I was bemused, and not a little puzzled, when I read this tsk-tsking article about about “sexy” wedding dresses in the NY Times. I’m confused as to why the Times has a slate of fashion writers that hate innovation, playfulness, and creativity—you know the very elements that redeem high fashion insofar as it’s a redeemable thing. Here are the dresses they think are too damn scandalous when draped over a bride.
Not a one of these wouldn’t be considered a perfectly reasonable evening gown if it was a different color and worn to some kind of thing where you wear clothes like that. Considering that a wedding is probably many women’s sole opportunity to dress up that much, why shouldn’t she wear something that’s appealing, instead of something that fits the image of the bride as a child-like virgin, fancied up for a ritual and deeply creepy deflowering? Wedding fans should be glad that the consumer culture has kept the practice alive in an era where people are increasingly disinterested in the wedding’s traditional function as a ceremonial transfer of a female body from father to husband. But for some reason, the NY Times fashion section is fond of harumphing. Another writer there recently threw a temper tantrum when a designer dared to make men’s clothes even a fraction as difficult, uncomfortable, and decorative-in-a-demeaning-way as women’s clothes are.
Being pissed because brides are increasingly unwilling to play into the fantasies of those who enjoy saying, “Wow, she’s so pure and virginal. I bet she doesn’t even know what’s going to happen to her later tonight. I shall cackle evilly now, because I’m a sadistic misogynist who likes his deflowerings violent,” just made me roll my eyes. But of course, it got Rod Dreher all excited, and feeling empowered by the vindication of his deep misogyny by the fashion supplement of the Times, he dropped a time-honored slur right in the title of the post:
The bride’s a slut. They call it progress.
He didn’t get much farther than the opening story about a bride who wants the back of her wedding dress to dip down to buttcrack to show off her tramp stamp. Apparently, once you get the lower back tattoo, the gloves are off and Rod can call you all the names that he’d probably like to call all women. I have tattoos, so I suppose I should be personally offended, but I’m not really. I figure that the day I start doing things that Rod Dreher approves of is the day that I relinquish my right to high self-esteem.
But what really makes his post funny is this:
UPDATE: I just got back from the Ayaan Hirsi Ali event, which I’ll be blogging about momentarily. But listening to her made me rethink my use of the word “slut” in this context.
Doh! For those who follow Dreher’s blogging (though I often choose to through the Roy Edroso filter), he’s often wrangling between the twin desires to demonize Muslims and his admiration for the way fundamentalists societies keep women under lock and key. Merriment ensues, if you like that dark humor sort of thing. But he’s not going to let a little bit of feminist thinking creep in, no matter how well-padded it is in anti-Muslim sentiment. He immediately returns to demanding that women put our own joys and lives behind his desire to have violent deflowering fantasies at weddings.
I should be clear that when I said earlier that I missed old-fashioned hypocrisy, I meant that I don’t really expect brides today to be virgins on their wedding day (though I hope that they are), but that I wish they would still honor the ideal by the way they comported themselves on their wedding day. Even if the couple has been shacking up prior to marriage, I think it’s a nice and even necessary tradition for the congregation to officially overlook it in the ceremony, and if the bride proposes to wear white, then we all become De La Rochefoucaulds, and appreciate that she’s honoring the old standard.
Even better would be if she carried a small whip with her and flagellated herself for having sex with the groom before that day during the ceremony. Even better would be if she let the groom beat her up in front of everyone for ruining his property values by letting him have access before he made the final purchase. Should the groom decline to beat his blushing bride for not providing him a hymen to break on his wedding day, the congregation could call his manhood into question. Fun for everyone! I love honoring the old standards.
On a related note, Diane Sawyer can go fuck herself.
I didn’t know this happened when it did, but WTF. Because a woman does a book on her sexual fantasies, she’s a “hypocrite” for writing a children’s book? That makes no kind of sense. Seriously, what’s the logic there? Shall we say that a woman can’t be a mother if she’s had sex? How does one then propose making that work in the biological sense? I guess the idea here is that women of course have to tolerate being fucked for god and country, but they can’t allow themselves to have desires themselves.
79 Responses to “What does sex have to do with getting married or making babies?”
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Is it okay to think that a dress that dips down below the buttcrack sounds really trashy, wedding or not?
