Tag / Katy Shrout

by Michael

The Big Deal About Weddings, pt. 2

As I said yesterday, I’ve been working with engaged couples from my church.  It’s a part of my job.  It’s a good part really.  I think it’s one of the best ways I can talk to people about themselves and during a time when they are in meaningful life time but while they aren’t exactly in a crisis.

I mentioned Kate Shrout’s article at the Religious Dispatches.  If you haven’t read it, take a look.  In the last section she deals with the myth of feminine upward mobility.  One of the reasons I love scholars is that they are often good writers.  They find ways to express stuff about life and people and the things people do.  Dr. Shrout wrote about the myth, and that’s what I want to park on in this post.

The myth of feminine upward mobility has to do with achieving princesshood by being given the right things.  As she explains, while invoking the example of Cinderella, it is

It is a myth of feminine upward mobility, facilitated through consumption, enacted by women especially on the wedding day. It is about rite of passage—how girls become women—and I, for one, would argue the transition is brought about less by Prince Charming than it is by the Fairy Godmother, the kindly feminine personification of the marketplace. You become a woman by becoming visibly beautiful, and you become beautiful by getting the right stuff.

A couple key points about this myth.

  1. Women move upward by being given something by someone else.  Shrout’s preference is to point to the Godmother rather than the Prince.  Whichever you choose, the myth of mobility seems tied to someone outside of our sisters.  As true as this is, especially around the subject of weddings, I’m frustrated that the one special day is the one time many women will feel esteemed and valued.  It’s sad that females cannot look forward to a life of recognition, appreciation, and esteem, and that those three get crammed into one day.  That one day carries so much significance.  If it doesn’t happen, if it doesn’t happen in a timely manner, the meaning tied to it is lost.
  2. Myth has its problems.  Some myths are real, and as I think of this one, I’m frustrated by a dozen instances in recent memory where I’ve heard of women being told in one way or another, “You aren’t beautiful unless you do this.”  Or, “You haven’t achieved until you’ve accomplished that.”  Shrout says that this myth is about women “getting the right stuff.”  I hope you think that this myth, as realistic as it may be, is equally unacceptable for the women in your life.
  3. Women need men to recognize all kinds of beauty.  My wife will tell you–I will tell you–that I am “eye conscious.”  Dawn says that all men are eye conscious.  But she’ll say I’m really eye conscious.  I’d never heard that until she told me.  In other words, men (including me) like beautiful things.  I appreciate beauty.  As a man, a part of my life task is to recognize beauty in women, in all forms, and not just physical beauty.  I think a lot of men doing that will create a world where women begin to see themselves as beautiful and not necessarily beautiful because of some thing they’ve done, some thing they’ve gotten.
  4. Faith communities can be gift givers.  I’d love to see communities of faith, or positive communities in general, being the voices which give to the women around us, so that their inherent beauty is pointed out, while they are receiving gifts from others in a safe way.  I’d love to imagine a church or a temple or a youth group as the place where little sisters growing up will hear that they are beloved because they are and not simply because of something they can do for someone else.  I think words like celibacy and singleness come up when a faith community is giving.  I think we draw out a person’s creativity and honor a person’s sexuality when a community is giving.
by Michael

The Big Deal About Weddings, pt. 1 of 2

I have not followed the events leading up to the only wedding happening in London this week.  But I am struck by how exalted Prince William and Princess Kate’s relationship and ceremony have become.  Over the last month, I’ve changed the radio station in my car, turned the channel on the television, and scrolled down my computer screen as the news has reported, promoted, and surveyed the events leading up Friday’s wedding.

I must say that I hadn’t considered blogging about the big deal around this wedding before reading Katy Shrout’s article over at Religious Dispatches.  Dr. Shrout poses several good why questions in her essay.  She surveys a quick history of the last century and a half of white weddings and discusses how we’ve come to stuff our faces with multi-layered cakes and how brides came to love things like tiaras and creampuff dresses.  More pointedly though, she deals with the myth of feminine upward mobility, which I’ll come back to tomorrow.

To be clear, I am happy for the couple.  I think the decision to marry is a serious and joyful one.  I’m happy they’ve chosen to wed.  I’m happy.  And I’m not sure that my happiness extends to the press coverage of their engagement and all the snapshots and videos and commentary promised to trail from their marriage service.  The press has dealt with the superficial and chosen to stay above the water of what marriage really is, what marriage really takes.  They haven’t hinted at the harder choices ahead, the significant losses to come–and aren’t all of them significant, even the little ones like leaving an apartment you liked for a bigger one or buying a different brand of toothpaste because that’s what she likes or because that’s what was on sale?  The press hasn’t mentioned the highs and lows of the couple’s life together.  I’m not surprised.  I’m not that naive.

I haven’t seen two straight weeks this year without talking personally to at least one couple looking toward “the altar,” readying themselves for marriage.  I’ve spent the same months walking with a husband and wife through the dark nights of marital trouble.  It’s been a weird and somehow normal existence.  Looking ahead with some and looking backward with others.

After our Easter service I met one of the engaged couples for the fourth and final session before their day, and we talked about their ceremony.  We’ll meet once, at least once, months after the wedding, but that was the last time we would meet to discuss their decision to marry and what comes because of it.  We’ve spent hours talking about communication, grace and personality, family history seen through the lens of genograms.  We’ve talked about the massive role that Jesus has in their relationship and how their relationship is “sacramental,” though I didn’t put it exactly in that word.

As a pastor, I hope that the royal couple, the one in the UK–has gotten counsel, that they’ve explored to their best efforts the mystical and material union that is marriage.  I presume they have.  They are, after all, royal.  They have advisors, including all those priests at the amazing cathedral that is the Abbey.  They are making a decision with international implications, just like the couple in my church frankly, though our couples in Chicago aren’t getting press coverage.  I hope they are making a big deal about their marriage and not just their ceremony.