In late May, the Visit Las Vegas Campaign released “Now and Then,” a glossy vye for queer tourism depicting the marriage of two women. The ad has since reached over 7.8 million YouTube views and the reception is overwhelmingly positive. At first glance, this might seem like a win for a culture unfamiliar with mainstream depictions of women loving women. Yet as I watched, my stomach sank. The ad felt like a cheap, performative grab for my queer attention. Ultimately — and regardless of the many rainbow emojis brightening the comments section — my feminist killjoy alarm went off.

Here’s the down and dirty overview: Beautiful Lesbians A and B are deeply in love and vacationing in Vegas. A wants to get married. B does too, but she’s tormented at the thought of her parents’ disapproval. A cajoles B while they both enjoy Las Vegas’ various amenities, until finally surprising B with a gorgeous ceremony. All the couple’s friends are there, but B is going to shut the whole thing down until she realizes her parents are in attendance. B lets out a high-pitched, “Let’s get married!” then moves towards a beaming mom and dad.

“Now and Then” is shamelessly soap, moving in for every queer person’s soft spot with heat-seeking precision: the homophobic parents, the shame, the emotional release of seeing accepted the little dyke we all root for. It seems like an important step for lesbian visibility in popular culture. So what’s the problem?

Dear Straight Allies, Please Don’t Forget The Harassment Of Queer Women
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The problem is that tolerance is a trap, and the Visit Las Vegas Campaign wants to sell it to you.

Suzanna Walters’ book The Tolerance Trap exemplifies how media like “Now and Then” — with its liberal attitudes towards gay tolerance, depictions of gay marriage, and rainbow capitalism — actually sabotage gay equality while seeming to advance it. Though the high-sheen production value can mask this, the plot of “Now and Then” is clear: If queer folks conform to heterosexual norms like marriage and wait around for societal approval, we’ll be rewarded, Vegas-style. Walters points to the sinister nature of (eventual) acceptance when she writes:

“The tolerance mindset offers up a liberal, ‘gay-positive’ version of homosexuality that lets the mainstream tolerate gayness. Its chief tactic is the plea for acceptance. Acceptance is the handmaiden of tolerance, and both are inadequate and even dangerous modes for accessing real social inclusion and change… The ‘accept us’ agenda shows up both in everyday forms of popular culture and in the broader national discourse on rights and belonging.

‘Accept us’ themes run the gamut: accept us because we’re just like you; accept us because we’re all God’s children; accept us because we’re born with it;…The ‘accept us’ trope pushes outside the charmed circle of acceptance those gays and other gender and sexual minorities, such as [transgender] folks and gays of color, who don’t fit the poster-boy image of nonstraight people and who can’t be — or don’t want to be — assimilated.”

“Now and Then” exemplifies the performative tolerance politics that the straight and cis majority thrives on. By capitalizing on classic — yet very real — tropes of disownment, rejection, and secrecy, the commercial asserts that queer happiness is achieved by hinging your actions on heterosexual opinions and values. B clearly orients her self worth to her parent’s unwillingness to tolerate her. “My parents aren’t proud of me,” B tells A, who feigns incomprehension:

A: “But you’re so beautiful, successful, funny!”

B: “I don’t think it’s my sense of humor they have an issue with…”

Then later,

B: “We can’t get married today, my parents will never forgive me.”

A: “For getting married without them, or for who you’re getting married to?”

Both scenes cut away, leaving unnamed not only the validity of B’s fears, but also the clipped-wing desire to finally have the legal right to marry and feel unable to because of intolerance. Note that the edited version of the commercial (rather than the full length version discussed here) is purged of this dialogue. Instead, the edits imply the parent’s issue is with elopement, not B marrying a woman. With this, Las Vegas give queer people two, and only two, impossible options: Hinge your life to hetero acceptance, or pretend the trauma of being queer never happened.

The dialogue is haunted by B’s apprehension. But with the sound off, “Now and Then” tells a completely different story. Strategic cinematography distracts from the lovers’ conflict, instead panning the best of Las Vegas’ attractions. The women laugh in the gorgeous Nevada dessert, take in the bustling nightlife, kiss in a neon-lit hotel pool. It’s all G-rated and aggressively cliché, but “Now and Then” offers up a rare moment of visibility to lesbian viewers starving for the scraps of representation.

Why ‘Tolerating’ Your Queer Loved Ones Is Dangerous
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When A leads B to the surprise wedding, the venue is candle-lit, elegant, but not ostentatious enough to annoy. This is supposed to be the emotional climax of the story, but instead “Now and Then” proves its own disconnection with queer lives by revealing that B’s perceptions of intolerance are baseless — her parents are there, smiling and happy. Surrounded by supportive friends, family, and — here’s the important part — the city of Las Vegas, the commercial seems to say See, aren’t you silly for thinking homophobia still exists? The irony of “Now and Then” is that it tries to signal the end of intolerance when in fact its star is driven by the fear of it.