When my boyfriend and I got married after 9 years together, I went to a seamstress and had a cheung-sam made with a pretty blue brocade. I am Italian-American and my husband is Swede-Norwegian descent. I got some interesting comments on my choice of dress. Funny how weddings become public property. I also kept my name though, and that is something I still get crap about almost 5 years later.
Madonna often annoys me, but I always love her take on the pearl clutchers who want to try and play “gotcha!” with her. The only response to Diane Sawyer’s question is “I don’t understand what that means” because it makes no fucking sense that a woman cannot write a book about sex and a children’s book. If William Bennett can write a book on morality for children without the slightest trace of irony, then Madonna can sure as hell write children’s books.
I guess the idea here is that women of course have to tolerate being fucked for god and country, but they can’t allow themselves to have desires themselves.
Of course not! If we have sexual desires that we must police for ourselves, how in the world will we be able to police male sexual desires as well as our own? No, no, much better if we have no sexual desires of our own at all. And if we do, they are evil and dirty and wrong and unnatural.
Hysterical, I’m not sure when buttcrack became the new cleavage but I’m not a huge fan myself.
However, if I attended a wedding in which the bride chose to expose what I considered excessive amounts of tush, I’d still probably tsk over the cost of the dress rather than its cut.
And even then, my judgement would be one of taste more than ethics. That’s one of the key differences between me (plus you, perhaps) and Rod. If I find some woman’s wedding distasteful, I’ll call it a difference of opinion. A person like the man quoted will call it immoral, and bemoan how untraditional (read: uncontrollable) women have become.
Even if the couple has been shacking up prior to marriage, I think it’s a nice and even necessary tradition for the congregation to officially overlook it in the ceremony, and if the bride proposes to wear white, then we all become De La Rochefoucaulds, and appreciate that she’s honoring the old standard.
Fucking kids aren’t even pretending the old ways were better anymore. Why, back in my day children paid lip service to their grandparent’s mores until the old badgers were dead, and now I’m finally that old badger and who’s humoring me? huh? No one, that’s who!
I read that article and was just impressed by the level of conspicuous consumption that the Times can normalize without batting an eye. One woman bought a vampy wedding dress, paid for custom-made cover-up so she wouldn’t shame her Mexican father in the convent wedding, then has ANOTHER sexier destination ceremony with a DIFFERENT trashy wedding dress, an idea she somehow manages to make slightly more offensive by giving props to India for inspiring it.
But now that you point out the slut shaming- “wanton” “won’t her male relatives object”- just, wow.
“instead of something that fits the image of the bride as a child-like virgin, fancied up for a ritual and deeply creepy deflowering”
Word up on why the traditional reason for white weddings creeps me out.
Although that wedding dress in the center pic would be kind of cool if the dress wasn’t clearly spawning another dress on that poor bride’s torso.
So…everybody knows she’s not a virgin, but how dare that bitch not at least display proper amounts of shame about it as signified by the act of pretending to be what everyone knows she isn’t? Okay. Now, who’s supposed to benefit from that again? Who at the event is supposed to be mollified, gratified, appeased, etc. by such a farce?
Agreed, HW. That’s what I thought when I first saw this story. I’d not wear a dress cut down to my ass-cleavage- wedding or not.
Other than that- I too, thought, “uh, put these dresses in a color other than white, call them “evening wear”—> no problem? But, yes, I am forgetting how puritanical weddings should be, these days.
And, OMG! There are no veils modeled with these dresses! Oh, wait… there’s that nod to a veil in the third pic.
Tanglethis- you know what some anthropologists have to say about ass-cleavage, right?
It’s not really my thing, either. It’s not that I’m all puritanical (I think)- it’s just that I’m not into asses- on a man or woman. Okay, sometimes covered in jeans. But, rarely…
I forgot that one cannot be a mother and a pop-star that once had a book dedicated to sex. Oooh, for shame. How could a “mother” know anything about children and sex? Where do those tots come from, anyway?
To be brought up whenever these phos project their issues:
SEX - Your /parents/ had it, Now GET OVER IT!
pho = phobes = -phobics
The second dress at the top of the post is an instant classic. Change the color (’cuz I’m not wearin’ white for any man) and provide a groom and I’ll get married in it. I tell ya.
