Even though I do, I don't do this...

Okay, so as I think all of you have read by now, Tony and I are getting married. I think that's pretty damned cool (notice the understatement here). This means we are now planning a wedding, and avoiding the chaos of run-of-the-mill, white, lacey, overly bride focused goo. That is where this blog entry found it's inspiration....

As I was perusing the uber corporate 'David's Bridal Boutique' website, generally looking at dresses and the rest of their tulle and chiffon clad entrapments, I noticed a section in their "boutique" titled To-Be-Wed Wear. First of all, why anyone would want to wear something advertising their relationship status, and certainly thumbing their noses at anyone who isn't equally "blissful," is beyond me! Second, if perchance that kind of public display of affection, attachment, what ever you want to call it, is your thing wouldn't you want to do so in a more long lasting way? I mean, is some made in India cotton garment that is going to fade, fray and tear, really the way you want to think of your commitment to your sweetie?

As much as those two issues disrupt my sense of inner peace, they are not why I sat here to share with you and rant about something I find deeply disturbing. Allow me then, to lead you to several of the products that they advertise as part of this "collection." The items in question are all underwear, specifically women's panties. There is the "Bride Thong," the "Dreaming of... Boyshort," the "Future Mrs. Boyshort," and the "Mrs. Thong." I hope I don't have to tell you how utterly ridiculous I find this. But since you're not here to calm me down...

I can't decide what is worse, that these "products" exist at all, or the fact that hundreds of brides will purchase this tripe not thinking about what these communicate. At best these garments are sexist and smack of a return to 1950's gender roles, and at worst they subtly condone and encourage the idea of the woman as nothing more than property of her fiance/husband whose sole purpose is to embellish his prestige. And how does this happen? By plastering these ideas all over the physical center of her sexuality.

WTF? Has women's equality lost so much ground that now not only are the women of my generation trying to find justification for their own lives by handing over their own identity for that of anyone else's, but much worse they are allowing someone to stamp his name on their body as if it were a tag of ownership.

A quick note to those of you who may not be familiar with this weblog... Please find a collection of activist websites to your right. Many of those are feminist. Visit them, frequently. At each you will not only find valuable and edifying articles about women's issues in today's political climate, but you will also find different ways to become involved in something yourself. Please, don't be a part of what I fear to be the majority of this generation, too blinded by prescribed roles and a consumerist fever to actually stand for something.

Progress?

Force feeding young girls, a la Chinese foot binding, to attain a cultural beauty standard that is just as phony as all other beauty "standards," and the homogenization (some could argue the Americanization) of what is thought of as beautiful? Where to begin...

I am repulsed and disgusted by this incredulously oppressive and controlling habit of force feeding in order to achieve some illusion of wealth. Imagine a MAN'S wealth being shown by the fact that he obviously brings home enough 'bacon' (pun intentional) so that not only does his wife not have to work, but on the contrary does nothing but sit around and stuff her face. These are ideas of wealth from another time. However that doesn't seem so quaint when you consider dear old mom and dad restricting their little princess to force Hostess Twinkies and MacDonald's down her throat to achieve the same picture.

And that brings me to my next point: It's just a picture. Sacrificing health for some unrealistic and artificial idea of beauty is wrong. The only purpose it serves is to control and oppress half the population, it doesn't matter what size package the oppression comes in.

How sad is it that even though this is an atrocious treatment of girls and women, I am simultaneously mourning the dwindling of societies where a woman my size and shape would be considered beautiful before, and turn heads faster, than one of Paris Hilton's stature. Where my thighs, stomach and arms wouldn't be shameful aspects of my flesh but proud ones. Where Scarlet Johansen isn't considered by the establishment to echo a time where women were more voluptuous, just because she has breasts in a community where that borders on taboo, even though she's still too damned thin. I think that it is sad that even though what these images are the other side of the force feeding coin, as it were, these are the things I fear for the women of Mauritania.

It doesn't matter what country your talking about, there is no way to achieve healthy and realistic standards (if standard is the goal) if there is socialized inequity in weight and food politics as well as unattainable beauty ideals that are being perpetuated by a global media. When, and where, do we meet in the middle? Where every woman and man can live healthily without being concerned with body "image?" where we can all simply live and be happy with ourselves and one another?