My dear friend Kelly gave me a copy of Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Gilman for my birthday, and earlier this week i finally finished it. The subtitle of the book is Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless; it’s a series of stories that span Gilman’s life from her earliest memories to her early adulthood in the ’90s. She’s a feminist Jew who grew up in New York, went to college to become a writer, suffered the divorce of her parents as an adult and wound up in D.C. after a stint working for a Congresswoman on Capitol Hill. I found all of the stories to be entertaining, but the one that gives the book its title was – of course – the most interesting one in my mind.
What it refers to, perhaps obviously, is a wedding dress. When Gilman and her fiancé become engaged, they decide to buck tradition and do things their own way. By and by they find that even if all you want is a DJ and a few guests you still have to have a place to put them and something to feed them, and in spite of themselves they become absorbed in the process of planning the whole affair. But the one thing Susan absolutely won’t have is the traditional wedding dress. As a feminist, she protested Fashion Week in college and wore clothes of a unique punk/vintage style, avoiding conformity to gender roles and societal expectations. Why dress up like some sort of storybook fantasy character to begin a life with a man who has to love you for who you are at your least glamorous? Marriage is a very real, quotidian thing and shouldn’t be treated as though it were some fairy tale. “Let’s face it. I’m neither royalty nor a virgin,” Gilman writes. “In a traditional wedding gown, I’d just be a hypocrite in a pouffy white dress.”
But at her friends’ urging, Gilman goes to a bridal shop and tries on a few dresses just in case. What she finds is a dress that makes her feel gorgeous and a whole new perspective on fashion’s role in feminism. She writes:
Every woman should have this experience – and not only if or when she gets married. Every woman should see herself looking uniquely breathtaking in something tailored to celebrate her body, so that she is better able to appreciate her own beauty and better equipped to withstand the ideals of our narrow-waisted, narrow-minded culture.
At the beginning of the chapter i felt like a bad feminist for not sharing her total aversion to all things traditional in the realm of marriage, but by this paragraph i felt vindicated.
I noticed that Gilman had the same sort of attitude toward marriage that Elizabeth Gilbert expressed in Committed, which is this general feeling of disgust with the idea of becoming legally married despite her devotion to her partner. Both women are feminists and feel that marriage is in many ways not good for a woman, partly because she has to sacrifice her ambitions in order to play the role of “wife.”
I’m not really sure what to think of this. My first reaction was to think that these women, along with a lot of other young people i’ve heard express this same view lately, are perhaps just making excuses to cover up the fact that they really aren’t willing to commit 100%. The way i see it, if you’ve already pledged loyalty to your partner, then you stand to lose nothing and gain a few pretty important benefits by getting married. So why do these women feel the need to reason with themselves that marriage is really some sort of rebellion in order to make peace with walking down the aisle? Are they really just that concerned about filling trite, stereotypical gender roles that they let their lives be governed by that fear? Or is a writing career truly hindered somehow by the duties of being a wife? Personally, i think it’s raising children that’s the huge sacrifice, not getting married.
Your thoughts? I’ve re-written the latter half of this post several times now, and i’ve decided to just end it here with a couple of questions and one unsupported statement rather than try to explain myself. The topic is just too vast; i could do a lot of research and write a very large paper on the topic of Whether Marriage is Good For Women. I suppose i shouldn’t criticize anyone for stepping back and really asking themselves if getting married is the right thing for them to do. But i think when the time is right, the answer has to be a very clear and confident YES. Single ladies: do your deliberating now.
I talked to my dad last night to update him on my progress with the wedding planning (hi Dad!). I wanted to let him know that i have purchased a dress and that plans are coming along nicely. He was enthusiastic and supportive, as always, but there was one thing he had to ask: why would an offbeat sort of girl like me want such a big, traditional wedding anyway?
For the most part i’m a pretty normal American girl; i graduated from public high school and a four-year university, i work my nine-to-five every weekday, i drive an SUV and i eat a largely unrestricted diet. I like shopping for clothes and watching reality TV. I’m an enthusiastic sci-fi fan so one might label me a geek, but any label like that rings more of conformity than anomaly. George Lucas would cheerfully tell you that i’m not the only one who has ever grown to love Star Wars.
Some of the things i’m most passionate about, however, are fairly unpopular and do set me somewhat apart. Indie music, atheism and the desire to remove myself from the gene pool are the big ones that come to mind, although i’d be willing to bet that those things tend to go hand-in-hand in people (i.e. there are probably proportionally a lot more atheists who don’t want babies than Christians who feel the same way). Music aside, this point of view does tend to color the whole world in a slightly different hue for me. I’m a skeptic. I question things. I take the world at face value, and for the most part i’m totally enchanted by it anyway.
So if i see things from such a different point of view, why is this whole materialistic wedding thing still so important to me? What do the gown and the flowers and the cake all have to do with my commitment to my husband-to-be?
First of all, i love my family. I have family all over the country, and a wedding is a great way to get all of them together for an evening. We don’t really do family reunions, so weddings and funerals are the way it happens. This gathering is also a way of officially welcoming Nathan into the family, because to me that’s what marriage essentially is: becoming family. Besides, i want a celebration, and what could possibly make a single day better than gathering all the people i love together to share in the joy? I’m going to need some of my dearest friends to be there, too, and Nathan will of course have his closest friends and relatives there as well. Say, about 100 people.
This necessitates food, because Nathan and i love to feed people and family gatherings are almost never without a meal of some sort. I don’t want to do the cheaper cocktail hour thing; we’re doing dinner. And drinks. And we’re gong to need a dessert, so why not a cake? While we’re at it, let’s make everything look beautiful and taste delicious so that everyone will really enjoy themselves. Food. Flowers. Music. Linens. Candles. That’s probably 75% of the cost of the whole wedding, right there.
More importantly, i’m going to be taking a vow which i want all of those people i love to witnesses. Getting married is practical in its own way, but it’s also symbolic. I’m pledging my love and loyalty to Nathan, and i’m taking it very seriously. I want people to see my sincerity – not because their observation will make me more sincere, but because each of them is a part of my life and i want them to see firsthand this terribly important moment.
And this, of course, necessitates that i wear a really fabulous dress when all of those eyes are falling on me. And my hands can’t just be empty, so i’ll need some beautiful flowers to carry. And petals to walk on, so that i’m not just shuffling across the grass. And [Science!] knows i need professional help with my hair, because i’m absolutely impaired when it comes to hairdos.
I’m a designer. I value aesthetic beauty, and i’m willing to pay other designers to create a visually – and delectably – fantastic day for us. I’m not saying i’m spending top-dollar for everything (otherwise i’d be getting married in some sort of castle, right?) and i highly doubt that “traditional” will be the word people use to describe this wedding after it happens. But to me a wedding should involve plenty of people, food, drink, flowers, candles, music, and one very flattering, stunningly beautiful white dress.
It’s that time of year again when i get to spend an entire day doing whatever i want! Today i’m on vacation from work so i slept in and looked at all my messages on Facebook, and soon i’ll be going to try on wedding dresses with a few friends and then celebrating the rest of my day with them and Nathan. My lovely friend Jennifer did my nails last night so that i’d look extra glamorous in the dresses:
Happy Birthday to Me! 