Surely Mr. Dreher cannot mean this? Because there’s nothing more high-larious, not in darkly-comical way, but in a rib-crackin’, knee-slappin’ way, than the sight of a woman who is embarking on her sixth marriage and who is using two of her five kids by previous marriages as flower girls and (the oldest boy gets to be the ring-bearer) but who still thinks it’s the Done Thing to parade down the aisle swathed in about seventy yards of albescent tulle.
The effect produced is of the most incongrous. Surely that’s not what De La Rochefoucauld would have intended?
hey, NT: NICE! I love cheung-sams. I mean, why not? It’s at least something one can wear again, right? And, if I were going to shell out some $ for a dress- well, I’ve long thought a red cheung-sam would be right for me. I’m definitely of the reddish-brown hair, green-eyed Caucasian persuasion, myself.
You know, the dress on the left is actually kind of cute, although I’d probably give it slightly longer sleeves because I’m just not into cap sleeves….
What They Said about the center dress spawning a whole new dress there in the middle…. that and I’m not sure that gown would be flattering on anyone more curvy than “quite slender.”
Of course, I have a hard time imagining #3 as being flattering on ANYBODY (are those tulle ruffles or did a feather bed throw up, WTF?)
I love the article on the shocking, shocking Prada show of men’s clothing. The writer complains with complete lack of irony that the male models were made “domesticated and passive” because their suits fastened in the back, didn’t have zippers in the fly, and didn’t come with practical, cozy coats and hats…like, say, probably all the women’s evening wear introduced this season. Miuccia Prada is called a radical man-hater indulging in “a flipped version of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale.” No guesses on whether other designers were criticized for offering the unflipped version.
Most hilarious line for anyone who’s ever seen a haute couture show: “But when designers stop conceding to biological function, they move away from the realm of fashion and into that of social engineering.” Because that’s what I think when I see 80-pound models tottering down a runway in scraps of feathers or vinyl: practical concern for real human anatomy.
ah, I was going to say something about that lower-back tattoo pic- but I’ll just leave it alone. That, too, is a matter of personal taste. It’s just not for me. That, and roses or dolphins on an ankle.
Okay. I will stop now. Getting stabby.
Need caffeine, obviously. Or, an afternoon cocktail.
How could a “mother” know anything about children and sex? Where do those tots come from, anyway? - holly e.r.
Well, she does call herself Madonna …
Maybe it’s a nuptial homage to Alien.
Because a woman does a book on her sexual fantasies…
Why must the mainstream media demonize bibliophiles? We’re people too, you know.
Wait, that is what this post’s about, right?
HW, I think flaunting the tramp stamp in a wedding dress is distasteful, but that’s an aesthetic thing. It’s certainly not immoral. But then again, I tend to think that it’s the white wedding dresses that are tackier than tattoos. If you can see a bride’s tattoos and she’s wearing a dress that’s not white and not just completely overdone like so many wedding dresses, that could be cool. Honestly, a white wedding dress that shows off the tramp stamp insults my taste mostly because it’s so sorority-girl-with-a-tattoo silly. Like you want to both be a little bit rebellious so people think you’re interesting, but not really rebellious. But since that’s the stance of 99% of people that aren’t really rebellious, it ends up just being tacky. It makes you less interesting, because you’re so conformist in your pseudo-rebellion. If you want to be different, don’t be a weenie about it—wear a fucking red dress to your wedding. Wear jeans and a tank top. Or, gasp, don’t get married at all.
Even if the couple has been shacking up prior to marriage, I think it’s a nice and even necessary tradition for the congregation to officially overlook it in the ceremony
I would have loved to have seen my family try that at my parents’ wedding, but I couldn’t have because I didn’t have X-ray vision in the womb.
To those who want Nadar out of the race, so people won’t have the /choice. to vote for him;
/You/ don’t have to vote for him if you don’t wanna, that’s your choice. Don’t like Nadar? Don’t vote for him.
Okay, the above comment was meant for this post;
http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2008/02/24/naders-in/
(Firefox tabs again…and having to refresh and wait for the pages to load for the anti-spam measure)
The sexiest wedding dress I ever saw was on a devoutly religious bride who, I think, probably had done the “saving herself” thing. It was white silk, extremely low-cut, and so close fitting and flowing, it looked like she’d just been dipped in milk. She might as well have had “WOO-HOO I GET TO HAVE SEX NOW!” embroidered across her bum.
Not my style in any way, but she looked stunning and blissful, and good for her.
