Skip to main content

The Film Bridesmaids Portrays American Wedding Hype

   The scene where Lillian tells Annie she is engaged and wants Annie to be her Maid of Honor perfectly embodies how that particular scenario often plays out in real life. You see Lillian's excitement as she begins to tell Annie Doug's proposal, and Annie begins to have an onslaught of anxiety. Her life has begun to fall apart, she's broke, and now her best friend is getting married. I had a similar reaction when I was asked to be a Maid of Honor, I am not a fan of weddings, and I felt pressure to play this particular role because I love my friend. 
     When women are asked to be in weddings, they usually say yes, then become frustrated with the responsibilities that come with their commitment. According to easyweddings.com, "Some brides will have many events and activities leading up to their wedding day and, often, the bridesmaids will put in money here or there for particular things. For example, the bride may have an engagement party, a bridal shower and or a kitchen tea, a Hen’s party and a pre-wedding getaway and other activities. These things will require money and, traditionally, the bridesmaids are expected to cover the cost of the bride for occasions such as the Hen’s night. If the bride chooses to go interstate or overseas for any of these events, or maybe she’s planning a destination wedding too, you need to consider whether you can afford to be in the bridal party. If cost is an issue for you, you want to speak up before accepting the role.” Weddings have become so over-fantasized that the extreme financial and emotional stress placed on members of the wedding party, as well as the bride, has become normalized within American culture.     For the creators of TheKnot.com, the creation of their website stemmed from their own stressful wedding experiences, “TheKnot.com launched on America Online in September 1996. Founded by “four good friends, two of whom had barely survived their own wedding due to the lack of updated information and real-world resources available”, The Knot now serves as “wedding central” online, with links to various wedding item retailers, and claims to be the largest online retailer of wedding favors and supplies” (Engstrom, 2008). The pressure to have a visually appealing wedding is so high that women felt compelled to create an online resource to help other women minimize their stress levels related to the “big day”. Though the initial idea behind the creation of TheKnot.com came from the lack of desired resources for brides to be, it has become highly commercialized to market more extravagant and idealistic fairytale images of weddings to women. This image that their website supports adds to the stress of wedding planning, as opposed to easing it because women feel that everything must be perfect the day they get married.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Marriage and Women's Earning Potential

     In order to gain support from women the wedding industry, "Recognizing that many independent women might bristle at the extravagant, irrational edicts, the wedding complex has recast the bride as fullfilling her unconscious dream as a child, one who believes in fairy tales and who needs to be told what to do" (Arend, 2016). Women are taught to aspire to their wedding day, because that will be the most important day of their lives. Yet, Research done comparing the incomes of women who marry before the age of 20, and women who marry after age 30 show that there is a mean difference of $20,000 dollars a year between the two groups.      The article Want to Earn More Money?Get Married Later.  states, “Women with college degrees who waited until after age 30 to get married earn significantly more than college-educated women who married at younger ages. Whereas those who married before age 20 report an average annual income of just over $30...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Hegemonic White Wedding and Mass Media

     The media have historically supported the views of the dominant group within American society, those holding social, political, and economic power. According to Hegemony in Reality-Based TV Programming: The World According to A Wedding Story , "Mass media disseminate hegemonic values within a society through its tendency to "reproduce the ideological field of a society in such a way as to reproduces, also, its structure of domination""(Engstrom, 2003). The dominant social construct within American culture is heterosexuality, "heterosexuality is, in reality, a highly regulated, ritualized, and organized practice. Sociologically, then, heterosexuality is an "established order made up of rule-bound and standardized behavior patterns" qualifies as an institution. Moreover, heterosexuality as an "arrangement involving large numbers of people whos behavior is guided by norms and rules" is also a social institution" (Ingraham, 1999, pg...
Post a Comment
Read more

Research Analysis: Bridesmaids and The Hegemonic White Wedding

INTRODUCTION:  Throughout American history weddings have been an integral part of our cultural experience, however women have always received the short end of the stick in these arrangements. It wasn’t long ago that women were expected to marry at a young age because the only jobs available were for men, so a single woman in America had no hope of being able to support herself unless she found a husband. In this paper I will use the film  Bridesmaids  to analyze the financial and psychological burden planning a wedding takes on women, and how society has come to normalize the extreme stress experienced during the wedding planning process by all women involved. First I will examine the relationship between current hegemonic social expectations and The White Wedding, particularly how these expectations impact women within American society. Secondly I will assess the financial implications of marriage on women, as well on couple’s relationship longevity in relation to nupti...
Post a Comment
Read more