Transcript | Ask Unladylike: Feminist Guilt vs Weddings?

[UNLADYLIKE THEME SONG]

CRISTEN: Welcome to Unladylike. I am your host, Cristen Conger. Today it's time for Ask Unladylike where I answer listener questions that Google could never. Well, actually Google does, but I really don't recommend it.

Now, first I’ve gotta pullback the curtain for a hot second to acknowledge that some of you unladies might not be happy to see an Ask Unladylike episode in your feed.

I've heard from a few of you who say this advice giving format is, is bullshit. I don't like it. Give me the, give me the regular stuff. And I briefly considered doing that. Just doing away with Ask Unladylike, or maybe calling it something else entirely to kind of a trick, trick the Ask Unladylike skeptics into listening.

Anyway, but guess what y'all. I like it! I like Ask Unladylike!

One of my very favorite things about this podcast is hearing from y'all, hearing the stories you share, the corrections you give and also the questions that you're wrestling with, he stuff that keeps you up at night, the stuff maybe you're uncomfortable sharing anywhere else, and it's a chance for me to talk directly back to y'all and share a little bit more of my own personal experience and any insights I can offer from over a decade of talking and researching about women and gender and patriarchy and all that jazz. So, you know, it's probably poor form to start a podcast, you know, telling some listeners why they might not like this episode, but this is Unladylike. This is where women come to break the rules, right? So that's broken. And before I break anything else, what do we have on deck today?

Well, we've got a trio of questions I'm calling Feminist Guilt versus the Wedding Industrial Complex.

Dun, dun, dun.

Ok, listener Emma write: My partner and I have been together for nearly five years and want to take that next step.

One thing I've struggled with a lot is engagement rings. I find myself strongly opposed to diamonds and always have been for ethical, environmental, and social reasons. Since we've been thinking about getting engaged, I find myself more and more judgemental about the choice a couple makes in what ring to get, how much money they spend, et cetera.

I know that's not awesome, but I can't imagine I'm the only woman experiencing it. Engagement rings are such a personal, important piece of jewelry that I have to imagine many women dream about from the moment they know what they are. Myself include. So why is there such a societal expectation surrounding what type, How big, how expensive a ring is?

Why do I find myself caring what other people think about the ring that is supposed to represent my relationship? Why is a societal expectation that a woman receives the ring, not a man or that a man has to be the one to propose? And how has that expectation justifiably endured into the modern world where women theoretically have just as much financial independence and savvy as men?

Thank you for taking the time to read this and considering these ideas.

Emma. Oh, Emma. I mean, you really packed a lot of questions into one letter. I love it. I'm gonna do my best to answer really the three big questions that you raise. So first up, why is there such a societal expectation? Surrounding what type, how big, how expensive a ring is, basically like why, why are we so into engagement rings?

One reason, of course, is capitalism and to sell diamonds, but, but it is more nuanced than that. So first, I've got a little bit of very heteronormative engagement ring history to share. Engagement or betrothal rings are accustom that stretches all the way back to ancient history. They are by no means a new invention.

People have been into this symbolic, you know, ring or token, some sort of sign that you know, you're, you're taken, I guess, and if we jump all the way up to the 1840s, That is when the engagement ring tradition began in the US and get this. At first, men and women wore engagement rings, which raises the question, how did engagement rings become something that men give to women?

And the answer probably has a lot to do with the law. Yes, the most romantic tradition of all the American legal system. So there was a law back in the day called the Breach of Promise to Marry that allowed women to sue men for breaking off an engagement. Now, these laws do not exist anymore, and you can believe that if they did men's rights activists would be coming out of the woodwork to get them shut down. How dare a woman only be allowed to sue a man?

Anyway, so these Breach of Promise to Marry laws we're basically like virginity insurance because the assumption was if a couple was engaged, we're not gonna talk about it, but we're gonna assume they were having intercourse. And if that bride who had already had sex got dumped, she was damaged goods. She was socially scorned. She would be considered less valuable on the marriage market, hence a legal remedy. She could sue her ex.