*blows a big fat raspberry at the NYT*
Having had 2 spinals, I cannot imagine letting anyone tattoo me back, but that’s just me.
What I find ridiculous, IMO, is not the style of the dresses so much as the fact that these women are willing to spend thousands of bucks on a dress they will wear for a few hours at most and spend tens of thousands for a one day event. for the same $$, they can be just as married and have that money in hand.
Star Trek: TNG had the right idea- Betazed marriages occurred naked!
Someone explain to me why a lower-back tattoo is called a “tramp stamp”, plz. How can it possibly be more trampy than the jeans cut so low you can’t sit down without letting the person in the row behind you know all about your underwear choices? And yet, it’s difficult to find jeans that won’t.
Note that I’m over 50, so tattoos were very rare until I was well into my 20s, and lower-back tattoos were basically unknown. To me they’re just “another place to tattoo”, and have the advantage that the tattoo-ee can readily adjust clothing to cover it up so’s not to upset Grandma.
DAS- true ‘dat.
Would’ve been amusing if she’d said, “well, you know, I do go by “Madonna”…”
Someone explain to me why a lower-back tattoo is called a “tramp stamp”, plz. How can it possibly be more trampy than the jeans cut so low you can’t sit down without letting the person in the row behind you know all about your underwear choices? And yet, it’s difficult to find jeans that won’t.
It’s a popular tattoo spot for college girls who like to party with frat boys, and tramp stamps pair well with the jeans that you are talking about. It provides something pretty to float above the ass-cleavage, much like your pretty face is a focal point above your boob-cleavage, and also focuses attention away from the inevitable thong that never looks quite so peaking out of the jeans when you’re sitting and the poor nylon is clearly stretched to it’s limit, looking more like ass-floss than ever.
I think its a nice and even necessary tradition for the congregation to officially overlook it in the ceremony, and if the bride proposes to wear white, then we all become De La Rochefoucaulds, and appreciate that shes honoring the old standard.
I want to know where De La Rochefoucauld said anything about the importance of ‘honoring tradition’ by lying about who we are. I think Dreher is taking something out of context from Rochefoucauld or perverting its meaning. Rochefoucauld was actually deeply against hypocrisy and dishonesty.
“ I meant that I don’t really expect brides today to be virgins on their wedding day (though I hope that they are), but that I wish they would still honor the ideal by the way they comported themselves on their wedding day. Even if the couple has been shacking up prior to marriage, I think it’s a nice and even necessary tradition for the congregation to officially overlook it in the ceremony,”
Façadism.
The overwhelming thing I wondered, after having read Rod’s post, was how a groom displays the appearance of virginity that he’s apparently so worried aout the bride displayaing. I saw no mention, and I can’t for the life of me figure it out…
Doctor, I got a lower back tat before I knew it had some weird sexual connotation many, many, many moons ago. But since then it’s become common knowledge that “sluts” have this tattoo. Certainly, it’s popular to get the lotus blossom there as your single tattoo, to show that you’re a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll. Mine’s a red and orange sun. But I like to think I’m all rock and roll, since I have three and have at least one more planned. I can’t be offended at the idea that having the lower back tat means I’m a slut. Anyone who is stupid enough to get their panties in a wad over Women With Ink probably has a definition of “slut” that I fit into quite easily.
Perhaps Dreher should consider that De La Rouchefoucauld also said ““If we had no faults, we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.””
——
“I want to know where De La Rochefoucauld said anything about the importance of ‘honoring tradition’ by lying about who we are.”
Dreher’s thinking of “Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue,” one supposes. That’s because he believes that a bride who isn’t a virgin on her wedding day - something which wasn’t all that common in our grandparents’ time, iirc - is chock full o’ vice, while one who is, is inherently virtuous (now, someone who holds that to be an important value, and strives to achieve it, that might be considered a kind of virtue, I’d think, something like an observant Jew keeping kosher - important for them, though of little value to anyone else).
Dreher perhaps should also reflect on “What we term virtue is often but a mass of various actions and divers interests, which fortune, or our own industry, manage to arrange; and it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste,” or that “The smallest fault of women who give themselves up to love is to love.”
Those pics look like they’re from some strange Project Runway challenge.
