Fat Wedding, Part 4: “The Bride Wore Very Little”

Image from NYTimes.com

This is going to be a short one in the Fat Wedding series. I read this NYTimes article last week and have been meaning to get around to talking about it.

I’m picking out this article in particular NOT because it out-and-out rails against fat brides, or gives you a diet plan, etc, but because of its general assumptions that brides all want to lose weight and/or look thin, fit, ‘in shape,’ toned, good naked, etc for their wedding day.

I think this piece it epitomized in a line by Ms. DaSilva, an interviewee:

“I want to look back in 20 years and feel like I looked hot on my wedding day.”

That’s it, isn’t it? “..feel like I looked hot…” Not that “It was a beautiful ceremony, I looked beautiful,” but that she “looked hot” to the attendees of her wedding and society as a whole. And what is hot these days? Tall, thin, large breasts. So it a revealing wedding dress which shows miles of thigh, making the shortest person look taller, and showing off how hard she worked to “attain” the upper-arm-like circumference to her upper thigh. Low-cut gowns show cleavage; and thinness, of course, is displayed by mermaid-style sheath dresses.

In addition to the dresses shown in the NYTimes article (included above) here are some sample images I’ve gathered from this season’s bridal fashions:

The above dresses are from designers mentioned in the NYTimes piece, and they’re designs from the 2007 bridal season. These particular styles are those that look like they’re designed to show off a very thin frame. There are many, many, many of these styles by famous designers, especially since the dresses are made to look good on models that look like those above, who are excruciatingly thin.

“Young women increasingly look to the red carpet for style ideas,” said Millie Martini Bratten, the editor in chief of Brides magazine. “They are very aware of how they look,” she added. “They diet, they work out. And when they marry, they want to be the celebrity of their own event.”

I see. So women who don’t diet or work out before their weddings aren’t “aware of how they look”? Oh sure, we just go and grab the white-ish muumuu off the rack the day before the weddin’, yee-haw! (with one hand, since the other is stuffing food into our face) We have no interest in fashion, or looking good. Because, apparently, ‘looking good’ is synonymous to ‘being thinner.’

But of course, there’s more!

Catherine Cuddy, an insurance analyst in New Jersey, was similarly focused on turning heads when she married in Bryant Park in New York last October. She dispensed with the customary long, fitted sleeves and train in favor of a halter style that dipped to the small of her back.

Even a veil was too much for her. “I didn’t want to cover up my dress,” said Ms. Cuddy, 33, a self-described Rita Hayworth type. Or the torrents of curls that rushed past her shoulders. Or, for that matter, her gym-toned back.

To get in shape for her gown, a white lace sheath that appeared to have been turned on a lathe, she stepped up visits with her trainer from one to three sessions a week. Ms. Cuddy had no thought of defying tradition or making a statement of any kind. She simply wanted to make the most of her curves, she said.

Again, there’s the sense that one has to “get in shape for her gown,” rather than, yanno, buying a dress that fits. Have we so ritualized the wedding day that the wedding dress has become more like a priest’s robe a woman must fast and self-harm in order to earn?

I don’t know if this is more a fat issue or a feminist issue, at its core; regardless, it is a reinforcement that body shape and size is a moral issue, in this case in particular for a woman (most sites focus on helping the bride lose weight, not the groom). She is “sexy” when she can wear slinky sheer trumpet-style wedding gowns with a slit up the leg, and hence more desirable, and hence more worthy of marriage.

I also, of course, want to note that also Ms. Cuddy wanted to make “the most of her curves,” she “stepped up” her personal trainer sessions to, I’d imagine, get rid of some curves! And I agree that she had no thought of “defying tradition;” the idea that women have had to self-harm and self-efface in order to ‘deserve’ to be married is very, very old. The idea their bodies equal their worth is also old. The marriage of the two concepts, no pun, is the tortured, starving dieter, willing to do anything to shed X pounds in order to “look good on” her “big day.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean we have to stand for it. I plan on looking wonderful for my “big day.” But I don’t plan on dieting in the 18 months between now and then.