A now-deleted post (that you can still see in Google’s archives) by blogger Kathryn Jean Lopez of the National Review has been weighing heavily on my mind. Entitled “You’ve Never Met a Bridezilla Like a Feminist Bridezilla,” the post is little more than an excerpt from a post by blogger Jessica Valenti of Feministing. Valenti, you see, is getting married. She also identifies as a feminist. While Lopez’s post doesn’t include any outright insults directed toward Valenti, the title implies that there is something unusual and perhaps even a little icky about the thoughtful way Valenti is approaching matrimony.
What, I have to wonder, is wrong with carefully considering whether or not to take the name of one’s partner… with thinking about the plight of those who cannot at this time get legally married… or with delving into the origins of established wedding traditions? My take is that the answer is nothing. Nothing is wrong with planning an examined wedding, and anyone who is threatened by another woman’s choice to plan just such a wedding probably has a pretty big chip on her shoulder.
What it comes down to, in my mind, is this: Not taking a partner’s last name isn’t automatically a feminist decision any more than taking a partner’s last name indicates that you’re a slave to the patriarchy. The same goes for wearing a white wedding gown, tossing the bouquet, including gendered words in your wedding vows, and being walked down the aisle by daddy. The reasons people do or don’t do these things go waaaay beyond “I’m rebelling against socially-sanctioned gender inequality” or “I’m a woman, so this is what I have to do.”
The feminist wedding is basically the examined wedding, which is what most brides and grooms really ought to be planning whether they identify as feminists or not. Sometimes the choices they make will adhere to the tenets of feminism (making it an uppercase Feminist Wedding), and sometimes they won’t, but to imply that Jessica Valenti is a ‘feminist bridezilla’ because she’s exploring all her options is patently absurd.
Eh, I think it’s much ado about nothing. I think you’re reading far more into it than what is there, personally. I think the term bridezilla is much more of a joke than serious in popular culture now. Considering the original author’s own post is titled “Adventures in Feminist Wedding Planning,” I think it’s reasonable to assume the bridezilla label is meant as a joke referring to just about anyone who has to plan a wedding – or any other big event. (Don’t get me started with an event I’m working on for May…)
Given the context of NRO being a site for very socially conservative readers, I think it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek about different issues faced that they really don’t care about as much. Should they? Well, then you’re setting their priorities for them and that’s just as wrong as if they tried to tell the girls at Feministing what their priorities should be.
Should the status of such priorities be the butt of jokes? Maybe, maybe not. I suppose that just depends on how uptight you want to be about it. I don’t think there was anything insulting about it, and I identify as a feminist who even attended an all-women’s college. I’m not going to be at all upset if someone jokes about the seemingly silly things I’ll focus on for our event which will come with a heavy history/civil rights theme. If NRO posted something similar about any planning posts I choose to put up, only with a “gun nutty bridezilla” comment, I would laugh.
Ah, the charming Ms. Lopez. She recently also blamed feminism for domestic violence.
*crickets*
It is interesting how the word “feminist” carries it’s own associations that have nothing to do with being a feminist to the point where Sandra Day O’Conner refuses to label herself with it.
But I agree, thinking over why you want to do what you do and the signifigance behind it instead of just going with the rest of the herd shows a brain and not that you’re a man hating, bra burning caricature of a person.
Sometimes one might want not to take the last name of one’s very loved husband not because one is philosophically opposed to it (one is not and one’s husband’s last name is, in theory, much easier to spell than one’s own last name) but because one despises one’s outlaws sooooo much that one does not want to have that little bit in common with them.
I’m very much of the belief that it’s important to examine traditions now and again to see if they fit your belief system and/or practical circumstances.
And so it was that I wore white, because I knew I would look great in it…but added a lot of colorful accessories because I’m a colorful person. We tossed the bouquet and garter, because I love the original intent of sharing the luck of the bride and groom with their nearest and dearest. I ditched the concept of the veil because I find them annoying to wear and the train because we were getting married in the woods and I didn’t want to deal with the extra cleaning fees, not to mention the attractive sight of the bride trailing dead leaves and twigs across the dance floor. I was piped down the aisle because I love bagpipes. I was escorted to the altar by my father because I knew he would be terribly hurt (though he would probably never have said a word to me about it, bless him) if he didn’t get to do that, and also because it’s a sign of familial support, which mattered to me. I did, however, have him answer the question ‘who gives this woman?’ ‘with the support of her family, she happily gives herself’ not only because I really, really dislike the question as representing centuries in which women didn’t have the option to decide purely for themselves, but also because I was thirty freaking years old, making it silly that anyone else have a damn word to say about it in this day and age. We entirely failed to have a cake because Mr. Twistie doesn’t care for them.
As for the name thing, well, when I girded up my loins to tell Mr. Twistie that I was keeping my own name after our wedding, he just looked briefly confused and said ‘I never thought you would do anything else.’ He knows the pride I take in my family and its history. He knows – and shares – my feminist principles. Most of all, he understands me.
I heartily encourage everyone to take a careful look at what’s expected and decide what works and doesn’t work for them as individuals and as a couple. Whether you choose to stick close to tradition, veer entirely away from it, or have a mix of traditional and non-traditional elements, your wedding should reflect what you believe and who you are.
Following tradition is great. Following it because you’re afraid to examine what it means to you isn’t.
It is not actually a deleted post, it is available here:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWJiYTkwNDE2ZjRhNDdkMTFmNjA1ZDk1ZTZiODQ0MGY=
Is my response really being held for disagreeing that the post at NRO is anything to take seriously? I see other comments approved with later timestamps, so I’ll assume that’s the case.