I wore a halter wedding dress and tried to donate it to a charity that donates white dresses to lower-income “coming out” parties. They told me it exposed too much skin! And it was really pretty conservative. : O
Another vote for hating the dresses because they’re stupid overpriced consumerist trash. Just think: it these women weren’t hung up on white, they could have gotten a cool dress that they could wear on a bunch of other formal (or not-so-formal) occasions. But then I might be the wrong audience here, because I’m just not the kind of person who wants to wear a suit and tie ever. I’ve probably even lost a couple of potential jobs as a result, and I know I’ve lost at least one potential relationship (and a good thing).
Dreher and his claim to wish women were all virgins on their wedding nights makes me puke…
For those who wish to mock the lower back tattoo without worrying whether calling them “tramp stamps” is a form of slut shaming, you can use the term “ass antlers.”
And, yes, the middle wedding dress is clearly the most tasteful, not counting the parasitic twin growing out of the midsection.
a bride who isn’t a virgin on her wedding day - something which wasn’t all that common in our grandparents’ time, iirc
I recently found out two of my grandma’s three sisters were pregnant on their wedding day. I suspect it wasn’t as uncommon as we’re led to believe. The difference is… well exactly what the guy was complaining about. Back in our grandparent’s time, women pretended to be virgins on their wedding days, thus reassuring conservatives that their values are important enough to pay lip service to, if not important enough to actually follow. But now a growing number of women are unwilling to even pay lip service to the idea that virginity is important, and that’s why the conservatives are so outraged.
Well to be fair, what 4 year old doesn’t demand reading every author’s entire ouvre with every story heard? I remember when I first heard “A Christmas Carol” and demanded that I be read “Little Dorritt”.
Luuuuved this:
However, I just heard a woman, Hirsi Ali, talk about how sexual purity is taken to such a psychotic extreme in Islamic culture that women are beaten, tortured and even murdered for having violated the code of honor. Hirsi Ali, who is no longer religious, said in her remarks that she believes religion should have nothing to say about sexual morality. That is clearly unacceptable to any remotely traditional religious person, but given that she’s an atheist now, and given how badly she’s suffered at the hands of the religious, one can certainly understand why she feels that way, even if one can’t agree. That Islam and Islamic law is fanatical about sexual purity doesn’t mean that a respect and an idealizing of sexual purity is wrong. Obviously there is a gulf between Christianity and Islam on this point.
BULL. SHIT. He’s writing about being fanatical about sexual purity, going as far as to say the bride at least needs to PRETEND she’s a virgin for his sake (or the sake of the church/company she’s being married before) and then he turns around and bitches about a FUNDAMENTALIST faction of Islam? My mind tries to bend around this logic and it just…can’t.
Doctor, I got a lower back tat before I knew it had some weird sexual connotation many, many, many moons ago. But since then it’s become common knowledge that “sluts” have this tattoo.
Ditto Amanda. I got mine when I was a senior in high school and the lower back seemed like a good spot where I could enjoy it (I like to touch mine for some reason) and per my mother’s advice I could hide it for job interviews. It was either that spot or the top middle of my back, but seeing as I wanted wings to go with it I decided for the lower. It wasn’t until after I graduated from college and did my masters program that I heard of it referred to as the “tramp stamp” and there are some other connotations about that, having to do with aiming and a “bullseye,” that totally grossed me out.
That, too, is a matter of personal taste. It’s just not for me. That, and roses or dolphins on an ankle.
Ha. I’ve got a dolphin on my ankle and it wasn’t until now that I realized how popular that was. Dang.
As for the Madonna video, she made a living from being “provocative” and now she’s moved on to do something else and it seems like an affront to people that the woman who was defiling a black (BLACK!) Jesus years ago is now peddling children’s books and not still being provocative because that was *all* she had to sell don’tcha know? It’s not like she had a brain to do anything else besides wearing bullet bras.
Asking around, I have also been informed that the epithet “tramp stamp” has classist elements, as well — the “stamp” implying that it’s cheap, by-the-book ink, not something individual, carefully worked out, and expensive.
The trouble with the dresses in the photo above is not that they are “slutty,” it’s that #2 and #3 (especially #3) look as if they would only flatter the tall and lean. I myself fall into the short and curvy category; if I don’t dress right that morphs into “stumpy.” I don’t care if I look slutty, but I abhor looking stumpy. Besides, #3 looks like she’s wearing a mini-wedding cake on her head.
