Women aren’t sad or pathetic for not single-handedly disavowing and dismantling an ever-growing consumer culture that feeds on and magnifies every possible human insecurity. Wedding planners, magazines, websites, venues and vendors, not to mention the Disney Princess empire, have all kinds of money, time and stupid buzzwords invested in making sure no one deviates from the plan.
What’s sad isn’t the fact that people buy shit, and long to buy shit, in a capitalist society; what’s sad is that people are making money, fuckloads of it, by making promises they know their products can’t keep.
What we need is more media literacy, more feminism, more patriarchy-smashing, more teaching women and girls that their worth is not found in one party they throw, the wedding favors they select, or the one person they legally bind themselves to. And we need way less of this: “Spending a significant portion of your time planning a wedding without being in love isn’t as much delusional as it is sad.”
