Amanda Marcotte, and, by extension, the Pandagonistas, are having a hissy because the New York Times ran a story on the latest trend for weddings: botox for the bridesmaids.
Frankly, I think anyone who wants needles in the face needs to have her/his head examined. I didn't like vaccinations as a kid, so I'm not gonna volunteer for a battery of needles at this point in my life. But, as usual, Amanda seems to mix her own hostility regarding marriage into why botoxing the bridesmaids is a bad idea:
The unsubtle implication is that women, by putting off their weddings from the proper bridal age of 19 to the wretchedly old early 30s, have to go to great measures to conceal what wretched old hags they and their friends are. The other implication, standard to these pieces, is that no matter how accomplished or intelligent a woman is, she’s not validated as a woman until some random dude decides he’d like to see her doing his dishes. And that if you’re marrying in your 30s, you’ve been waiting so long for admission to the human race that you completely lose your mind with excitement, micromanaging every detail down to the color of your bridesmaids’ pubic hair.
Where to start? While I think getting botox for your bridesmaids shows a certain amount of shallowness, I'm not sure where it meets with "doing a man's dishes" or that women should marry at 19. I guess when no one wants to marry you, though, you have to sneer at the institution.
There's no doubt the wedding industry has been built on the illusion of the perfect wedding. And lots of young women (and maybe some men) buy into the fantasy. I've been to big fancy weddings and justice of the peace weddings, having fun at both. But never did I think the bride was a better woman because she'd had a boob job or botox. Perhaps, as some of the comments suggest (and they are worth reading just for the giggles), I've gotten past "extreme lookism," whatever that may be.
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