If anything was ever going to push me over from being a “this is what I did/observed/wondered today” blogger to a “single and looking and pretty damn proud of it” blogger, it would be the unsolicited postal item that arrived for me sometime last week. The Wedding Channel magazine sat out on the hearth, where miscellaneous newspapers, catalogs and junk mail get shuffled back and forth each week, without really catching my attention until today, when I grabbed it for the car ride up to Target. After exclaiming like a giddy maid-of-honor-to-be about several cute ideas and clucking shamefully at the vast assortment of strapless dresses that made up 90% of the 125 Chic and Sexy Gowns spread (you’ll look naked if the photographer shoots your shoulders and up!), I asked my mom what inspired her to make this news stand purchase. I assumed she’d picked it up for some nostalgic purpose or that someone she knew was recently engaged.
“Actually,” she said, “it came in the mail – addressed to you!”
She said she tore the incriminating address labels off the minute it arrived to save me from a complex. Telling me that the address labels were what brought the matrimonial literature into my vulnerable hands defeated that purpose. Some well-intentioned secrets are meant to be kept! And if this isn’t a societal message to ladies who happen to be maintaining a really strong single streak, I don’t know what it is.
It almost made me mad enough to put down the magazine and pick up something feminist and uproaring instead. But then I would feel like a t-shirt with “bride” spelled out in rhinestones would never again in a million years be a bridal shower fashion option, and so what if I’m the kind of girl who just likes to keep her options open?
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