Visit Las Vegas’ commercial is dangerous because it “short circuits the march toward full equality and deprives us all of the transformative possibilities of full integration,” by depicting fully-realized queer joy as dependent on heterosexual acceptance. Even more alarming, “Now and Then” offers convenient vindication for any homophobic person ever. B’s parents are not held accountable for their prior actions; when they enter the wedding venue they are absolved of any wrongdoing. Given that B’s parents are brown-ish, and that both women have foreign accents, the commercial reinforces racist perceptions of foreigners as regressive. The ceremony is a racially-coded, apology-free mess.

Whatever the good intentions Visit Las Vegas had, “Now and Then” is a money-driven advertisement, released at a time when Vegas has nothing to lose from marketing to gay people. Note how it’s taken them until 2018, when a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage, to make an ad like this, rather than tout Vegas as a destination for tolerance and fun in the ‘90s. Make no mistake, the motivation behind all “queer-friendly” media is to profit from, not defend, our community. “Now and Then” targeted a market, and now eagerly awaits the pink money and gay tourism that will surely follow. Don’t let the thrill of seeing yourself represented mask this.

Here and now, it’s 2018 and I’m not satisfied with lesbian representations in mainstream media. Even the commercial’s title, “Now and Then,” implies a degree of separation from the bigotry “then” and the tolerance “now.” The commercial is a joke its creators don’t seem to get. Supposedly “post-gay,” “Now and Then” can’t even imagine a present unburdened by the “air kiss of faux familiarity” that defines mainstream understandings of queer people.

Show me the queer love that’s hard to look at, the kind that makes its own rules and does what it wants regardless of approval or pride. Show me the most intolerable among us front and center: trans folks, gender deviants, queers of color, the undocumented, the deeply transgressive. Show me two fat, middle-aged bull-dykes madly in love, deeply amused by the ironies of gay marriage, and getting hitched anyway. Then maybe I’ll visit your damn city.

“A sign in my gym’s locker room reads: ‘Please use a lock. Not responsible for lost or stolen items.’ Frustrated at searching for free lockers (because people stow their things, but don’t use a lock — thus making lockers look free when they aren’t), I move the contents of unlocked lockers to the ledge above. I am trying to square the owners’ apparent indifference to what happens to their things (by failing to use a lock) with the idea that a locker is occupied. I am frustrated by the time-consuming search for unused lockers. And these people fail to follow instructions: ‘Please use a lock.’”

—From CONNIE via Social Q’s, New York Times, 1 February 2018

Dear Connie,

It is of course tiresome enough, when searching for a place to stow one’s own bag full of priceless gems and cures for various deadly illnesses, to open gym locker after gym locker only to find the cubbies occupied by the worthless tackle of the masses. But to then be forced to do the exhausting work of removing strangers’ piddly crap and placing it elsewhere — why, that really cuts into a cardio warm-up! It really says something about the thoughtlessness of people these days that your gym-mates think nothing of delegating to you the responsibility of removing their crummy bullshit from lockers and leaving it just around wherever when in fact you have a lot of House Hunters to catch up on from the elliptical!

Items that are not placed under lock and key must be strewn about. That’s not just a basic function of physics — famously illustrated by the concept of Schroedinger’s Moldy Shower Shoe — it’s also a moral issue. Once you’ve laid eyes upon a set of house keys, a half-used stick of Right Guard, and a crumpled but blessedly unused maxi pad, you have an obligation to move them to a new place in order to teach a valuable lesson to people who erroneously believe that “their” “possessions” “belong” to them just because they bought them, were given them, or otherwise came to have them in their custody. Why, anyone might come by and simply help themselves — you’ll make sure of it!

But of course none of this answers your question — you want to know how you can stop wasting time opening all of the unlocked gym cubbies full of people’s phones and credit cards and other garbage, emptying all the unlocked gym cubbies full of this detritus and relocating all of this trash no one will ever miss from all of the unlocked gym cubbies. The solution couldn’t be simpler: Incorporate all of this unavoidable lifting and shifting into your weight training routine, thereby cutting down on the time you spend out on the floor. You could even ask one of your gym’s personal trainers to help you out! In the spirit of intellectual consistency, be sure you follow whatever instructions they give you after you have described in detail your practice of rifling through the belongings of your fellow patrons.

“My son is in high school and has been being tutored by a college math associate professor for the past six months. My son has made fantastic progress and has overcome years of failing math grades.

The problem is that this professor was just fired for sexual harassment at his college. It was a big enough deal to make the local paper and everyone has backed away from him. He has been ejected from his other leadership positions in town and is now seen as a pariah. (The level of harassment was Louis C.K.-level, not Weinstein.)

I want to continue the tutoring as long as possible. I am concerned about the message my son gets in this, but at the same time, this tutoring is the only thing that has ever worked for my son in math. He has taken a child who may have not graduated high school and put him on track for college. What should I do?”

