Jessica Valenti Of Feministing Proves Feminists Can Get Hitched, Too
Posted by: Jessica Wakeman
Filed in:
relationships
12:50PM, Friday October 16th 2009
If you call yourself a “feminist”—which basically means you believe women deserve the dignity, rights and respect afforded to men—then you can relate to how peeps come out of the woodwork to tell you you’re either being “too feminist” or “not feminist” enough. Some people think feminism should be a spartan existence where there’s no frivolity allowed, on principle: no makeup, no “Sex & The City, and definitely no getting married!
The dumbest criticism of feminists we’ve ever seen happened when some people freaked out over the engagement of Jessica Valenti, co-founder of Feministing (and one-time Frisky blog!) to her boyfriend, Andrew Golis, deputy publisher of the politics blog, Talking Points Memo. Gettin’ hitched, apparently, is “antithetical” to feminism.
Peeps had issues with their non-traditional proposal (no kneeling, no rose petals) and Valenti’s choice to keep her last name—not just professionally, but keep her name everywhere. While most Feministing commenters congratulated Valenti and Golis on their engagement, some hardliners gave her a hard time, like one who wrote Valenti “seem[ed] to find flaws with patriarchy, but fail[ed] to find a way to bring it down.” Oh, please! You can still be a feminist and get married—I mean, even ‘70s feminist icon Gloria Steinem tied the knot eventually. Non-feminists brought out the sharp knives, too: a blogger for the conservative magazine National Review even penned a post about Valenti called “You’ve Never Met A Bridezilla Like A Feminist Bridezilla.”
All the criticism spurred Valenti to pen an article for the UK’s Guardian newspaper last April in which she said she’d discovered the hard way how “there is no such thing as perfect when you are a feminist getting married…The fact that Andrew and I had had conversations about the misogynist traditions that accompany marriage made us a bit of an oddity, it seemed,” she wrote. “Then there were the fellow feminists who felt that getting married was a sop to the patriarchy.” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
But Valenti and Golis, who both are feminists, chose to do their wedding their way, screw the naysayers. This cute couple nixed a white dress (a traditional symbol of a woman’s supposed virginity) and opted for both parents to walk them down the aisle. They divvied up the labor of planning the wedding, contrary to those heinous “Bridezilla” shows where the guy just shows up to a pre-planned event arranged by his bride. And Valenti tossed her bouquet to all the single male guests, just to be cheeky. As a recent write-up in The New York Times‘s “Vows” section attests, the entire wedding was lovely, thank you very much.
Some may criticize Valenti and her new husband even more for landing in the traditional marriage-revering of places, the freakin’ Times “Vows” section. But I, for one, am thrilled to have a feminist bride template. I’ll be tying the knot with my dude sometime within the next two years and I’ll be eschewing a lot of the traditions of marriage, too. I know anything that will happen to me—from telling Dad I don’t want him to walk me down the aisle, to shopping for a gown that isn’t pure, virginal white—Jessica will have gone through before. If she can marry like a feminist, so can the rest of us.
“You come to a point where you give up on holding yourself to a perfect feminist ideal. It just feels stifling,” Valenti told the “Vows” section. So Valenti stopped listening to what others were saying and did what’s right for her—and that’s the most feminist choice she could have made of all. [New York Times “Vows,” Feministing]
TheFrisky.com is part of the Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network
Wendy Atterberry
wrote on October 16 2009 @ 12:13 pm: [report]
Yes, it looked like a lovely wedding and they seem like a great match, but, I don’t know, call me a hater or whatever, I just don’t find it all that novel or politically progressive that a couple got married the way they wanted to, the naysayers be damned. Isn’t that kind of the norm?
And it’s ironic that someone who felt so much hostility about the choices she made felt it necessary to knock the decision MANY women — feminist and not — make to wear an engagement ring. In the Times column, she says: “The only purpose of an engagement ring is to show you ‘belong’ to someone and your man makes bank.” That’s the ONLY PURPOSE, huh? I wear my great-grandmother’s engagement ring and I hadn’t realized is said anything about the “bank” my man makes.
Anyway, her statement pretty much sums up the problem I have with much of the modern-day feminist movement. It leaves so very little room for differing schools of thought even if they may come from a similar ideology.