However, take away the bow and tone down the lace a bit, and #1 is very pretty.
Meanwhile, in Ye Goode Olde Days - not the Victorian era, but the 18th century and before - working-class and peasant brides were much more likely to be pregnant on their wedding day than not. In Scandinavia and the remoter parts of Scotland, you got engaged (or handfasted as they call it), made sure you had enough put aside for your own house and plot of land, then got pregnant - and THEN got married. A woman was supposed to “prove” her fertility pre-maritally. Sexist? Yes. However, no-one was pretending that sex wasn’t a big part of marriage, not to mention babies.
So on top of the consumerist culture directive of “you must wear an overpriced, uncomfortable, ridiculously expensive dress that you’ll never wear again,” women now have the added fun of “and you have to look sexy in it.”
Imagine all the extra beauty-industry expenditures! Forget covering up your ugly, ugly bodies with lace and pretty ruffles, ladies, now you have to have your tits and ass hanging out, and we can fix those for a reasonable price, too.
Feh.
My favorite dress in a wedding I’ve attended was the bride who was visibly pregnant and wearing a gorgeous red dress! It seemed to say, “yeah, I’m a Jezebel and proud of it!” — I loved it!
The panic over tattooing is deeply amusing to me. It’s so common now that it doesn’t really say anything about you. Of course, I live in Austin, so I don’t worry too much about it, but I’ve never had an employer that I didn’t feel like I had to hide tattoos from. I remember when I got my last one, I teased my boss because she had a teeny-tiny one that only took like 15 minutes to do, and mine was an hour and a half job.
Originally, the white didn’t mean “I’m a virgin” but “I’m RICH!” Before white wedding dress, brides just wore their Sunday best.
“a bride who isn’t a virgin on her wedding day - something which wasn’t all that common in our grandparents’ time, iirc”
Just reread this - eek, realized I’m saying the opposite of what I meant, which is that virgin brides weren’t necessarily all that common back in the day. Ack. Wasn’t trying to sound like the worst kind of looking-down-nose scold.
Originally, the white didn’t mean “I’m a virgin” but “I’m RICH!” Before white wedding dress, brides just wore their Sunday best.
The white wedding dress had its origins with Queen Victoria (who was, of course, rich) and later her daughters (ditto) setting the fashion. It didn’t really trickle down to the hoi polloi until after World War II. My grandma was married at City Hall in a suit. Ditto my great-aunt. I’m thinking that those suits were their Sunday best.
I toured a “historic house” back in Illinois one year, and there was a collection of the family’s wedding dresses on exhibit. While the brides who married from the 1880’s on wore white (and were rich), the first family bride wore navy blue silk - for all we know, her Sunday best. I surmise that at that time (1850’s), a white dress you only wore once was for royalty, aristocracy, and the super-rich daughters of industrialists and the like - even the “ordinary well-off” wore her Sunday best.
Mind you, I don’t think it’s wrong to want a fancy, expensive wedding gown, if that floats your boat. I personally don’t want to plunk down the dead presidents for something I’ll wear only once, but that’s just me. However, the idea that a fancy, expensive, white gown is “traditional” is just plain laughable.
One “urban legend” element to the “tramp stamp” meme is that (there’s no nice way to put it) the woman must have gotten it so that the many guys hitting it doggy-style will have somewhere to aim — a target, if you will — when they pull out. I really have seen comments from people who feel this is the sole purpose of getting a tattoo there. Interesting male-centric POV about women’s tattoos.
Amanda, have you done a post about women and tattoos before? There’s a wealth of feminist commentary there….
White was meant to symbolize joy as well, not purity. I tried for shorts and a tee-shirt, but that didn’t work out - there were pants involved though.
As for the article about men’s fashion, the stupid author claims that “real world concerns have no business in the realm of fashion” in the same damn article. I guess your real world concern about comfort and the ability to piss how you want to wasn’t a concern for Ms. Prada - fuckwit.
Anyone who believes that is severely undersexed, because they have a very vague idea about the mechanics of sex that owes more to porn viewing than experience.
Anyone who believes that is severely undersexed, because they have a very vague idea about the mechanics of sex that owes more to porn viewing than experience.
Well yeah, I’d say that pretty much sums up the proponents of that view, hehehe.