By the 1930s, states began striking down these laws, and this is where expensive engagement ring kind of fill the gap where the law left off. So they kind of take the place of, you know, an extremely sexist form of collateral against a broken engagement.

And like I said, this is extremely heteronormative. This is also assuming that women are the ones really without the power ultimately in this situation, because it is, it's really the guy who's called all the shots.

Now around the same time, those breach of promise to marry laws started being done away with the diamond market was in the dumps. So, the De Beers diamond company, talk about big diamond. De eBers had all these diamonds they needed to move. They weren't moving. They were like, how can we convince people to buy more diamonds? So, De Beers poured a ton of money and advertising into selling diamonds as the most romantic stone of all. They were the ones who came up with the whole, ‘a diamond is forever’ tagline, and they sold engagement rings as the ultimate form of insurance because, as any gal knows, the surest way to know how much a man will value and treasure you and be faithful to you for the rest of your life is the size of the ring he puts on layaway for you at Costco.

I mean, hello. We could solve the divorce rate if we just started measuring rings more. Y'all, I don't know who this character is who I've slipped into, but she's gonna need to see herself out now.

So that is, that's kind of the back story of where the American engagement ring tradition came from. And Emma, you know, you also ask why do I find myself caring what other people think about the ring that's supposed to represent my relationship?

And here's where I think that maybe you can cut yourself a little bit of a break because it's not a bad thing that you care. It's not a bad thing that you think about it. I mean, I think it would take a lot of effort to be raised and fully kind of indoctrinated from girlhood with our engagement ring propaganda, uh, to, to have retained none of it by the time you're thinking about a long-term relationship with your partner.

I mean, you also, you can opt out, you can fully opt out of an engagement ring if you want to, and, or you can say, hey, partner of mine, um, we're in this together. You wear a ring, too. You wear an engagement ring as well. Spread the love.

For me, I, I do have an engagement ring, but I don't wear a wedding band. Don't have one. Probably never will because I got my engagement ring and I really liked it. And I mean, hat on a hat. Why, why add something else?

That idea of kind of molding the customs to suit whatever feels right for you and your partner brings me to the question of why the tradition has endured so much of this being the thing that the guy does for the girl, and why it's never the other way around. For one thing, Emma, we still live in a patriarchy. So there's that. I think there's a lot of masculinity scripts and norms and baggage that's tied up in that, even though I think a lot of the focus on engagement rings and the, the whole engagement and wedding talk is so overly focused on women and brides, but there's a lot of masc in there as well, but also I think it's partly because couples — couples of men and women — don't talk to each other about it enough.

Like if anything needs canceling — ok, there's a lot of stuff that needs canceling — but one thing that does need canceling is the idea of popping the question. Engagement should not be a surprise. I don't even think a ring or whatever symbol of that engagement, if anything, should be a surprise. Like, I'm, I'm glad that you and your partner are talking this stuff out and make that a conversation. Find out what's on his mind, what he wants, what what feels special and significant to him because I think that's, that's going to be so vital for not just getting over the engagement hump, but then getting through the wild obstacle course that is planning a wedding. 

So I would take this opportunity to just start getting on the same page with your partner and loop him in. Fucking, can we just, can we just start looping the men in, please? Please? No, really it will, it will make wedding planning a lot, a lot less of a headache.

And how did my engagement ring story go? I don't know that it's that romantic, but Emma, I'll tell you. I was, I, I wrestled with the same kind of things as you are in terms of knowing all of the baggage associated with engagement rings, and it's like, am I gonna wear a symbol of women's oppression on my hand? And the place that I got to with it was, for me personally, understanding that traditions can be reclaimed and kind of made over and cherry picked, honestly, in a way to honor the love and relationship that you have and the way that feels right to you.

And when my now husband and I were talking about getting engaged, I mean, we talked about it all. We talked about what, what we would like, what we wouldn't like, and and because I'm an, you know, an outspoken feminist, he did say to me like, I really love you and I, I would really love to propose to you. You know, it was something that he, that he wanted to do, something that he had thought about. Um, and not in some like creepy misogynist, like possessive kind of way at all. It was just something that he wanted to do.