— Via Dear Prudence, Slate, 19 December 2017

Dear What Should I Do?

At any moment your son could be asked to perform elaborate feats of trigonometry, but what are the chances he’s going to interact with another human on planet earth and need to draw on the values and lessons imparted to him by his family in order to decide how (or whether!) to proceed in any given social situation? Pretty low, probably!

As long as the otherwise brilliant man your son hangs out with on a regular basis has only whipped his dick out and masturbated in front of women who expressly did not consent to participation in such an act, as opposed to forcibly sexually assaulting them, you’re fine. Adolescents are notoriously immune to sociocultural influences and your kid, like all teenage boys, is not of a developmentally significant age at which it would be a bad idea to teach him that being moderately competent at something means he can do whatever he wants to whoever he wants to do it to, whenever he wants to do it. You can always decline to give your family’s money to some other sexual harasser, some other time, when it is more convenient for you.

Who can say that just because your family continues to expressly support a sexual harasser for doing math good, your son will get the impression that an individual man’s intellectual or artistic contributions are more important than the safety, wellbeing, and potential of any number of women? He might just learn some good long division tricks from the man who makes women look at his dick when they don’t want to! It’s definitely worth the gamble.

Your son has his whole life to learn that sexually harassing women has consequences. Maybe your soon will learn this lesson at that good, good college he’ll get into thanks to that man who shows his dick to women when they don’t want to see it! Maybe he’ll learn it when he gets a job, or maybe when he becomes somebody’s boss, or maybe when he becomes powerful enough to hire people, or maybe when he becomes powerful enough to fire people, or maybe when he retires, or maybe when he’s literally on his deathbed?

Regardless, there is just so much time left in life for your son to learn about consent and respect and human decency, and so little time for him to memorize the quadratic equation. There are not many math professors as good as this one and so few women in the field, anyway, so it’s not like you’re going to find one easily — I wonder why? It’s probably biology or something.

“I got married three weeks ago. It was my second and my husband’s first marriage. The venue was about 110 miles away from the area where we and most of our friends and family live, so many guests stayed in the hotel affiliated with the venue. We went all out! Several guests have said it was the best wedding they’d ever attended. Five hours of open bar, outstanding food, and gorgeous setting! We went through all our cards and gifts and noticed there was one missing — a woman I’ve considered a very close friend for twenty years. She came to the wedding alone and, believe you me, took full advantage of the open bar. I was perplexed and surprised because it seemed out of character for her not to give a gift. I texted her and (white lie) told her that hubby and I were concerned that we may have been missing some cards then casually asked, ‘Did you put a card in the box?’ To which she simply replied, ‘No.’ I understand she doesn’t have a lot of money to spend, I get that, but NOTHING? Not a card with a lovely sentiment or even a modest gift?

Do you have any words of wisdom? I realize I need to ‘let it go,’ but I’ve been ruminating!”

—From VEXED IN UPSTATE NEW YORK via Ask A Practical Wedding, A Practical Wedding, 18 January 2018

Dear Vexed,

Of course you’ve been ruminating! People who get married deserve to be materially rewarded for falling in love and telling a bunch of people about it all at once, and you are no exception. Everyone who attended your destination wedding owes you a gift that meets or exceeds their precisely consumed share of the open bar, and this so-called “very close friend” is absolutely obligated to reimburse you for the 1/389th of the wedding you performed for her. (And you definitely had one of the best weddings, for sure! Definitely only people who have the best weddings are told that their weddings are the best! This is absolutely 100% not a thing that people just blurt out because what the fuck else do you to say to someone who stenciled their kindergarten school picture in artisanal vegan crayon on 389 light blue mason jars.)

Dear E. Jean: A few weeks after our wedding, I learned that friend A and friend B got together after they met at our reception (one of them mentioned it to me). They had a great time together and are planning to hang out again, and I’m incredibly jealous!

Aren’t I supposed to be invited, too? What’s the etiquette here? Isn’t there an unspoken rule about how to conduct oneself in these situations? Isn’t one supposed to go through the mutual friend, and not behind her back? I know it’s normal for adults to meet new friends through their social networks, but I want to tell them I feel disrespected. Is it my insecurities?

— From “FEELING ISOLATED,” via “Ask E. Jean” in Elle, 22 November 2017:

Welcome to our latest Bad Advice column! Stay tuned every Tuesday for more terrible guidance based on actual letters.

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Dear Feeling Isolated,

What’s insecure about mandating that your friends arrange their social calendars according to the degrees of friendship from which they link themselves to you so as not to errantly enjoy themselves in your absence? Why, nothing at all, that’s what! The mutual affinity that these two share is plainly an attack on you personally and is expressly intended to come at your expense.