It sounds like one of those urban legends you hear from teenagers who haven’t had sex, but want to show off to their friends how adult and knowledgeable about sex they are. Because anybody who’s had sex more than, like, once would be doing a coffee take on hearing that one.
That’s more of a runway problem than anything else–I’ve never seen anything at a fashion show that I could imagine on someone I knew personally.
This article was about a designer who specializes in wedding dresses, but fashion shows traditionally end with wedding dresses–a custom that might have been dropped long ago, except that it serves a function, sort of a dressmaker’s way of saying “B-b-b-b-b-b-That’s All, Folks! Now get the hell out!” But a lot of designers aren’t really into wedding gowns, so you see a lot of weird jokey dresses at the end.
I read someplace that brides didn’t go in for white gowns until Queen Victoria popularized them by wearing one at her wedding. The virginity symbolism got stuck on later, probably by the usual assholes.
I’m left with only one question: Diane Sawyer is aware of where children come from, right ?
I got my lower back tattoo in 1999. I heard the term “tramp stamp” about five months ago. Oh well. I still like it. I did think it was a sexy place to have one, but it was because I knew this beautiful woman who had a chain of violets in that spot and I loved how when she would sit down, I would get a glimpse between her shirt and her pants. No butt crack, no thong, no underwear of any kind. I’d just see a little bit of the violets, and it just added to her beauty for me. I already had a tattoo at the time, over my hip bone, and thought that was the perfect spot for my next one. Just like my first, I had artwork done that was personally meaningful. It did not come from stock art, but was a tiny drawing, a doodle really, that I saw somewhere and had blown up and tattooed on me. It’s my favorite of my three tattoos. (#3 is on my scapula, and although it is of the ubiquitous butterflies, I wanted them specifically as the symbol of change. As they were drawn free-hand for me by an artist, I’m pretty certain I’m the only one in the world with these two exact butterflies. He may have drawn similar butterflies for someone else, but I doubt he replicated what he did for me exactly.)
That “pulling out” explanation for the “tramp stamp” sounds like a super-crude joke that somebody mistook for an explanation.
I got my sacrum tattooed years before I heard the “tramp stamp” thing, too. I chose the spot because it was easy to conceal with clothing and it’s not going to fall when I get old.
(Wedding dress for the Pharyngula crowd.)
I don’t have any wedding plans in the near future, but I know I don’t want to wear a white dress. It reminds me too much of a little-girl First Communion dress. Although if the bride’s a virgin the dress could represent a different kind of first communion. (yes, i know that was lame).
Doesn’t anyone just dye their dress after the wedding? I mean, white is the perfect colour for that, and if you’ve already blown a whole bunch of money on a fancy dress because your parents said so or whatever, why the hell not get it dyed some cool colour and wear it to other formal events?
Also, regarding “visibly pregnant and in a bright red dress” upthread: you know, that’s the REAL old style bride right there.
Actually, come to think of it, when (if) it finally becomes advantageous for my fiance and me to get married, I probably will wear a white dress. But that’s because my mom kept her wedding dress for me because her mom made it and I turned out to be the same size. So I guess that’s a little different.
AAAAAAUGGGH WHY. Why does he feel entitled to express an opinion about total strangers’ vaginas why why why…oh, I know, patriarchy, but I still want to rip my hair out.
I do dislike those dresses. It’s not at all a moral issue; it’s just that I’m not comfortable with the idea of being all sexed up in front of my extended family, I’m pretty sure my relatives (not to mention any future potential in-laws) do not want to see my ass-crack hanging out of my dress, and I think failing to take that into account would be narcissistic and tacky, although not nearly as narcissistic and tacky as demanding that women play blushing virgin for you.
got my lower back tattoo in 1999. I heard the term “tramp stamp” about five months ago. Oh well. I still like it.
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got my sacrum tattooed years before I heard the “tramp stamp” thing, too. I chose the spot because it was easy to conceal with clothing and it’s not going to fall when I get old.
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One of the worst features of learning about the opinions of idiots (in this case, men who think tattoos are ‘for sluts’), is that it can make normal women with tattoos feel all self-conscious. If in fact it does make you feel that way, please don’t let it. Men who think that are idiots, in my book. Tats can look really good. Some people are just freakin’ nasty-minded morons.
Amanda- “If you want to be different, don’t be a weenie about it—wear a fucking red dress to your wedding. Wear jeans and a tank top. Or, gasp, don’t get married at all.”
