Here Comes the Pride

This weekend, I am going to a friend's wedding. This is my second friend to be married this year. Oddly enough, last night, I caught a Sex and the City episode which featured a wedding. So now, of course, I have weddings on the brain. How do I feel about them? At this point, I'm pretty ambivalent. How do I handle them? I'm happy to hear when people have "found" each other, but, if a wedding were an argument, I don't think I'd be convinced that I, myself, am "lost." I used to have vague daydreams about getting married, but the older I get, the pickier I get (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).

For interesting critiques of weddings, and, by association, marriage, I think some comedies are performing good work. Old School starts with a wedding in which two of the groom's best friends provide examples of relationship pitfalls. Halfway through the movie (and after the friends have started an all-inclusive fraternity), Frank and Marissa are living two separate lives and begin to discuss divorce. Though Marissa is fed up with Frank's juvenile actions, it's clear that marriage doesn't suit Frank at all, a point that I believe is under-read within the film. What's more, I would love to have seen this premise pursued from a woman's point of view, but women are typically the "straight men" in this kind of comedy. Besides, all women want to be married—right? Right!?! Don't get me wrong, Julia Roberts' Runaway Bride gave a woman's point of view, but the outcome didn't truly challenge the institution's relevance to women's lives. (Plus, I am 84% sure Julia Roberts is animatronic, so I don't trust her point of view.)

Building on the lure of the wedding ritual, Wedding Crashers shows how weddings benefit those other than the married couple. Personally, I love to go to weddings! It's exciting to see my friends get married, especially when I know and love the person they're marrying, too. And, as I've become more comfortable with the prospect of being forever single, I am able to have more fun and be more emotionally generous. Come to think about it, maybe I want a wedding more than I want a marriage (bitchin' good time!).

Finally, I love The Wedding Singer. Who would have thought that Adam Sandler would come up with one of the most compelling relationship comedies ever? In this movie, Robbie falls in love with Julia while he helps her plan her wedding to her creepy Wall-Street-workin,' two-timin' boyfriend, Glenn. Robbie and Julia develop real affection for one another as they discuss their lives and their dreams...then they fall in lurv. This movie succeeds by relying less on sex than it does on the premise of shared respect and mutual emotional support, both of which the principals conveyed convincingly.

This brings us to what happens after the cake is eaten and the champagne goes flat. Married people get presents, tax cuts, possibly children, and the right to create and delimit their own families. As for single people? In the SatS episode "Right to Shoes" (I think), Carrie reflects that married people are given multiple celebrations and gifts whereas single people are never celebrated. Of course, being single is its own reward, but her point is more telling: our society is constructed to support and nurture the very people who have already partnered into supportive and nurturing relationships. This is not to say that one should smother the singleton with overattention, as many of us have created systems of supportive and nurturing friends. On the contrary, I would urge understanding. In many ways, our alternative kinship system makes up our family, though this isn't readily apparent to society's marriage-privileging one-track mind. Single people aren't only desparate leftovers who have failed at dating (though, to be fair, that does describe some of us); many of us are so happy with our lives and fulfilled in our work that we can't find time to fit others in, or we simply don't look.

So here's a gift which keeps on giving: if you're having trouble interacting with the singles, treat us as if we were already complete, with the same respect that is afforded married couples. Listen to us as if we were talking about something you care about even if you can't understand what we are talking about. Believe me, we already do this willingly for married people and those who've had children (i.e., people unlike us), and we deserve no less consideration in return.