Everyone, male or female, is subject to the whims and the pressures of society. Of course, not everyone has to bow or bend to the demands of society: there have been a plethora of counterculture movements that have focused on the need to rebel against the mainstream and against the demands that society places on people to conform. Human beings seem to have a simultaneous need within that drives them to want to stand out from the crowd, but also drives them to want acceptance from the crowd.
For many, acceptance from the crowd requires conforming to many arbitrary and traditional notions, concepts, and tropes (Clarke, 1976). This discussion will focus on the concept of the western wedding, investigating the ways that society forces participants to conform, and the ways that women in particular are drawn into conforming to the fancies of this fascinating ritual.
First and foremost, it is important to understand what is meant by the key concepts in this discussion. In the analysis, the idea of the “body” refers to one’s physical form, but it also refers to more than an individual’s body. The idea of the body as a societal image for consumption is one that is common in sociological and feminist literature, as the body is one of the first things that human beings can perceive about one another. Everyone has a body, and the body can be judged as beautiful, attractive, unattractive, ugly, short, fat, and so on.
Judgments made on the body can be value judgments, and there are often value judgments made about an individual based on his or her appearance. In this discussion the focus will be on the female body, and how the female body in its many different forms and types can either contain cultural capital or drain cultural capital from the owner. Consumer culture, finally, is understood to be a culture in which commodities and “things” are valued more heavily than intangibles. However, in this discussion, consumer culture is not limited to tangible things—it has been expanded to include intangible experiences that can then be shared via social media for a larger audience and greater sense of pride (Featherstone, Hepworth & Turner, 1991).
Martin (2003) suggests that the very idea of the “everyday” is that it is normal, but in reality, “everyday life has a history” (Martin, 2003). A wedding does not happen to a single individual every day, of course, but weddings of all sizes and shapes do indeed happen every day. When a couple becomes engaged, it is common for both parties to feel intense excitement; however, it is also very common for young women to begin to plan their weddings years prior to meeting their life partner. Many women feel the need to be the center of attention on this day, and the focus of the day is on establishing the bride as royalty.
When the bride enters the reception, this is known as the “grand entrance;” many brides plan their grand entrance so that they can be the center of everyone’s attention. The traditional wedding set-up has the bride and groom seated at the head of the room, with the guests facing them, so that the couple can be seen throughout the reception. However, the bride remains the focus for the bulk of the reception, and it is the bride who most of the guests are focused on throughout the reception as a whole.
The bride, knowing that she will have so many eyes on her throughout the night, will often feel pressured to find a dress that she feels beautiful in—it is a common refrain for women to hear that they are the focus of the wedding, and that they need to have their way about every part of the wedding ceremony. However, a wedding should be about joining two families—it seems out of place to have the bride as such a central figure in the ceremony and the reception. Much of this focus on the bride is linked to old ideas about giving away women at a wedding, rather than the more modern understanding of a marriage between two equals in society.
Many brides go on extensive diets to change their bodies for their wedding day, knowing that during the ceremony and reception, they will essentially be on display and up for consumption for their friends, families, and loved ones. Shriver (2013) suggests that being fat drastically reduces one’s cultural capital, and thus, it is no surprise that so many women feel vastly uncomfortable in their skin during their wedding and reception. Men face this pressure to a certain extent as well, but women are really the focus of many weddings, and the festivities at the reception are an excellent demonstration of exactly how and why women feel so much pressure on their wedding day (Nixon, 1992).
When the bride has her father-daughter dance, all the eyes in the room are upon her; again, when she has her first dance with her new husband—whether immediately following the grand entrance or after dinner—all eyes in the room are upon her. Again, when her husband feeds her the first slice of cake, when they toast, when she tosses her bouquet, and when the best man removes her garter—all eyes in the room are upon her. Knowing that human beings place higher cultural value on thin bodies, it makes sense that many women feel immense pressure to be thin on their wedding day. The white dress that might once have symbolized virginity is now just a symbol of status—in many cases, a multi-thousand dollar symbol of status.
Social media also exacerbates this need. Images of the perfect wedding are everywhere, and the problem with social media is that the owner of a page is able to cull unwanted images from the page. Thus, on social media, an individual can present exactly the image he or she wants to present. Brides feel immense pressure to provide guests with the image of a perfect day with the perfect man. After all, most women only experience one opportunity in their lives to wear a ball gown—and many take their wedding as an opportunity to be viewed as the epitome of femininity.
Many women do not realize that what they are doing is performing a traditional practice as a way to prove their cultural value to their extended social circle. However, even without understanding the pressure that they are feeling, many women who are planning weddings do indeed feel the pressure to have a perfect day. The strain and pressure associated with planning the perfect wedding is inherently linked to the social capital that a woman has in many peoples’ eyes.
References
Clarke, J. (1976). Style. Resistance through rituals, 175-91.
Featherstone, M., Hepworth, M., & Turner, B. S. (Eds.). (1991). The body: Social process and cultural theory (Vol. 7). Sage.
Martin, F. (2003). Interpreting everyday culture. Oxford University Press.
Nixon, S. (1992). Have you got the look? Masculinities and shopping spectacle. Teoksessa: Lifestyle shopping. The subject of consumption. toim. Rob Shields, 149–169.
Shriver, L. (2003, June 7th) How fat has become a political issue, The Globe and Mail.
