On bridezillas as a concept

I'm sure that most of you has heard of the movie that's coming out soon, Bride Wars. It's pretty much impossible not to, considering that Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson are promoting the shit out of it. Seriously, they are everywhere, but as much as I love seeing Anne Hathaway's red carpet choices, I will not be seeing this movie. Even if I weren't already married and pretty much over weddings, I wouldn't be seeing this movie. Because, to be frank, it looks like a sexist, cliché piece of shit. The portrayal of the wedding as the most important thing in these women's lives, the way they turn on each other so easily over a minor conflict... it's just disgusting. But really, this review says everything that I could say, and very succinctly, so I highly suggest that you read it.

But the whole thing got me thinking about weddings and bridezillas. I hate the term bridezillas, and I hate the fact that this movie is such a cheap way to capitalize on that social idea of women as bridezillas. This movie buys into all those stereotypes that give weddings such a bad name and makes regular women feel that if they don't want to turn into a bridezilla and everything that represents, they can't have a traditional wedding at all.

I just find the entire concept of the bridezilla to be sexist and disempowering. There are very few women who act like this, and yet it's become such an easy, popular term to use that all those brides who fall into normal parameters--spending money and effort to make their wedding what they want, and having reasonable expectations that others will do what they say they will to make that happen, without treating everyone around them as disposable--hypersensitive to being labeled a bridezilla.

This happened to me the day before my wedding--I found out that my dress had been put back into its garment bag after being steamed and pressed, which meant that the satin would wrinkle again. Hyper-conscious of not wanting to be a bridezilla, I responded in what I felt was a mild, polite, and appropriate manner and found a solution to the issue (calling my father, who was at the hotel with the dress, to ask him to take it out of the bag before it wrinkled). And yet I got called a bridezilla, and it felt both hurtful and incredibly unfair. I still don't think I was being unreasonable at all, and I didn't get mad or yell or scream, and yet the second that word was used, I felt that I couldn't say any more about the situation or even respond to the allegation without making things worse.

Basically, "bridezilla" has become a term that makes regular people feel that they can't assert themselves in ways that would normally be well within their rights. It's become a way of fighting back, a way of, essentially, silencing someone. Brides are so worried about not being bridezillas that a lot of them are going too far in the opposite direction and not standing up for themselves when they should.

I'm not saying there aren't women (and men--yes, it happens) who go crazy over their weddings, who make it their number one priority at all costs and hurt people in the process, who act exactly like the characters in this movie. And that's inappropriate and unacceptable behavior on their part. But instead of turning it into a stereotype of how every bride will be and creating this term and this standard, can't we just treat these people as the anomalies they are? And certainly, can't we avoid making movies that spoon-feed this disempowering concept to the masses?