And I am not a big jewelry person. Um, I, I, I, I kind of think that my fingers just all look like a little, little sausages, so I don't know that they wear rings all that well. So, one morning, I don't know about him, but I was definitely hungover. We, we got up, we went to a giant antique market in town and we spent a couple hours walking around, and I put so many dead people's rings on my hand, and the way that I picked the one was it was the ring that I put on and then, Emma, I just started crying. And it was the strangest, one of the strangest experiences I have ever had.

In retrospect, could it have been the hangover? Yeah. But also in the moment, I was, oh my god, this, this really feels like I, this really feels real and, uh, oh, overwhelming. And, and it was like a cliche moment out of a commercial that I never could have planned.

So give yourself a little bit of a break and maybe ring shop hungover. How about that for some solid advice?

See, Ask Unladylike skeptics, I mean this quality. Yeah, I bet you're thinking twice now.

[AD BREAK]

CRISTEN: So, listener Emma asked about engagement rings. Next up, of course, we gotta talk weddings. So, listener Ray writes:

I'm at that time in my life where my fridge is filled with save the dates, and my partner's mom keeps asking me if we're gonna be inviting second cousins to the wedding.

We're not engaged. And I've been majorly struggling to untangle this whole thing.

I feel like I constantly have society whispering in my ear, the wedding industry pop culture, my friends and family, my Jewish tradition, TLC .

I bet somebody watches 90 Day Fiance!

When it comes to my own engagement, commitment, ceremony, and celebration, how do I decipher what's really important?

I need some help unpacking the patriarchy behind this massive event.

How can I have an unladylike wedding that I want without throwing the meaning behind the thing out the window with the crepe paper flowers?

Ok, Rae, this is such a good question, a timeless question, and definitely one that I confronted a lot while planning my own wedding. Now, before I get into my practical advice regarding the wedding planning, I just have to tell you something that, that now like a, a number of years down the line for me post-wedding, something that I might go back and tell myself, my, my engaged self is save yourself a little bit of emotional energy as well, everyone, because guess what, all of those societal whispers of when are you gonna get married? How are you gonna do it? Will it be perfect? Um, yeah, that's, that's kind of just the start of the questions to come.

Because at least in my experience, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes when are you gonna have kids? And basically no one is gonna stop pestering you about, about kids and family and your future plans regarding that until menopause, ok? We finally get a break at menopause and then we have to deal with hot flashes. It's honestly rude. It's honestly rude, Rae.

So that's a very longwinded way of saying that, that you don't have to, that you don't have to build up the wedding as much as maybe you think you do. And what I mean by that is, you know, weddings are milestones. I loved my wedding. It was one of the most fun nights I've had in my life. But also it was a party. You know, weddings are, are parties that you throw for your friends and family and you probably I'll just, in my case, ok. I spent, I spent too much money on my dress, alright? Alright.

And while you're gonna have the pictures and the memories for a long time, and you want everything to look good, and you want it to honor who you are and, and what you're about, also, remember that it's kind of a timestamp. It is gonna be a time capsule of, of also who you are, who you and your partner are at that time, and kind of the rest of your, the rest of your relationship, your marriage doesn't depend on it, and I'm saying, I just mean you can take some pressure off yourself.

This does not have to be, this doesn't have to be perfect in some kind of way. And how you decipher what's really important is talk to your partner first and foremost. Get clear on your main goals. Like, as completely unromantic as it is, you can kind of treat it like a project management job of like, what are our dream outcomes for this event? Because a side note, there will be spreadsheets involved, there will be spreadsheets involved, so you might as well go ahead and take a project management kind of lens to it.

For my husband and I, our goals were to create an event where our families, our immediate families felt comfortable and really though where our chosen family and friends could all get together and have a really good time. In our case, especially for me, that meant paying for the wedding ourselves. Like as gross as it might sound, in the case of wedding planning, money is power. And, uh, it's not that I was scared that my parents would somehow run roughshod over the whole thing if they contributed anything, if they were the ones paying for it.