These friends of yours are not simply entitled to enjoy themselves when you’re not around as if any old, grown-ass person has a right to make friends with any other old, grown-ass person who returns their interest. People just aren’t capable of, like, knowing a bunch of different other people and being able to use their judgment about who they want to hang out with and when. What would that world be like? Folks just genuinely enjoying each other’s company and encouraging the people they love to find comfort and joy wherever they can, even if it means growing and expanding friend groups to include ever more people who love and appreciate each other on their own terms? Unthinkable.

It’s perfectly normal to demand your fair share of the finite amount of love available in this life lest someone you treasure experience even a fleeting moment of their own independently won joy, thereby chipping away at your personal ration of cheer. Every mutual smile and giggle that these two share outside of your presence depletes your own store of happiness.

This is a fact they well know, which is why they’re going to such extreme lengths — directly contacting each other without obtaining your permission first! The sheer gall! — to share each other’s company. A truly respectful adult would be sure to refrain from entering into the unchaperoned presence of another adult until they had been assured that all of their shared acquaintances had been consulted to their respective satisfactions.

Remind these friends that you are the social glue that binds them and gives their acquaintance worth, and request that they cease and desist all attempts at getting to know each other without you. If necessary, demand to be Skyped into any meet-ups you can’t attend in person, and you will soon find that that you will no longer feel isolated.

I recently spoke on the phone with an old friend from college. During the call she mentioned that her son is taking a drug for A.D.H.D. and that it really helps him focus. I know there is controversy surrounding this class of drugs, but I didn’t feel comfortable bringing that up. I assume she has looked into the pros and cons, and I know her mother is a psychiatrist. But should I mention my concerns nevertheless? Or should my concerns about seeming a busybody outweigh concerns about her son’s future health?

— From “NAME WITHHELD” via “The Ethicist,” New York Times, 20 November 2017

Dear Name Withheld,

The fact that you are literally aware that some controversy exists over a pharmaceutical should in no way stop you from giving your friend unsolicited advice about her child’s medical condition and any related treatment. Your Google probably works totally differently — and far more deeply — than this lady’s Google, and it’s important that you share everything you found in Reader’s Digest with her, lest she continue to rely on her own capability as a parent and the expertise of her son’s own doctor, who knows the specifics of her son’s case in the decisions she makes with her family about her child’s treatment.

Without your essential recollections of that thing you heard those people talking about on “The Chew” last week while you were getting your toes done, your friend may continue to believe that she herself, in conjunction with the degreed medical providers she has retained for the purpose, is in the best position to decide the course of her child’s care.

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Dear Miss Manners: My wife and I got married about two months ago. We just finished going through all our cards and gifts, discovering in the process that there are still quite a few people who have not given gifts.

I have heard people convey that the proper window for giving wedding presents is from six weeks to one year after the wedding. What is the actual correct time frame to expect gifts, and after that time has passed, how do we go about inquiring with these people about the (lack of a) gift?

I do not want to be rude by making our guests think we are waiting for a gift (though we are), but actually our main concern is that perhaps the gift or card got lost at the venue or in the mail, in which case we and our guests both lose.

I’d like to simply send out a text message to each with something to the effect of, “Hey, please don’t feel ANY pressure to give a gift at all, but we went through our presents and did not find one from you, so we just wanted to make sure it didn’t get lost or misplaced.’’

However, I am afraid this will be interpreted as a thinly veiled (and rude) attempt to “remind’’ the guest that they have not yet given a gift.
—“Miss Manners” via Washington Post, 24 November 2017

Gentle Reader,

Only the most self-absorbed guest would interpret a mass, form text message sent to dozens of people concerning the whereabouts of absent gifts as a reminder about an absent gift, instead of what it obviously is, which is a deeply concerned and personal entreaty inquiring as to the dear guest’s good health as it relates to their capacity to materially reward you for publicly pledging to stay in a relationship with another human being for the rest of your life.

To take the time to type thirty-eight entire words, let alone and press send, shows just how deeply invested you are in these relationships, to the extent that you care passionately not just for the people, but for the things they really ought to have bought for you by now. We can only hope that your wedding guests see things as you do, and respond accordingly.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/bad-advice-on-shift-key-mutiny-and-wedding-cruelty-4c00fe42b28b/ Tue, 12 Sep 2017 21:49:34 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=3220 Read more]]> Welcome to our Bad Advice column! We’re proud to give you terrible guidance based on actual letters.

By The Bad Advisor

“My 27-year-old daughter and her best friend, Katie, have been best friends since they were 4. Katie practically grew up in our house and is like a daughter to me. My daughter recently got engaged to her fiancé and announced that Katie would be the maid of honor (Katie’s boyfriend is also a good friend of my future son-in-law). The problem is that Katie walks with a pretty severe limp due to a birth defect (not an underlying medical issue). She has no problem wearing high heels and has already been fitted for the dress, but I still think it will look unsightly if she’s in the wedding procession limping ahead of my daughter. I mentioned this to my daughter and suggested that maybe Katie could take video or hand out programs (while sitting) so she doesn’t ruin the aesthetic aspect of the wedding. My daughter is no longer speaking to me (we were never that close), but this is her big wedding and I want it to be perfect. All of the other bridesmaids will look gorgeous walking down the aisle with my daughter. Is it wrong to have her friend sit out?”

