Comments on Hooray! Another Bridal Magazine!

... except if you're gay.

Face it, horat!o, there are some benefits. :-p

some benefits to marriage, nothing but debt in WEDDINGS. ok, some people famously hook up at weddings, but that's about the only benefit to be had from them.

some benefits to marriage, nothing but debt in WEDDINGS. ok, some people famously hook up at weddings, but that's about the only benefit to be had from them.

yeah, let's get back to the gruesome stuff. Gag is right Erica.

Every Family Deserves a Teen Caregiver
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribunereview/news/westmoreland/s_498786.html

Question: Would you rather be kept as -a teen hostage/slave for six months? OR a year long jail term for teen prostitution?

oops, she wasn't the caregiver. ok, avoid the story. i made a mistake, shut your eyes. The USA is beautiful. Racial love, harmony, yadda yadda yadda.

just reporting the facts, ma'am.

it's easy to shut your mouth josh, try doing it more often.

(Wedding)Bellingham to (Divorce Court)Battleground?

I’ll concede that for as long as I’ll be alive, women will probably still be falling prey to the little girl dream-wedding fantasy.

Are there any humorless crypto-Victorian feminist stereotypes you don't just run right out and live into, ECB?

I mean, don't get me wrong-- I like your writing and everything. But it's like you're reading out of some "second-wave feminism for LUGs" handbook you found under a dustbin at some Ivy League women's college or something.

And just as a point of order, why exactly is it that women who want something you don't approve of are "falling prey" to their desires? One of the most glaringly hypocritical things about the particular strain of feminism you seem to favor is that, according to the dogma, no woman can make a rational informed decision to be a housewife or a prostitute.

Which is horseshit.

Whatever. Let's everyone gather around Erica and agree with her about her hatred of weddings and her scathing contempt for people who think they're important.

Not that she needs anyone to affirm her beliefs or anything.

I know this is immature, but the name Spitznass made me laugh out loud.

John, it's easy: if women are choosing to do something Erica disapproves of, they're victims of larger social forces; if they're choosing to do something she approves of, they're empowered agents of their own destiny.

But that wasn't why I dropped in here. I actually was going to ask about the data that backs "pursuing fairy-tale fantasies for marriages that most often end in divorce"? Because according to the National Marriage Project at New Jersey's Rutgers University, "For the average couple marrying for the first time in recent years, the lifetime probability of divorce or separation remains between 40 and 50 percent." That's high, but last time I checked "between 40 and 50 percent" is less than half. So marriages today, fairy-tale fantasy or otherwise, most certainly do not "most often" end in divorce.

Unless you think big-budget weddings are more likely to end in divorce than more spartan affairs. And that would likely be wrong, too: if you take marriage cost as a proxy for income (the more expensive the wedding the higher the income of the marrying couple), then the likelihood of divorce actually drops considerably: an annual income over $50,000 (vs. under $25,000) reduces the risk of divorce by 30%.

I'm extremnely curious about the story behind Erica's man hating writings...

Was she an abused child?
Did her dad abandon her?
Did she know who her father was?

Obviously the guy did a very poor job of representing the male role in her life.

Or am I completely off base and she decided to hate men for some other reason?

how does thinking the wedding industrial complex is an irritating waste of time and money equate to hating men. Is is your belief that women are supposed to be so delighted to have landed a man they should be happy to plan a big pink party around the occasion? just curious.

What's up with all the new Seattle mags lately? As if Seattle is that interesting HA HA.

I agree. The modern wedding spectacle is fueled by some of our worst capitalistic instincts. So ... not so much about hating men as it is, I guess, an indictment on capitalism. Me, I always tell my friends, that your wedding only needs TWO things to be a success:
1) your loved ones
2) booze.
Maybe I should start a wedding magazine.

Go Scarlet Knights.

@9: There are no Ivy League women's colleges. The Ivy League is an atheletic conference comprised of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, U Penn, and Yale.

One thing I've never been able to understand is why people react so strongly to ECB. She likes to write about the viaduct, and she doesn't like female stereotypes (though apparently she is one, according to Mr. Lilburne). What is so inflammatory about these things? It all seems pretty innocuous to me.

Who launches a bridal magazine in July?

I just want to point out that I never said anything about ECB being "man-hating." I merely suggested that she's dogmatic, humorless and patronizing.

I'm against the wedding/industrial complex like anyone else and think people should just get married in their backyards like in the old days, but I think I might have to lean toward #9 at this point.