But also, like, I, I didn't wanna ask my parents for the money. I knew that they could not afford to pay for a wedding and nor should they, but they wanted to give something. I kind of had to also negotiate with them a little bit of wanting to respect their desire to be generous and their desire to help us celebrate by contributing to things for the wedding. But also, saving together for the wedding was a very good exercise for my husband and I, uh, is a really good way to rack up a bunch of credit card points, which paid for part of the honeymoon.

But also like for the feminism of it, like we, we did what we wanted. We had the wedding we wanted, and it wasn't all that non-traditional, to be honest, but it just made, it made the planning for me feel so much more seamless because there is no second guessing when you're the one cutting the check, when you're the one sending the Venmos.

And if you can't afford to have a huge wedding, Don't worry about it. You don't, you don't need to. You know, I, I have friends who do the civil ceremony at the courthouse, and you have a lovely dinner with friends at a nice restaurant afterwards. Like, there are so many ways to do this, and I think that it's, it can be not just a, a months-long game show of, you know, patriarchy whack-a-mole, um, but also an opportunity for you and your partner to really get in the weeds of how you, how you wanna blend families, what family means to you. What parts of your, your cultures do you want reflected in the ceremony? What if you don’t want a ceremony at all?

I mean, I think that that weddings rightfully get a lot of shit for all of the baggage that comes with it, and I'll also say that there, there can be some, some upsides to as well.

And if there's one parting piece of advice I can give you, it is to not make your wedding into a feminist purity test. That's not what it is. It doesn't have to be that. There are always questions about how do you have a feminist wedding, and it's like, you know what? You know how you have a feminist wedding? You have two feminists who get married. That's called feminist wedding.

And Rae, you and your partner coming together and exercising your, your autonomy as a couple and establishing who you are in front of family and friends in the way that feels authentic to you, that's the ticket. And if it doesn't look feminist enough to anybody else, they can sort through that.

Don't say ‘I do’ to the bullshit. Ugh. Ok. Let's go to break before I come up with any more terrible things to put on a pillow!

[AD BREAK]

CRISTEN: Ok, we've gotten engaged. We've gotten married. Now, it's time to go visit the in-laws. Listener Kirsten writes:

I've been married for four months to this guy I've totally loved and adored for five years. We have a great relationship and the hardest part about it for me, Is the parents. It has been five years and I loathe spending time with his parents because I don't feel seen or valued by them at all.

I have never felt that they have ever been interested in getting to know me. I feel like a prop rather than a human. It creates a strain on my husband who feels bad about the situation, but absolutely does not have the wherewithal to solve the problem, and I can't blame him because I don't either. They are also erm, very politically conservative and enjoy talking at me about politics every time we see them.

It's not worth my energy to engage because they're stubborn and argumentative and will dismiss anything I say. But all caps, god damn the way I completely shrink myself down to just survive any family visits makes me feel so small and ashamed. The cherry on top is that I feel like we are all pretending that we pretend to like each other, pretend to connect.

I'm an intuitive person. I know what it feels like to be seen and accepted and loved, and I feel so gas lit when I'm told by them or my husband that they love me. I know I'm not the first person to have a bad relationship with my in-laws, but this is my first time not connecting with the partner's parents, and now the plan is that the only ones I didn't really like are the ones I have for life.

I want to like them. I really do. Any advice at all would be so appreciated and implemented. Kirsten, the liberal daughter-in-law.

I mean, first of all, Kirsten love a promise of implementing the advice without having heard it. I mean, that is, That is some trust. That is some trust. So, ok. I gotta say that I feel really fortunate when it comes to in-laws. They're great. You know, I feel like. Well, I don't feel like I know, I know that I, I'm married, married into a lovely family that I enjoy. My father-in-law, I don't think he would be offended if I said that he is politically much more conservative than me, but also he's kind of the, the outlier in their family, so I'm not so much of a a, a glaring liberal liberal at the table.

Um, I empathize though so much with you because for me, Kirsten, political family difficulties are more, they're more on my side of the family, and just that conflict with between me and my parents I was born to, and uh, and, and that's maybe a longer story for another time.