— Via “Dear Prudence,” Slate, 6 September 2017

Dear Mom,

It’s generous of you to want to involve your daughter in her own wedding, but if she’s not going to ensure that this event does not have any unsightly local limping women in it, she needs to relinquish the big decisions. This is as much your wedding as it is anyone else’s — more so, really, because you had a baby one time. What has your daughter done besides literally be the reason for this whole shebang? Sadly, it sounds like your daughter values the lifelong relationship she has built with Katie more than she values her mother’s approval of a temporary matrimonial tableau.

It is a shame that she won’t stick Katie in the corner because you don’t like the way she walks, but weddings mean different things to different people. Your daughter obviously believes that her day is about surrounding herself with people she loves, rather than about recruiting whoever is available to traipse down the aisle without a gait that you personally find distracting. Hers is not a particularly tasteful approach, of course, but it’s the one she’s chosen instead of casting aside her closest friend because you find Katie’s body so repulsive that the mere sight of it will permanently mar the day in your memories forever.

Beauty only comes in a limited range of sizes, colors, and abilities, and anyone who falls outside that range is prone to destroying weddings, which don’t count unless everyone involved looks like they jumped out of the placeholder in a JC Penney picture frame. Your daughter’s wholesale disregard for shallow sociocultural imperatives that tell people they are worthless unless they conform to the physical standards of manufactured normativity is cute, but this isn’t a gathering of her nearest and dearest in celebration of a milestone that has nothing whatsoever to do with how anybody looks. It’s a wedding, for chrissakes! Not some kind of familial bonding ritual, and if it doesn’t mimic a goddamned Modern Bride spread, what is the point? Eternal love and mutual affinity between and among people who aren’t singularly concerned with your approval at every turn? Please.

We all do the best we can by our children, but some apples fall very, very far from the tree. Through no fault of your own, you simply got a child who grew up to love and appreciate people for who they are, rather than for what really matters — whether you feel that they can walk across a church looking like they came out of central bridal catalog casting.

“A few months ago, after an increasing amount of silence on her end, an old friend told me she didn’t want to be friends anymore. So I backed off. I found out from a mutual friend that she’s now engaged. I feel like I can’t let this event go unacknowledged. Would it be wrong of me to send a card of congratulations and a gift?

I have no expectations that this will rekindle our friendship; I just want her to know I’m happy for her and still thinking of her.”

— Via “Old Friend,” Carolyn Hax, Washington Post, 23 August 2017

Dear Old Friend,

Newly engaged people have so little going on, and so few people interested in their lives, that they often welcome any spare demands for their attention that others can offer. Your situation is a little more nuanced since this lady 100% told you to lay the fuck off, but there’s no reason not to offer this person an opportunity to experience the opposite of the thing she expressly told you she did not want — a friendly relationship with you.

It’s hard to say why she’d want to cut off contact with someone whose instincts guide them to deliberately disregard the express wishes of others, but it’s great that you’re so selflessly willing to give her a chance to think about you thinking about her even after she specifically told you that she didn’t care to be friends with you, specifically.

I mean, what are you supposed to do here? Respect the fact that this woman explicitly told you that she does not desire your company or communication, or go to not-insubstantial lengths to make her aware that you have positive feelings about her upcoming nuptials? Is she supposed to go the rest of her life just not ever knowing whether you, someone she unequivocally said that she did not have a mutual affinity for, feels pretty good about her engagement?

What kind of life would that be, really, to live day after day, year after year, decade after decade, not knowing that somebody you didn’t really like all that much was glad you got married? So few people will be offering this lady their thoughts about her engagement, it’s important to make sure she knows that at least your feelings still matter.

Bad Advice On Asking A Woman Out When She’s Dating Someone Else

“I just finished my sophomore year of college. For the summer, I got a three-month internship at a company that does work in the field I am getting my degree in and want to work in after I graduate. This was my second job, after the internship somewhere else I had last summer. I was hoping to get some good experience like last summer.

I was paired with the same person for two-thirds of the work I was doing. She has lots of skills, but I noticed when she types she uses the caps-lock key each time she needed to make a capital letter instead of using the shift key. She is only five years older than me, and she is very good with technology and computers. I didn’t understand why she would type this way, because even though she does type fast and efficiently, using the caps-lock key would slow her down. I mentioned it to her and even showed her, and she said she had no idea but she would keep on using the caps-lock key.

I thought she just needed to see how efficient it was so when I was using her computer I disabled the caps-lock key. She was very upset when she found out that it didn’t work and I explained what I did and why she should give the shift key a chance. She complained to the manager, and even though I was just trying to make things more efficient, the manager sided with her and I was let go a month into my internship. HR sided with her too when I went to them. I’m confused because I was only trying to help and make things more efficient. Did I really do something wrong or did the company overreact?”

