I was getting ready for work a few days ago and this
interesting sorta ‘pretty’ commercial came on television. It was of a very handsome man (which is what
probably stopped me long enough to watch) who was waiting at the head of an
aisle dressed up to the nines. He looked
sort of nervous which morphed into a smug half grin. Soon enough the camera pans to the reason he
in fact looked like this: his bride was
walking towards him bedecked in a flowing gown that probably was the very
embodiment of so many little girls fantasies.
Even I sat mesmerized.
The woman herself was gorgeous, blushing just so, shyly looking at her
groom who waited for her as she floated closer.
It was a sweet advertisement I thought to myself, well done. Sighing, I turned away and continued to prep
for work.
I guess the company that was paying for the ad has more
money than they know what to do with since while I was pulling on my favorite
fuzzy boots the thing aired again. This
time though I focused on the words and…wait…what? I sat quite dumbfounded. I heard the voice over of the groom, a pleasant
soft spoken resonance within it, talking about how he’s not the focus of
anyone’s attention, how he’s the ‘invisible man’ and goes onto say how the
wedding is ‘all about the bride’ and how for the bride, it’s ‘all about the
dress’.
Okay folks, I’m an old married woman, 17 years and counting
(MashAllah). May be this fact alone
makes me ‘out of date’ in understanding this sort of social thinking. I
can’t say I remember everything about what my own wedding was like other than
pure chaos. Sure important parts drift
to mind, how he looked, how I felt, how
I sensed as if I was a 3rd party sitting somewhere watching me go
through the motions. But what is most
easy to recall was that for most of the engagement period, as the day of the
wedding approached, I wasn’t sweating the small details of the event itself, I
was more worried about the bigger things like “I’m going to be someone’s wife,”
“oh crap does he expect me to make him breakfast every morning?” “Am I supposed to pick out his ties or match
shirts to socks?” “Hold up, so I have to
care about someone else’s life along with my own?” These were the things that shot through my 23-yr-old
brain as I prepared myself to be bound to another for the rest of existence.
And I don’t think anyone could say for a moment, knowing who
I was then (and who I am now) that I would be more worried about my dress than
the man himself. Here’s a possible
unknown fact to my non-desi readers: in
our culture, the groom’s family/groom provides the bride with her wedding
outfit(s) (this includes everything from toiletries to shoes, even underwearK) while the same happens
to the groom. I never saw my wedding
dress until the day before that rainy August evening. And neither did I ever think to ask about
it. I know this is highly unusual and I
don’t know many women who have been quite that lax about such a thing but I
never claimed to be normal (as you’ve probably noticed). Do I think others should do this? Of course not!
Anyhow what had me outraged about this ad was the simple
fact that it seems to say to the world that it is alright for the woman to be
more focused on something as silly as the dress (or other wedding details)
rather than the man she’s planning to spend the rest of her life with in wedded
bliss. And adding insult to injury, the
man knows this as well as accepts it.
Um…what?
Hello folks, to me this picture seems all jacked up. This is so ‘effed that I don’t know where to
start with this ‘rant’ I’m about to take off on. I had thought this would be a perfect blog
topic to break the long dry spell I’ve recently gone through with my writing but
that was days ago when I first spied this ad.
And had I typed this then, it would have been full of far more curse
words than appropriate. Judiciously I
decided to wait a few days and due to a rigorous work schedule I haven’t had a
chance to refocus while in the meantime there was a distinct cool down period. Or so I hoped. Obviously not. I’m still sort of hot under the collar.
Let me ask you something crazy here which no one else may
have ever bothered to ask. I warn you,
this may be a little disconcerting, the question itself. You may in fact sit back and really get them
tiny little cogs in your head to start working.
Hang on to your thongs/knickers/tightiewhities or whatever else it is
you chose to put on in the morning (There’s an assumption here that you do
indeed wear undies and if you don’t, please do not share. The other assumption is that you in fact put
on fresh underwear every day. Once
more, if you don’t, please don’t feel the need to make my blog into your
confessional.). Here it is: Possibly, Little Cricket, don’t you think
that instead of focusing all your energy and attention around the details of ONE
very important day, you actually focus on setting up the right foundations to
what will in essence make up the rest of your marriage/life?
Through the years I’ve had brides-to-be (friends, not just
strangers off the street which would be plain ol’ weird) come ask me what I was
like when I was preparing for the day in which I would be connected to another
forevermore. To one particular
individual that had panic in her eyes along with a certain gleam of insanity, I
told her, ‘I didn’t sweat the small stuff.
The wedding isn’t important; it’s all the days after that is what I was
intent on getting right’. In that
instant, I totally lost her. The
confused stare she gave me said that in loud volumes. So I sighed, sat her down and explained. I said something like this:
There is no such thing
as a perfect wedding. No matter how
‘impeccable’ you hope it will be, something will inevitably go wrong. And that’s okay. So what?
How can that one single day be more important than the rest that will
follow?
More blank confused looks thrown at me as she says “yes, but
I mean you dream of this day since you’re a little girl. You deserve it to be everything you
envisioned.”
More sighing, on my part of course, True, but I wanted to run away and join the circus when I was a kid. I can guarantee you that it’s a good thing
that didn’t come to pass. I think that
one of the best things about growing up is the very fact that we adjust our
visions of the world/universe/reality.
We hopefully figure out what is possible, what isn’t, we accept what we
can do and what we can’t do and most importantly we take into account the fact
that all things simply cannot always go our way. By the time you’re making the decision to get
married, you should have at least that little bit of maturity within you,
right?
Well, not right. Not
everyone I realize is as mature as I was when I was taking the decision to
marry P. And for all my immaturity
towards life (and there was plenty) I never fooled myself into believing that
being and subsequently staying married to one man for the rest of my life
(without actually killing him in the process) would be simple.
I knew that it would take some major work…on both of our parts. Although I also admit that I had no clue,
none at all, as to how hard it really can be sometimes, at least I wasn’t
sitting there more worried about the trivialities than the big picture.
And this leads me to mull over: do more marriages fail in this day and age because
societies focus is so very…well, unfocused?
Have we basically lost all sense of what is important? How wrong does the general populace out there
actually have it?
A few of you may be thinking that I’m way overthinking this.
May be even wondering why I would take a simple advertisement and blow it so
totally out of proportion? My answer
back to you would be, why not? May be
YOU should? And follow that up with the
question: Can something as innocuous as
an ad be an accurate representation of the national psyche? Frankly, I believe it can. Companies (like the bridal store that aired
the spot) which can afford to spend a lot of money during prime time most
likely has done their due diligence. I’m
assuming they pour over marketing specs (or whatever you call them), have done
test runs, and checked with legal before actually airing. These aren’t stupid people (in a business
sense at least I hope). They know what
will appeal to the mass before it goes up on the screen.
And since my peepers have seen it, doesn’t that mean that
this nonsense was vetted and the marketing geniuses sitting wherever they’re
sitting have determined that there will be consumer appreciation? That the lemmings of the world will watch
that advertisement and run, and I mean run, en mass, to the store to buy
themselves the most important thing that will be at their wedding…the
dress. Oh how sad is this thought?
The fact is that the right veil, the best champagne,
the glittery opulence of the wedding all fades eventually in the memory. We’re left with some pictures and may be a
few retold stories but the bulk of it all goes away. What we deal with every day after that is
getting up to that person who you walked to at the end of the aisle and my
advice is, instead of the dress being the most important thing to you that day,
make sure it’s the person.
Take this advice from a woman who is old, cynical yet a
realist. This is what counts most.
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