Many people are beginning to believe that marriage is slowly becoming obsolete. While encouraged throughout most of human history, changing factors in the mid-twentieth century led to an increase in cohabiting couples, unmarried parents, and single people choosing to live alone, along with more women choosing careers over marriage and children. However, the divorce rate and cost of weddings skyrocketed in the process.
Now, before I dig any deeper, let me say that I have nothing against women preferring to stay unmarried, or delaying marriage for a while, in favor of pursuing a career. In fact, more power to you; if you feel that you can go ahead and support yourself without any emotional consequences whatsoever, then by all means do it. But my point is that our culture has seemingly reached a point where marriage isn't really promoted or even consciously encouraged anymore. If a girl today says, "I can't wait to get married," she is likely to be met with a bunch of raised eyebrows and rolled eyes. People will wonder why she is choosing to become "dependent" when she could instead dedicate the rest of her life to a career. Which begs the question: does choosing to spend the rest of your life with somebody necessarily make you "weak"?
I understand that traditionally, marriage was based on commitment and building ties between families, not upon actual love. (In some countries, it still remains this way). So it's ironic that despite how it's 2014, we still tend to portray marriage in this sense. If a woman chooses to get married and have children, then her dreams are dead; her life is apparently over, and she has become a weak female, right? Whereas when a man gets married, he proves that he is committed and ready to build a strong family. Why does this stigma exist? Why is it that if a woman remains alone and career-focused, she is a "strong, independent woman", but if a man chooses to remain unmarried, he's an "immature manchild with committment issues"?
Kind of a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don't kind of thing when it comes to both sexes.
When I read Cinderella Ate My Daughter (awesome book by the way), I remember how the author was bemoaning the girly-girl culture, saying how it was anti-feminist to only have girls focus on being princesses who will one day be rescued by a prince and have a fancy wedding. But why is this such a terrible thing? Why is it that feminists promote the idea that abortion, prostitution, and stripping are "empowering", but marriage is a horrible, terrible thing that should be avoided?
I mean, for goodness sake, I could name at least ten things worse than getting married. Murder, war, poverty, malaria, AIDS, Fifty Shades Of Grey....the list goes on. People even go so far as to try and prevent their daughters from playing with princesses, as if it will somehow shape them into submissive females. I am sorry, but we should really focus on letting kids be kids. For instance, when you were five years old (speaking to the girls here), did you want to dress up as a princess, or as Gloria Steinem?
Maybe the whole material aspect of weddings is what we are trying to avoid. The cost and extravagance of weddings has increased exponentially, spawning shows like Bridezillas which showcase women as spoiled brats who only care about how they will look on their wedding day, not on the actual marriage itself. I certainly understand wanting to avoid this; nobody wants to be materialistic or been seen as a phony person (unless they have no shame, of course). But there isn't a rulebook that states you absolutely have to have a giant fancy wedding! Whatever happened to ignoring the haters and not always follow the crowd? It's not the actual wedding itself we should be against, but rather the type that is pushed by the capitalist industries all over the Western world.
Just because a girl says she wants to get married doesn't mean that she immediately gives up on her dreams. In fact, getting married and raising a family can actually open many more doors than you would expect. When we jump on girls by demanding that they focus on a career instead of what they may want to focus on a bit more (for example, marriage and kids), then we are restricting their ability to become who they want. And that is certainly very anti-feminist indeed.
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