— Via “Ask A Manager,” 17 July 2017

Dear Intern,

As long as you’re “only trying to help,” you can do literally anything! Good intentions are all that matters in the world, and the effects of your actions are entirely irrelevant. This company obviously doesn’t know how to handle itself professionally when a world-class efficiency expert such as yourself walks through the front door. It’s very likely they were intimidated by how efficient you are. In the future, just keep fucking with other people’s shit no matter what. It will be an extremely efficient way to bring your efficiency message to a great number of different employers.

Beauty Is A Preposterous, Frivolous, Amazing Gift We Give To One Another

The experience of beauty I share with my friends is a bulwark in a world full of bullshit, a bastion against very real everyday horrors.

Already looking but pre-feeling beautiful on my wedding day, when my father decided to snap a photo of me standing beside a garbage can.

Five years ago today, I walked into a crowded room and everyone stared at me. “She looks BEAUTIFUL,” gasped some blessedly effusive person seated to my left.

Now look dudes, I’ve seen my share of rom-coms and I’ve been to a hell of a lot of weddings based on them. I know the narrative in a traditional-ish Man + Woman tale of matrimony is supposed to go…

and then her nerves vanished when she looked deeply into the eyes of her groom, waiting for her at the end of the aisle. She floated on an ebullient cloud of true love to join hands with her new husband, blissfully unaware of the eyes of the onlookers dazzled by her passage . . .

or something like that.

There’s some truth to the cliche, I think: catching and holding my now-husband’s gaze did make me feel a bit steadier, helped me walk through the sensation of leaping, clawing nerves to meet him in the center of that ballroom to take our vows, but still! The voice from the left, that exclamation from a woman who just couldn’t or wouldn’t withhold verbal appreciation of my wedding day aesthetic, swept me into the center of the room with head high as if my heart weren’t pounding out of my chest.

I don’t know which of my friends or family said it, but I love her. I’ll never think of that moment without feeling the sharp, pleasant pang of sincere compliment, and I still believe that her pronouncement *made* me beautiful in that moment. Perhaps I already glowed from the vantage of outward eyes — I better have looked good, given all the time I spent on my makeup that morning — but it was in that instant that I felt it. “Beautiful.” It echoed in my brain, and that warm, lovely feeling stayed with me throughout the night.

After my brother’s recent wedding ceremony, my dad wrote a little Facebook post that made everybody (or at least definitely me) cry. In it, he made a salient point that, being extremely lucky in the lottery of in-laws, I hadn’t much considered: the legal and sentimental bond of matrimony goes far beyond the two people in the dress(es), tux(es)…or whatever the amazingly Offbeat Bride ensemble(s) they choose to wear for their commitment ceremony.

Marrying somebody is marrying his/her/their entire network of love and acquaintanceship. On a familial level, this becomes pretty apparent as a marriage progresses: your spouse’s family can become, quite literally, your family — you gotta coordinate holidays, you gotta take on pain and part in interfamilial conflict, you gotta go to all the parties. You’re one of the crew now, for better or worse, in sickness and in health.

My Hot-Pink-Loving Santa Claus Father Taught Me What Beauty Is

But when it comes to the wedding day itself, your literal and metaphysical family functions more as a (much-beloved) background, a surrounding tableau of smiles and well-wishes that renders individuals near-anonymous en masse. The people who help you battle anxiety and withstand the enormous pressure of that metaphorical multi-person embrace to survive your “special day” and provide a ceremony worthy of memory are a select group of trusted confidantes: your ride-or-dies, your chosen family, your friends. And especially, if you’re a woman (the woman writing this essay, anyhow): your female friends.

I looked beautiful at my wedding five years ago because Jane taught me how to style my hair in finger waves. I looked beautiful at my wedding because, on the morning of, Lauren said “Jenn, get the hell out of the kitchen. Go do your makeup and I’ll wash the dishes.” I looked beautiful because Hannah, bless her most noble of hearts, attended to my excited, nervous mother all day prior to the ceremony, fetching wine as needed and refusing to allow her to call me about anything potentially anxious-making until the vows had safely been said.

I looked beautiful because Beka offered to make the run to pick up the photo collage that was to-be-displayed by the guest book; I looked beautiful because Lindy literally slapped my father-in-law’s fingers when he attempted to snatch a surplus of hand-made favors from the limited amount available.

When it comes to the wedding day itself, your family functions more as a (much-beloved) background, a surrounding tableau of smiles and well-wishes that renders individuals near-anonymous en masse.

I looked beautiful because I’d received bachelorette night hugs from Bethany, Jen, and Lindsey, who’d all traveled from out of town to be there, because I could hear Kaylan’s laugh ringing before I even walked into the ballroom, because Chenoa wore cowboy boots and Jaime accidentally wore a transparent dress to attend my nuptials.

