Another day, another friend announces their engagement on a certain social networking site whose name rhymes with "Macelook." Some days, it seems like I'm the only person in the world who doesn't get to post big flashy ring pictures, followed by big flashy wedding dress pictures. And if you're a heterosexual or heterosexual-leaning woman between the ages of 25 and 40 in the U.S. today - there's one thing you've been conditioned to want since before you could walk: DIAMONDS, WEDDINGS, MARRIAGE...followed by millions and millions of babies.
Sometimes, all the social pressure makes me want to - in the words of a good friend - just stick a pen in my eye. It takes all the strength in the world to remind myself that marriage - while often lovely on a case-by-case basis - is a truly broken institution.
Four out of ten Americans now say marriage is becoming irrelevant. Marriage discriminates based on social class, gender identity and sexual orientation. But marriage has been carefully packaged and sold to the female half of our species as the only way our lives will ever feel really complete - and that we really ought to just compromise our desires and needs in order to find an acceptable male and settle down. And so there's this nationwide panic attack taking place among most of the women I know - including, occasionally, me - surrounding when "The One" will magically appear.
So. So. Broken.
What isn't broken is the lifelong commitment that so many of my friends are choosing to make to one another - and for that, I'm profoundly happy. I just wish that those commitments could be celebrated in a social and political environment that wasn't so charged with consumerism and inequality, and that wasn't designed specifically to make us single women feel so blisteringly inferior.
