, there are some things that have become genuine, important social rituals. People actually have good reasons for wanting to participate, even if marketers exploit those reasons to squeeze more dollars out of them.

When you go shopping with your mother, aunt, or best girlfriends for your wedding dress, they're saying to you "I want to help you as your life changes. I am with you." Your companions are assisting you in trying on a new identity. It's the same ritual as helping the bride get dressed, or helping her do her hair and makeup, on her wedding day. It's the same as any ritual clothing or makeup: the same as the white garments worn by many people to be baptized into a Christian church; the same as the medieval robes, hoods, and hats worn by every modern high school and college graduate.

When a bride walks down the aisle on her father's arm, she may actually be saying "I was my father's property and now I will be my husband's." Or she may be using those property-transfer symbols as a convenient way to express her loving relationship with her parents, and the fact that her parents approve and support her new family relationship.

I may well expand on this a little later. But for now, I'll conclude: I'm not saying these symbols and rituals should be accepted without criticism. Many of them are quite sexist, and many are just marketing-created rituals (like the need for a huge diamond ring). But I am saying that women, especially, don't have to feel guilty, stupid, or duped for their desire to participate in all the traditional wedding rituals. They have real reasons. They have good reasons. You're not a bad feminist for wanting an engagement ring, because it's probably not the ring itself you want: it's a way of letting others know that you're making a commitment to someone you love. You're not a bad feminist for wanting a white dress, because it's probably not the dress itself you want: it's a way of marking your transition into the new identity of being in a committed partnership.

The question, of course, is whether you genuinely think that symbol is the best way to accomplish what you genuinely want. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. Either way, it doesn't make you a stupid pawn of the wedding industry.

She uses gaaaaaasoline

Driving into work past the $3+ pump prices, I wished that I knew more about hydrogen fuel cell technology. Someone could make an absolute killing if they marketed a reasonably cheap, reliable non-gasoline automobile. From what little I do know, hydrogen fuel cells seem to be the best technology right now for that.

Biodiesel is also an option. I think it's a good one for shipping and construction, where big diesel engines will probably remain in use for a long time. You can even make it in your backyard. I used to live behind a guy who did. He said it cost him 79 cents a gallon to make. If I had a bigger backyard, I'd start making some myself, and buy a diesel car.

But I wish I knew enough to start marketing fuel cells. I'd be freaking rich.

Fee fie fo fum)

Not that anyone ever comments here (at this point I'm not sure anyone's even reading), but I love this post of Cory Doctorow's about how to handle comment trolls. I hang out at Making Light sometimes, and disemvowelling is the best way of handling trolls (or even fights among regulars) I've ever seen.

Also, new internet rule from Ginmar's blog: If you whine about "censorship" or "stifling dissent" when your comment is deleted from someone else's blog, you have automatically lost the argument. It's like the variant version of Godwin's Law (not just that someone will invoke the Nazis, but that whoever invokes the Nazis automatically loses).

Why? Because there's this wonderful thing known as the internet, where you can get your own blog! For free, even! And then you can rant on whatever strikes your fancy! Other people are not obligated to let you do it in their space, interrupting their conversations.

(Note to self and anyone who may happen to be reading: I owe you posts reviewing Packaging Girlhood, Pissed Off, and ruminating on the social significance of weddings.)

If I had a hammer

"Do-it-herself." That's the headline to this article, about the New Trend! of women doing their own home repairs.

It kind of made me barf.

Here's a quote:

Owning power tools doesn't make her any less feminine, she says: "I'm still a girl. But if I can do it myself, it's much easier and much cheaper ... so I have more money for all those Coach purses."

Here's another:

More women are commanding greater earning power, but they still have a basic desire to "nest" and create a sense of home, they say. BeJane readers can choose projects by moods or life-changing events like the birth of a child or empty nest.

Here's a third:

Big-name retailers are taking notice, investing in programs and products targeted specifically to women. At Home Depot, for example, "Do-It-Herself" clinics offer tips in areas such as refinishing furniture or installing track lights, small projects that don't require major machinery or expertise to complete.

I'm a woman who derives great satisfaction from building and making things. I learned to love it when I took up technical theater in high school and did a lot of set construction. I asked my parents for a DeWalt drill for Christmas when I was sixteen. I drool over articles like this one in Mother Earth News, about building your own house from the ground up. I guess it's really not a surprise that I ended up in engineering.

It bothers me to think that some people find that so threatening that it has to be made trivial and decorative. It's okay, women, you can attend classes in making things pretty or hanging little decorative things. You can come up with little foofy projects to go with your ever-changing female moods, or to make the house better for a new husband or a new baby. You can save some money to be able to pursue your real function, which is to be decorative -- to buy purses, jewelry, and makeup. Just as long as you leave the tiling, plumbing, nailing and wiring -- the real building-- to the menfolk.

The sad thing is, the real thrust of the article is great. There's a lot said about how being able to do her own repairs gives a woman power. She doesn't have to depend on a man to do it for her; she doesn't have to wait around for someone else to fix it. She's self-sufficient, acting in the world and making things happen. All of these are things I love about building things and doing my own home repairs, quite apart from simply enjoying the work.

But they had to weaken it, water down that power, make it about being decorative rather than making real, useful things. There was a clear sense that women with power tools -- which stand for power itself -- are threatening. They have to prove they're "still girls", that they still care about purses and babies and husbands and rugs, because otherwise they might be too scary. And that made me mad.

Fatphobia and the NYT

I'm not convinced by this article. They took a bunch of obese people, put them on a starvation diet, and then were shocked to note that they had the physical and psychological signs of starvation.

More, I don't like the fatphobia. "Obese people, he knew, had huge fat cells, stuffed with glistening yellow fat." What a way to write that sentence. It just bangs on that "fat gross-out" button.

Obesity is a "moral panic." The researcher was "horrified" when his subjects regained weight. The study conclusions are all discussed in the light of what this means for getting and staying thin.

I think it's time for a different philosophy of body size and health -- one that's not predicated on the FAT IS BAD idea. Of course being obese is dangerous to your health -- but the way to combat obesity, from a public health standpoint, is not to make people more neurotic about their weight. As the article points out, semi-starvation neurosis makes people much more obsessed with food.

Instead we need to focus on creating a society where healthy food and active lifestyles are available to everybody, without a lot of emotional baggage. Right now we drive to Wal-Mart and buy corn chips and corn-syrup-sweetened soda, because it's not safe to walk and our cities are scaled for cars anyway, and because the produce is expensive and unappetizing. (Read The Omnivore's Dilemma for a great writeup on Big Corn, as well as for a compelling explanation of why local food is better.)

If our public health focus was on actual health, instead of the way that fat people violate the beauty standards, we might see better public health. But articles like this are completely focused on staying thin. Not healthy -- thin.

Sometimes, when people eat right and get enough exercise, and have good cardiovascular health, muscle strength, and flexibility -- their bodies are still not sculpted into the socially acceptable standard. They may still have some of those fat cells "stuffed with glistening yellow fat." They may still wear size 10 or 12 jeans.

And sometimes -- like me -- people can be thin, their bodies having a shape that fits the beauty standard -- but they still have little stamina, fairly weak muscles, and are generally not in good physical shape, because their diet and exercise isn't what it should be.

In fact, I think that's what this study shows. Some people are genetically predisposed to "thinness", some are not. But all of them can be healthy.