That’s bizarre. You just described my thought process about marriage. When I was 17, I desperately wanted to get married in a red dress (how fucking hot would that be?). Later, I wanted to get married at the JP without dressing up at all. Now, I have no desire to get married. Creepy how you’re reading my mind.
More than 2/3rds of Puritans were pregnant at the wedding, if our historical records are to be believed.
My S.O.’s family has a saying: Only the second child takes 9 months.
This officially makes *most* Hindu wedding dresses slutty. Is that stomach I see? Woo hoo!
The first dress reminds me of one of the choices from “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, the sexy one where Hugh Grant says “You’re not serious” and Andie McDowell replies “No. But maybe next time!”
As for tattoos…I could never imagine something I’d want on my body for the rest of my life. And the armbands are going to look so funny when folks are in their 70s and wrinkly.
Worst of all, in the medical establishment’s ever-widening “things to punish pregnant women for b/c they are the only ones who still listen to us” tramp stamps are a ‘reason’ to refuse to give epidurals. heaven forbid some of that ink get into the spinal fluid.
Has that ever happened?
But it could! So if you were a slut in your 20s and got a stamp, you can just SUFFER through the delivery. Although I bet they still give you an epidural should things go bad, and you need an emergency C-section.
But maybe not. Maybe anesthetic-free surgery is the proper punishment for slut.
As usual, Rod is misinterpreting the purpose of the white dress in the modern American wedding. It’s about conspicuous consumption, and God forbid you should try to opt out of that. Some people were indignant that I bought my very nice silk organza dress on the internet for $300 from someone who bought it and changed her mind. Didn’t I know that I was supposed to spend more on my gown than on anything else in the whole wedding?
One acquaintance of mine not only bought the insanely expensive wedding dress, she bought a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes with the express intention of never wearing them again. WTF is up with that? I may not have worn my wedding dress a third time (yet), but I’ve worn my bustier and shoes several times since the wedding, because they’re comfortable and I like them.
Personally, I like wedding dresses to be, well, modest, because I like clothing worn in a church to be modest. If they’re not marrying in church, I really don’t care.
I’m getting married in a few months, and i’ll be wearing a particularly weird shade of green. It suits me much better than white, and why would I want to pay for a dress I can only wear once anyway?
I have no problem with more fashion-forward wedding dresses. I can see that if I planned on having a religious rather than civil ceremony where that might be a problem.
(I notice that lalouve has just made a similar comment, and others probably.)
Since when do authors require moral authority to write anything? How is sex immoral? I would like to know why Diane Sawyer seems to think she has the moral authority to make such inquiries. Fuck her indeed.
#1 is beautiful, but seems more Arwen-Lord-of-the-Rings than modern wedding. #2 scares me. I bet it’s much worse straight on than from the side. You don’t really need a bouquet with that one…. Just cup your hands under the satin explosion and you’re all set. #3 is fabulous for the International Latin Ballroom Dancing competition, though that hat is a major faux pas.
You have to wonder how many women are marrying men urging them to wear something sexy to the wedding. Me, I wouldn’t want any dudes in the fam checking out any cleavage except toe cleavage. Weirds me out to think of wearing something sexy and revealing while hugging my grandfather…. Ick. But this is definitely a taste issue, not a moral issue.
Diane Sawyer’s a tool. It amazes me that she graduated from Wellesley.
More than 2/3rds of Puritans were pregnant at the wedding, if our historical records are to be believed.
My God - that’s horrendous. How on earth did they fit them all into the reception?
I think this gets at the heart of the NYT style critique in general–it’s as much about class as it is about gender. NYT style readers and writers are just as likely to sneer at the lack of old-fashioned upper-crust styling on these dresses as their sexiness. Not totally disagreeing with y’all, just saying there’s more to it than sexism…
I’d also like to express my aversion to tramp stamps and ass cleavage. It’s more of an objection to trashiness vs. sluttiness.
That said. I love the dress on the left. Take the frills off, put it in any other color than white, and I’d have that hanging in my closet.
Oh, god, that reminds me of watching my cousin’s wedding video with my grandparents (none of us had made it to the wedding). Her uncle from her mother’s side shot it, and there were an awful lot of lingering shots of her cleavage. During the cake-cutting, the camera parked itself right between her breasts the whole time. It was… uncomfortable, to say the least.