I looked beautiful because I myself, my own super-best friend, spent a lot of time and effort in consultation with all of the above-mentioned women choosing a dress, making my own jewelry to wear for the ceremony, styling my hair, designing and applying my makeup. I looked beautiful because of the effort and influence of a lot of women, and I felt beautiful because of some woman’s exclamation upon observing the fruits of my enterprise. I mean, damn, I know I’ve repeated the word 78 times in this paragraph alone, but it’s just apropos: what a beautiful, beautiful group of women I know. What a beautiful night!

Recently I’ve been thinking about this form of feminine labor, the way my friends and I utilize our bonds of trust to uplift one another during times of celebration or difficulty. It looks a bit different from the models of adult female friendship I observed growing up, but functions so similarly! I have never made a dish to bring to a church potluck or a loved one in bereavement, but I have packed up every mascara I own and sprinted for the faces of friends who are enjoying accomplishment or suffering heartbreak, eager to provide them with the loveliest self-image I can assist in creating. When Hannah married, I spent more time perfecting the makeup of the mother of the groom than decorating my own face (myself, as a sister, being not nearly as important a figure in the resulting photos).

When Lauren, who typically doesn’t wear makeup, was wed last month, I went to painstaking effort to give her the natural-but-OOMPHED aesthetic she envisioned for the day. When Beka received some bad news that rattled her self-esteem, all I could think to do (besides make dumb jokes and help her through a bottle of champagne) was to whip out some shiny shadow and take a photo that, in its gorgeousness, would make plain the absolute ridiculousness of her rejection. Beauty is my gift to them all, a process-based undertaking that serves to offer both me and my friends reassurance and joy.

How To Make Your Face Look Superb For Your Soulmate’s Seoul Wedding

It’s frivolous, I know. Do any of us need to look or feel pretty? We shouldn’t really, I guess. Not like we need to eat. Do any of us need to be married? Discounting depressingly legit reasons like religion-enforced patriarchal tradition and financial dependence, and good ol’ HEY YOU ANCIENT SPINSTER-style societal pressure—of course not!

Nonetheless, I celebrate both on June 30: my marriage, and the experience of beauty I share with my friends. Both are, for me, bulwarks in a world full of bullshit, bastions against very real everyday horrors that would sap my spirit unto death. I need strong bonds with other humans in order to survive, and those I share with my husband and closest women friends sustain me.

“Beauty,” as a process, is not meaningful to me as a dreary prescribed practice of daily maintenance, but functions as more of a spiritual ritual by which I create and reify the relationships that give my life meaning.

Would my wedding day have been as significant if Lauren hadn’t offered to clean my kitchen so I could spend more time on my makeup? Would hers have been as meaningful if she’d been married in her usual bare face, minus my cosmetic wizardry? Well…of course, in the sense that we would both still now be legally bound in commitments to spouses we trust and adore. But would the ceremonies have been *quite* as special, as perfectly personal in lasting memory? I think not.

The last words I heard from another person besides my husband on my wedding night came from the mouth of another friend, a slightly different tone than whoever’d gasped “She looks BEAUTIFUL!” Justin and I had just retreated to our honeymoon suite and slammed the door. We stood leaning against it, grinning stupidly at each other, when we heard the elevator outside DING!, disgorging a load of women who’d closed out the dancing following our wedding.

Do any of us need to be married? Discounting depressingly legit reasons like religion-enforced patriarchal tradition and financial dependence, and good ol’ HEY YOU ANCIENT SPINSTER-style societal pressure — of course not!

“But,” issued an appreciative voice from the elevator, bellowing down the quiet hallway, “did you see Lauren’s boobs?” (Reader, I did. On that particular night and always, they looked excellent.) “Did you SEE THEM?!” My newly minted husband and I both lost it, cackling until we couldn’t breathe, laughing until the clamor of other voices faded into the still of night. I knew again then that I’d made a perfect choice of partner: someone who would never begrudge me the feminine frivolity I cherish in my friendships, someone who delights in myself, my body, my family, my friends, and the absurd ways in which we express our affection for one another.

On June 30 it feels right not only to celebrate my love and ever-increasing appreciation for my partner-in-life, but also the women whose blurted words definitively punctuated our ceremony, the friends who saw us to the point of marriage and beyond. Beauty (and boobs, apparently) have bound us all in a broader web than I was even capable of conceiving when I said “I do” on that swelteringly hot evening in 2012, and five years later? All of those loves shine more brightly than ever. How beautiful is that?!

]]> https://theestablishment.co/bad-advice-on-vengeful-wedding-debauchery-60390df55495/ Tue, 13 Dec 2016 17:44:57 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=6259 Read more]]> Welcome to our latest Bad Advice column! Stay tuned every Tuesday for more terrible guidance based on actual letters.

“I married my husband seven years ago.