Wendy Atterberry
wrote on October 16 2009 @ 12:15 pm: [report]
That should read: “felt so much hostility FROM OTHERS about the choices she made.”
Twig
wrote on October 16 2009 @ 12:52 pm: [report]
I think it’s great that she and her husband made their wedding special and unique to them.
I think it is so ridiculous that some people think a feminist can’t get married, or wear makeup, etc. I think the beauty of being a feminist is realizing that men and women have equality and are free to express themselves and their gender as they wish.
My boyfriend and I are both feminists.
Jessica Wakeman
wrote on October 16 2009 @ 12:59 pm: [report]
@Wendy
I think in the modern-day feminist movement, feminism doesn’t have to be this monolithic thing. We can all agree on the big, important basic principles, but differ on little stuff, like what an engagement ring means or if young girls should play with Barbies. I don’t think those relatively minor disagreements should be reason to scotch the whole movement, though.
ydragurl
wrote on October 16 2009 @ 02:19 pm: [report]
“Valenti and Golis, who both are feminists, chose to do their wedding their way, screw the naysayers. This cute couple nixed a white dress (a traditional symbol of a woman’s supposed virginity)”
The idea that a white wedding dress symbolizes the purity of the bride is a widely-accepted, recently-created myth. It only became customary to wear a white dress after Queen Victoria got married and it had nothing whatsoever to do with her supposed purity—she wanted to show of her lace! Now, I’m typically not one to split hairs over historical trivia (I just learned of this fact not too long ago), but I find it funny that the bride eschewed the white dress in the name of feminism when the tradition itself wasn’t even patriarchal to begin with! LOL
tabby
wrote on October 16 2009 @ 02:20 pm: [report]
@Jessica, I wish you better luck than I had telling my dad, “No one is going walk me down an aisle!” He didn’t take that very well. And while I really, really, really loathe what it symbolizes and don’t want to do it, I realize that to my dad it is an important way to show that his little girl is all grown up and he is supporting her in her life. By refusing to let him do it, he sees it as a slap in the face and that I don’t love him. No amount of talking about the patriarchy is going to make him feel less shunned and so having both parents walk me seems like a suitable compromise. Though there will be no mentioning of anyone giving anyone away. Hopefully your parents will understand that you don’t like the tradition. Good luck when you plan your own wedding.
Wendy Atterberry
wrote on October 16 2009 @ 02:34 pm: [report]
You’re right; The feminist movement doesn’t have to be a monolithic thing. In fact, it shouldn’t be. But here’s the thing: if being a feminist “basically means you believe women deserve the dignity, rights and respect afforded to men,” as you say, I should hope that would describe most reasonable men and women. So…what does it mean to “marry like a feminist” then? If feminism isn’t monolithic, how can there be a particular way feminists marry?
It’s this general preoccupation in creating a set of defining behaviors that strikes me as a bit disingenuous. I wholeheartedly agree with the “important basic principles” of feminism; I just think they often get lost in all this other silly stuff.
joyy
wrote on October 16 2009 @ 02:49 pm: [report]
@Wendy - *high five*
effing hickster
wrote on October 16 2009 @ 03:02 pm: [report]
@tabby: It’s cool that both your parents will walk with you. Hypothetically, if only your dad was available, why couldn’t it be seen as a gesture of support, rather than ownership?
—————————————————————————————-
As for an engagement ring and the ceremony itself, I’ve always seen it as making the statment: “I’m not available anymore, as I am pledging my lifelong love to this person.”—not the signal that one is a piece of property.
I like what Valenti and Golis are doing. I’d also support prop-8 for the same reasons. Other movements, such as the civil rights movement, have long used the concept of “reclamation” (such as the use of the n-word) as a tool to further their cause, so why shouldn’t feminism?
Additionally, as a design-savvy artist, if a woman chooses to marry me I would expect to be able to share in the planning. I’d like the opportunity to vote down the frilly, fuschia-colored tafetta nightmare dresses in my wedding, as she would have to vote down the traditional black and white tuxedos.
SCRMOM
wrote on October 16 2009 @ 03:15 pm: [report]
So Valenti stopped listening to what others were saying and did what’s right for her—and that’s the most feminist choice she could have made of all.
Exactly.