And if you are listening, Mom, hello. I love you, but you know it's true.

And I also just wanna validate the, the feelings that you're having because it, it is, it is a shitty, shitty feeling to, to get nothing, to feel like you are being told I love you, but just in a very hollow, performative kind of way. And, and I, and I get why, why it would be upsetting and feel like you are now locked in with these people who you do not mesh with.

If you are spending a lot of time over there and, and getting nothing and feeling really rotten about it, I would also say like, cut, cut down on, like reclaim some of your time, you know? I think it is ok and maybe even necessary, especially early in your marriage, to start kind of establishing some of these boundaries.

And there are so many follow up questions that I also have like about your husband's dynamic with the parents because he's aware of the disconnect and the the way that they make you feel, but he's not running any interference, and I don't know that they have the family communication for him to even bring it up because I do think that there are certain kinds of families where like nobody talks about their feelings. Nobody is gonna get really real about things.

And as the in-law I, I, I sympathize. You know, coming into the situation and you say you're an intuitive person, and you're like, yeah, we are all walking around like zombies. Everyone is completely faking it. But the fact of the matter is, uh, at least, at least based on my, my past like five years of therapy, family dynamics are, oh, woohoohoo. I mean, Kirsten, they, they're so above your pay grade. In this case, it's just tough because if really the person who has the most leverage in this situation is their son, your husband, maybe there is a scenario in which this could be a good topic for couples counseling. Someone who has a lot more insight than I do, who can dig into the nitty gritty of whatever particular dynamics are going on here.

Where you do have power and leverage is when it comes to the political conversations. You are so fully and completely within your right and even within the bounds of etiquette that if they start trying to wind you up by talking politics, just don't engage. You can even say, I'd, I'd rather not talk about that or change the subject. Make it clear that you, you have no interest. There have been times with family members, And I'm not gonna say exactly which ones, and I'm sure family members have done this to me, I actually know family members have done this to me, where politics comes up and it's like, and you know, you don't have to pick up what they're putting down.

It's ok. It's ok if your in-laws aren't, aren't in love with you because Kirsten, you're not in love with them. And I hate it that you, that you clearly just, you know, you say you have to survive these family visits. This is clearly unpleasant, and it's something that you also have some, some time to tackle.

And a thought exercise I'll leave you with is what would happen if, when your husband tells you that his family loves you, what would happen if you believed him? Where you write, I feel so gaslit when I'm told by them or my husband that they love me. Now I get, you know that they say they love you and you call bullshit. Fine. Your husband saying they love you — either he needs to, to not bullshit you, or you need to believe him.

I will leave you with that thought exercise and I know, I know Kirsten, that there are other Unlady out there who have been in the exact same boat are maybe still in that same boat. Who knows? Maybe they jump ship. But I know that there are other unladies who have had to navigate the choppy waters of difficult in-law relationships because I have heard from them and I know that it does not have to be that way and is often not the case.

And I'm sorry that you're having to navigate this because really like this is the time for you to be, you know, put getting yourself, uh, because this is really a time for you and your new husband to be, I don't know, figuring out that hashtag married life, which is also such a lol, y'all. I mean, if I had a dollar for every time after, in the year after I got married, that people asked, how’s married life? Really? What are you supposed to say to that? Because the answer is like, um, the same, but maybe a little more credit card debt? I don't know. How's it supposed to be? Um, are you asking me about sex? I don't know.

Yeah. Um, and then I just make it really awkward cuz I'm standing in the middle of the grocery store with, uh, an acquaintance and just babbling about all of the information about my marriage that they didn't ask about. There was like, I, I was really just feeling, I, I was really just saying something polite and then I say, ok. Well, uh, well, I, I'm off to the frozen food section. See you later.

[OUTRO]

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Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzen. Til next week, what are your Ask Unladylike questions? I know you've got some. I know you do. Any queries in the back of your mind that you just don't know how to solve, which way to go? There is a podcaster sitting in an attic in Atlanta who would love to take a crack at them, and that podcaster is me.

Ok. Bye bye.