A close girlfriend of mine was one of my bridesmaids. She got ridiculously drunk at my wedding. She ran around the dance floor like an idiot. She hit on one of my husband’s married friends in front of his wife. She threw up in the bathroom, and one of my aunts had to take her car keys away.

It makes me sick to watch my wedding video because she is everywhere, acting like an idiot. Now she is engaged and planning her wedding, and I feel like I should get stupid-wasted (or act stupid-wasted) at her wedding so she can feel all the hell she put me through.

My husband is not interested in going to her wedding because of her actions at our wedding. He wants to RSVP that we will not be attending and send a card with money, but if I am going to give her a card with money, then I should go to the reception and act like an a — .

What are your thoughts?”

-From “Disturbed” via Ask Amy, Washington Post, 24 November 2016

Dear Disturbed,

It seems a real waste to hold on to a seven-year grudge about someone else’s decision to make themselves look like a complete tool for nothing. Here you have saved up all of this non-refundable ire toward someone you call a “friend,” building anniversary after anniversary of anger, and for what? Simply to let go the chicanery of yore in favor of freeing yourself from a lifetime of resentment based on a few hours’ worth of bad dancing and failed passes to which you have tied the very ruination of your marital memories? Phooey!

We are all the exact same people we were seven years ago; no one has changed or matured in that time, and the memory of your friend’s performance at your wedding is as fresh in everyone else’s mind as it is in yours, which is why your plan to act like a publicly drunken clod as retribution for one evening of poor decision-making is positively foolproof. Everyone at your friend’s wedding will completely understand that the topless woman throwing champagne glasses at the DJ is simply out for bald revenge, as any reasonable person would be, and not really throwing champagne glasses at the DJ, a thing only unreasonable people would really do, and not just ironically do, as you shall.

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We are all the exact same people we were seven years ago.
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Your brilliant plan will be appreciated by all the guests. They will greatly enjoy the patient explanations you will give to all of them for your behavior, lest they think you’re an actual drunk asshole instead of a sober asshole pretending to be a drunken asshole. Everyone will think you charming and cool and see this decision as a very positive reflection on your excellent character, which they will understand to be superior to the bride’s based on your elaborate act of retaliatory subterfuge, a totally chill and normal thing to do.

“We rarely get a response from grandchildren to whom we send carefully selected gifts. I have concluded that it is mostly due to a pathetic lack of manners.

Children need to be trained to express appreciation for what is given to them, and the irony is that emailing is so quick and easy. The pervasive disappearance of even the most basic manners and consideration for others is cheapening our quality of life and sadly breeding some low-class citizens. Good manners are nothing more than the oil that lubricates human interaction.”

-From “Disgusted in Florida” via “Annie’s Mailbox,” 10 December 2016

Dear Disgusted,

Your awful shitbag grandchildren are the fucking worst. They’re ungrateful assholes who actively choose, day after day, not to teach themselves the basic blasted manners their grandparents want them to have. If they weren’t such low-life scumbags, they’d go right the fuck out and buy a goddamned copy of some Emily Post shit and read the fuck up about how to thank the hell out of their gracious and thoughtful grandparents, who have the nicest manners of any people who ever lived, and definitely nicer manners than the assball progeny of your own children, for whose manner-teaching abilities you bear no responsibility whatsoever.

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Your awful shitbag grandchildren are the fucking worst.
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“My live-in boyfriend has not exactly proposed, but he has been dropping hints about ‘looking at rings,’ etc. So I was surprised when I came home with a few things from a bridal expo and he shouted that I was ‘rushing’ him into marriage. Now I’m considering ending it. Thoughts?”

-From “Wannabe Bride” via “Ask E. Jean,” Elle, 9 December 2016

Dear Wannabe Bride,

Thoughts, indeed, are all one can have in this situation, wherein two people may or may not be willing to marry each other and may or may not be on the same romantic timeline and may or may not be ready to obtain wedding-related purchases in the service of the marriage-slash-wedding they are thinking (maybe) about.

The last thing one wants to do when one is considering hitching up one’s legal, financial, and emotional well-being to another human for the rest of one’s life is to have a frank and honest conversation about what the future holds. Instead, potential spouses must engage (before they are engaged) in the delicate art of hint-dropping, mind-reading, and yelling about coupons for buy one, get-one-free wedding DJ services. Only this way can romance — the classical experience of hoping and assuming your intended feels anything like the way you do, or the way you think they do — truly flourish.

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Potential spouses must engage in the delicate art of hint-dropping.
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No one wants to feed friends and family the unsavory story that mutual agreement and loving consent preceded their nuptials. Imagine, years down the road, the embarrassment of telling one’s children that Mummy and Duds were once young, in love, and capable of discussing their feelings with one another. No, the best you can do, Wannabe Bride, is simply continue to want — or, of course, end the relationship, which is the universe’s only other alternative to desiring to grow old and die with the dude.