Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

by Jia Tolentino

Sexism rears its head no matter who a woman is, no matter what her desires and ethics might be. And a woman doesn’t have to be a feminist icon to resist it—she can just be self-interested, which is not always the same thing.

On her wedding day, a year of planning and approximately $30,000 of spending are unleashed over the span of about twelve hours.

apotheosis,”

A wedding no longer marked a woman’s shift from single to married, but rather, it indicated her ascension from ordinary woman to bride and wife.

Attempts to market engagement rings for men had previously flopped, as such rings were incompatible with the still-prevalent idea that engagement is a thing that men do to women. But in a war context, the male wedding band started to seem logical: with a wedding band, men could cross the ocean wearing a reminder of wife, country, and home.

tradition of bride and groom exchanging rings at the ceremony was rapidly invented. By the fifties, it was as if the double-ring ceremony had existed since the beginning of time.

licentiousness

weddings have only been getting more expensive. They remain an industry-dictated “theme park of upward mobility,” as Naomi Wolf put it: a world defined by the illusion that everyone within it is upper-middle class.

“A great set of wedding photographs can be called upon to justify all the expense that preceded them, and the anticipation of acquiring a good set of photographs can also encourage that expense in the first place,” Rebecca Mead writes in One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding.

Expectations of bridal beauty have collided with the wellness industry and produced a massive dark star of obligation.

paltry

A woman keeping her name is making a choice that is expected to be limited and futile. She will not pass the name down to her children, or bestow it upon her husband.

We find it inappropriate for women to treat their names the way that men, by default, feel entitled to. On this front, as on so many others, a woman is allowed to assert her independence as long as it doesn’t affect anyone else.

It feels like a trick, a trick that has worked and is still working, that the bride remains the image of womanhood at its most broadly celebrated—and that planning a wedding is the only period in a woman’s life where she is universally and unconditionally encouraged to conduct everything on her terms.

the more I try to uncover whatever I’m looking for, the more I feel that I’m too far gone.

In the end, the safest conclusions may not actually be conclusions.

We are asked to understand our lives under such impossibly convoluted conditions.

I have always accommodated everything I wish I were opposed to. Here, as in so many other things, the “thee” that I drea...