Public Service Announcement: If you are not a virgin do not presume to wear a white wedding dress. It is an honor that is earned from chastity and virtue. Not a tradition for you to soil if you lacked the same.
what about anal? does it count
The idea that the white wedding dress is “an honor that is earned from chastity and virtue” is historically bullshit.
In the west the white wedding dress has it’s origins in the Victorian era, specifically in the white dress Queen Victoria wore in her marriage to Prince Albert. At the time, red was the most popular color for upper-class women to wear at their wedding, and her wedding dress was sort of the contemporary version of Lady Gaga wearing some outlandish outfit to a red carpet event. (She also eschewed the ermine and crown traditional for a queen to wear, which was quite startling to many people.)
After that, a pure white dress became a fashionable way for wealthy, upper-class women to show off their money. Because a pure white dress would quickly yellow and could be ruined by a single spill or a little dirt in an era before 20th century laundering techniques, a white wedding dress was a way of saying “that’s right bitches, I’m so rich I can afford to have this beautiful, elaborate gown made for me and I’m only going to wear it once. Plus odds are good I’ll never work a day in my life or come into contact with anything that might soil it so yeah, great to be me, right?”
Connotations of spiritual purity and eventually virginity only came years later, when the idea of a “white wedding” began to appear in etiquette and housekeeping guidebooks. Even then, it was more because these qualities were associated with upper-class women rather than because the white dress was an honor earned through keeping hands off one’s genitals. Even then, most women just wore their best church dress to their wedding for quite a while. It was the image of thew white wedding dress in post WWII Hollywood movies that finally cemented it as a standard and iconic part of the culture.
Nowadays of course, the American wedding is an orgy of conspicuous consumption, and every woman regardless of her financial situation is expected to get married in a dress she’ll never wear again.
tl;dr, that tradition you’re so keen on protecting has less to do with virginity than is does with showing off big wads of cash.
Poor people would traditionally wear their Sunday best to get married in. They were usually black, brown or other dark colours, because Sunday Best outfits had to last for years and be appropriate for all occasions, including funerals.
Reblogged for historical debunking
I’m always in favor of historical debunking that also gives the middle finger to Magical Virginity.
Finn doesn’t balk at helping out, whether it’s passing tools to Rey in the Falcon or aiding Chewie with his injuries. Finn doesn’t talk over Rey or try to make choices for her. They may disagree and banter, but it’s not barbed, and it’s at an even keel. He looks out for himself, but not at the expense of others – when Finn decides to leave for the Outer Rim, he honestly tells Rey his story and how he feels about her, and asks her to come, and then accepts her refusal gracefully. He respects her decisions, her autonomy, and Rey as a person.
Obviously Finn digs this girl — who wouldn’t, she is undeniably The Coolest — and he does ask if she has a boyfriend early on, but after she says “None of your business,” he lets it go. When he could sulk or tease or be possessive or rude toward her, he doesn’t. He adores her, but is happy just to see Rey safe and well. He’s not preoccupied with romance or feeling “jilted,” where another character might resent her for it. When she hugs him on the Starkiller Base, he doesn’t turn lecherous or try to make a move. She owes him nothing, even when he risked his life to come to her aid, and he gets that! He’s not a White Knight, Friend-Zoned, or a Nice Guy. He never tries to “take” anything he wants when it comes to Rey. He doesn’t view her as a thing to take….
The parallels between Finn and Kylo Ren are the most direct (and stark) in terms of toxic masculinity. Finn seems to reject this toxicity, whereas Kylo Ren is constantly hung up on performing and proving himself strong enough. They are opposites: especially evidenced by the way they treat Rey – how they define themselves against the chief female presence of the movie.
Like Finn, Kylo Ren is also interested in and impressed by Rey. (And he also first meets her when she attacks him.) But instead of treating Rey like a person, Kylo acts out of aggression, objectification, and self-centeredness. He immediately immobilizes her, Force-faints her, and then carries her, bridal-style, to his ship: old-fashioned, exploitative, and gross. His language towards her is incredibly patronizing: “So this is the girl I’ve heard so much about…” He proceeds to insult her friends and threaten and torture her: violating her mind, using her as a tool but also relishing the show of his own power and the taking of something personal by force. “I can take what I want” is simultaneously a threat, a statement of power/entitlement, and a declaration of how Kylo fundamentally views Rey: an object, something controllable to serve his purposes. When the tables turn and Rey reads him, he is incredibly shaken by the subversion of his own authority and control, and when she escapes, he storms around looking for her in a blind rage, pursuing her with a weapon. Even as she’s beating him in the ensuing lightsaber battle, he has the gall to mansplain her own power to her: “YOU NEED A TEACHER!”
I love how this article is in direct contrast with the nonsensical idea that Kylo Ren somehow respects Rey as an equal while because Finn took her goddamn hand, he’s somehow the sexist one.
I am a Reylo shipper (much to my surprise), and this is 100% true, The interesting thing to me, as a fan and as a romance writer, is how much the Rey/Ren dynamic relies on some SUPER old-school romance tropes (the bridal carry, the “I can take what I want” (and make you like it, being the undercurrent there), etc. These are tropes that have mostly (and rightfully) passed out of favor in the genre, but make no mistake, they are/were romance tropes, and once upon a less-enlightened time, signified that A Great Romance was in the offing.
In that era of romance writing, the dynamic between men and women was very much a case of “woman tames the savage beast and civilizes him with her love/pure heart/vagina, man introduces woman to world of (sexual and/or material) wonders she’s never known before, etc.” And while if anybody pulled that shit on me IRL, I’d slap a restraining order on him, fiction a whole ‘nother beast.
The great part about the movie is that it rejects those old-fashioned and problematic tropes out of hand as being the tools of an unstable bad guy. The great part about fandom is that we can go back and play around with that–twist it, play it straight, whatever.
As someone who grew up reading books with titles like “Sweet Savage Love” and, like “The Virgin and the Viking” (I think I made that last one up), it’s an utter delight to go back and play with those ideas from a modern perspective and give Rey the upper-hand which she so obviously has.