That’s too bad, I did enjoy reading this blog. I’m sorry to see the atmosphere on comments change.
Bitter: We’d never hold a comment for disagreeing with a post! Comment moderation is done automatically by WordPress’ spam catcher, and we check it a few times each day to make sure non-spam comments aren’t getting tossed. Your comment was one of many on this post that were held for moderation… I can’t be sure why.
Meg at A Practical Wedding is saying similar things. I, while no expert, am also saying similar things. Hmm. Goes without saying that I agree with you. Still a feminist myself, after 52 years of life. http://amidlifeofprivilege.blogspot.com/2009/03/when-in-doubt-deconstruct.html
I do think it’s interesting that someone would not want to take her husband’s name as way to strike against the patriarchy but would then keep the name she got from her father. Or take the name her mother got from her father. Unless you make up a last name, you are at some point endorsing the patriarchy by taking a father’s name from somewhere in the line, aren’t you?
The one thing that didn’t get decided for me for my wedding was my dress, mostly because it was super-cheap. My family admitted, begrudgingly, that the dress was “so meâ€, but it is still the most original, beautiful dress I could imagine wearing with the budget we had at the time. It should be up to the bride, not anyone else, what she wears on her wedding day.
Bitter, my comment have found their way into the spamcatcher on more than one occasion, and that SINCE I started writing for this blog. We have no control over which messages get posted immediately and which wind up in moderation.
If we did, my comments would never need to be moderated.
For what it’s worth, I’ve noticed that my longer comments tend to get held up — I suspect the spamcatcher is programmed to snag anything past a certain length.
As far as the NRO post goes, I’m puzzled by this Kathryn Lopez person — she just reposted what Valenti wrote as though it were so obviously ridiculous as to need no comment. I didn’t see anything ridiculous in what Valenti wrote. Clearly I’m not on the same wavelength. Not sure I want to be, frankly, if what SerenityNow said is true.
And Bitter, I have to disagree about bridezilla being a term used all in fun these days — I’ve seen it used in extremely nasty and negative ways on various message boards and blogs, for such sins as wanting the caterer to return their calls, wanting to walk down the aisle alone, and being disappointed when the best man flakes out and doesn’t show up for the rehearsal. Sometimes it’s just a joke, but sometimes it’s designed to hurt the bride or bully them into doing things someone else’s way. I absolutely got the vibe that Ms. Lopez was using it in the non-fun sense.
Yes, my name will always be somewhat patriarch based. But honestly, it was my name for 30 years until I got married. It was sooooo easy to change when I got married and a complete bitch to change back when I got divorced. If you really look at marriage stats, DON’T CHANGE YOUR NAME! You’ll just have to reverse it later! Why should I change my name? Why doesn’t he change his? We’ve progressed beyond the ownership symbolism of adopting his name.
Jennie, I got married last fall at the age of 44. I am not philosophically opposed to changing my name because I really don’t care that much. My given last name is apparently a difficult one for people to understand and spell and my husband’s name in theory is easy (but I guess people think it shouldn’t be that easy so they always ask so now I am spelling it anyhow), so it wasn’t a difficult decision in theory for me to change my name, but once we got married, it was hard!
First of all, I really cannot stand my husband’s parents, not the least because they told him two weeks before our wedding that they weren’t coming and he shouldn’t marry me. No, this wasn’t a surprise — this has been their attitude all along. But then, yeah — this has been my name for 44 years and it was a lot harder than I thought to give it up. I continue to use it when I identify myself and only use my husband’s last name when I sign official documents. And it was a PAIN IN THE NECK to change it legally.
The term “Bridezilla,” used by someone to mock the choice or choices of a stranger to him or her, is not “fun.” It is not done in fun, it is not funny, it is not done lightly. At this point, it has evolved into an abusive term used by bullies in the hopes of beating someone out of a choice that they themselves would not have made. It is often used as a club to beat someone who is behaving in a perfectly reasonable manner, i.e., someone who wants the caterer to return her calls.
When someone actually calls them on it, a lot of bullies will try to slither out of responsibility for their behaviour by claiming “it’s just a joke†or “nobody takes it seriously!†That’s the excuse bullies often use to deflect the disapproval they richly merit.
Kathryn Jean Lopez threw verbal rocks at someone who is, as far as I can tell, a complete stranger to her. To add insult to injury, nine-tenths of what she “wrote” was lifted directly from Ms. Valenti. I think if you’re going to steal someone else’s work and present yourself as a “columnist,” you should either be more respectful of the source material or write your own damned column.
I think we’re having a very examined wedding but gag me with a spoon before you call me a feminist. Feminism has come to mean a narrow type of behavior and thought for women. We must conform and obey. If you stray off this reservation, like, say, Sarah Palin, oh the wrath you endure.
Valenti’s whole patriarchy complaint is sort of ridiculous (taking her mom’s last name? I mean, HONESTLY). It doesn’t make you stronger as a woman to reject your husband’s name.
Nor does it make you obviously and unquestionably ridiculous to consider the matter according to your personal belief system and political priorities.
I’m not going to get into a huge debate over feminist politics because this isn’t the forum for it. I will, however, say that the definition of feminism is simply that of believing that women should be treated as full human beings legally. We disagree on a lot of political issues, too. We come from every political party, as well as every color in the rainbow. We made it possible for women to debate the relative intelligence/silliness of changing our names when we marry.
And you’re welcome, Karol.