I used to think dresses, handbags, 'beauty regimens', frilly underwear, etc, were tools of the The Man (or The Woman) and deserved to be actively ridiculed. Then one day, whilst mid-rant, a friend finally shut me up by saying "You know, just because girls do it, doesn't mean it's bad!". I realized that my focus was off. Equal pay for equal work and other things that truly keep women down needed to be my focus, not nail polish or dumb TV shows.

The thing is, weddings shouldn't be the end-all of people's lives, but it is arguably a good excuse for a vacation, an opportunity for far-flung family and friends to meet up, and a chance to essentially create your own holiday that's just for you. I sidestep my distaste for all things wedding-related by ignoring wedding magazines and people who take their weddings too seriously.

It's true, the wedding industry makes you feel like a cheap floozy who hates their family if you don't have a fancy reception in an expensive place with expensive food and expensive accoutrements. Well, you can't blame them for trying. (In the words of a famous American, when I get married, I'll do it My Wayyyyyy!)

(Oh, and a big fat BOOOO! to any catty wedding guests who nitpick about the wedding to which they've been graciously invited.)

"One thing I've never been able to understand is why people react so strongly to ECB. She likes to write about the viaduct, and she doesn't like female stereotypes (though apparently she is one, according to Mr. Lilburne). What is so inflammatory about these things?"

I often find ECB's posts (both viaduct-related and sexism-related) annoying even when I (not infrequently) agree with the general sentiment expressed. Something about the one-notedness of it all; I think #9 hit it well. No doubt she would assume that I could only possibly think such a thing because she's a "strong, outspoken woman".

TSM: No, I would "assume" you think such a thing (although "no doubt" is kind of an assumption too, hmm?) because you don't appreciate opinionated ("one-sided") writing.

Erica is quickly becoming my favorite misogynist next to Bukowski.

Since when does Erica not like men? That's nuts. She doesn't like discrimination, inequality, oppression and people to try to get away with furthering any of the above.

She's calling bullshit on things that keep women down.

If you think things are fine and dandy for women, guess again. In general, men own the land, they own the buildings, (hell, they even design all the buildings and build them, too), they own the media (and run the media), they make more money, they donate more money, they run the government (governors, mayors, presidents, executives, I'm talkin'), they run the companies, (CEOs and corporate boards) and the military (which represents bottomless resources.) Plus, they have more sexual freedom (For a millionth example, see today's article in the P-I: "College students face sticker shock for birth control pills") and rarely deal with sexual assault, while 1 out of 4 women do. The list is endless.

In short, women have some access to these areas on the fringes, but are not in control of any of them. As comedian Tim Allen once said, "Men are pigs aren't they? Too bad they own everything! Ha, Ha, Ha!"

This is not to say that women are victims and should be boo-hooing about all of this. However, let's recognize that there are some inequalities that are worth fighting against and calling out. Will everything be equal someday? Probably not, but that doesn't mean women should just sit tight and clamp their mouths shut about it to keep others more comfortable.

Both women and men are responsible for evening out the playing field here. I don't see anything in Erica's writing that contradicts that statement.

I don't see anything in Erica's writing that contradicts that statement.

Try reading with your eyes open.

Actually, there are 2 wedding magazines in Seattle: The Knot Magazine - Seattle and Seattle Bride.

This would be the 3rd.

The Knot - Seattle and Seattle Bride are essentially just advertisements and stories filled with promos for advertised products.

By they way, Barnett, notice that the title of this magazine is Seattle Metropolitan Bride & GROOM. Yet you merely address it as a "bridal magazine".

Believe it or not, Barnett, some men (especially in Seattle, I'd posit) are co-equal partners in the wedding planning game. I know I was.

Bridal & ... groomal?

"No, I would "assume" you think such a thing ... because you don't appreciate opinionated ("one-sided") writing."

Well, I don't, I suppose, as there's a serious glut of it these days. But, really, it's more an issue of personal range. Hmm ... got any ads featuring bikini-clad women to write about today? Oh, good, here's one. Let's write away. Objectification. Sexbot. Isn't it awful? Ding! Next.

Frankly, I think Erica is less man-hating than stupid-woman-hating. And I'm with her 100% on that. There are a lot of idiotic women out there who help to make life more difficult for those of us with a brain.

As for weddings, it is ridiculous and dumb to go in debt/pay thousands and thousands of dollars for a one day event. You want your wedding day to be beautiful and fun, and it doesn't take a small fortune to do that. All it requires is a bit of creativity and thinking outside the box, something which seems to vanish abruptly for a lot of women when they start thinking about their weddings (and buying all the idiotic bridal magazines).

So which is more trite: A woman who calls out inequality or the person who calls her a man-hater for doing so?

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