It’s a good thing I didn’t establish this blog with a “being single” theme or call it “Spinster on the Edge” or anything like that. As little as I was able to imagine ever getting married, when I created this blog I decided to highlight a quality I knew would never change. Well, two qualities: being a Chicana and being on edge, or on an edge, or on the edge.
It’s a good thing because I am now engaged and looking at wifehood for the first time at the age of 41 (I’ll never stop drawing attention to how old I am to be getting married for the first time).
I read this Newsweek article called The Incredible Shrinking Bride about women who drive themselves to extremes as they prepare for their wedding day. It’s no longer enough to spend well over $25,000 on the wedding day itself, now we also have to whiten and straighten our teeth, get tans that are also blemish free, perfect our hair (all of it), laser treat our varicose veins and sun spots, botox those little wrinkles and, of course, lose weight. Lots and lots of weight. Apparently, some women order their wedding dresses several sizes smaller in anticipation of the transformation they’ll make for their big day, and frantically have them let out again when reality hits in the days before the event.
I’m conforming to the weightloss part, carefully counting calories and cutting out sweets (I’m already at the gym every day). But I always do that in the spring. Besides that I’m not doing anything for my wedding day. No fluffy white dress, no tanning, no getting work done, no mani-pedi, no new shoes, no old-new-borrowed-blue.
Being a wife sounds like a cool new adventure for me. I’ll try that one for a while. But I’m not going to pay $25,000 for it, torture my body to fit someone else’s ideal image and sit down to my wedding dinner, starving so badly I’ll eat anything that’s put in front of me.