Why We
Stare at Brides
By Mark Judge
It didn't start out as a
social experiment, but it became one.
A young woman from the
neighborhood was getting married. The family invited me, and asked that I take
some pictures. They had an official wedding photographer, but I'm a
photojournalist and would get some backup shots. This was fine with me -- I
actually prefer that role, as I think that people look much more natural and
beautiful when they are not posing.
So I was a participant in
the ceremony, but also something of an outsider. I could be close to the
wedding party, yet also watch those watching the ceremony, which was at
Georgetown University in Washington. It was a position that left me with a
question.
Why are we so mesmerized by
wedding brides?
I realize all the usual,
and correct, answers. She's beautiful. It's an important day. People like to
see happy things.
But all of this could apply
to seeing a group of women out on the town celebrating a birthday. People are
not mesmerized by a girl's night out. They are mesmerized -- some seem frozen
in place -- when they see a bride. It was a rich and funny experience to be a
fly on the wall and watch people abandon their shopping bags, friends, and even
smartphones (other than to take pictures) and simply stand and stare. And
stare. And stare. And stare.
They stare, some of them
with deep longing, because that in a world that insists on being more and more
secular and selfish, a woman on her wedding day is a shocking countercultural
totem of resistance. She is a defiant sign that immortality can be touched when
you make yourself a gift to another human being. The groom does this also, of
course, but men tend to be more violent, promiscuous, and in in the evolutionary order of things, more
expendable. People might notice the groom, say he looks handsome, but they
positively forget themselves when they see a bride.
Women are more moral (look
at the prison population), are the primary transmitters of life and culture,
and just smell better. There is just something divine about them. As
pornography, dressing down, and feminism keep trying to drag them down to the
guys' level, the wedding gown reveals their true selves. And in the
metaphysical scene of things it is much more crucial to human flourishing than
"equal pay for equal work."
Real men know that the
woman's true self is worth loving, protecting, and dying for. The best women
call us out of ourselves. They teach us discipline, self-sacrifice, and giving
ourselves up for future generations and for love. And not romantic love, but
the love, as Pope Benedict XVI once put it, that goes all the way to the end; the
love that endures through sickness, depression, disease, even indifference.
That is why we stare at brides in their white. We stare in awe and in
gratitude.
The night after the
wedding, I went to see a great band from Austin, My Jerusalem,
play at the historic State Theater in Virginia. I was mulling what I was going
to put in the wedding video I was putting together for my friends. Then the
band provided the answer, in their song "Mono." Here are the opening
lyrics:
You're
gonna die in this room
In your twin size coffin tomb.
When all your friends have bailed out,
Who will rescue you now?
In your twin size coffin tomb.
When all your friends have bailed out,
Who will rescue you now?
The
sheets, they make you itch
And bedsores make you twitch.
And you just can't figure out
How you've gotten here somehow.
And bedsores make you twitch.
And you just can't figure out
How you've gotten here somehow.
I wanna
be the one who rolls you over.
I wanna be the one who rolls you over.
I wanna be the one who rolls you over.
Not your typical wedding
vows, but it hits the mark.
Mark
Judge is the author of A Tremor of
Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock 'n' Roll.
No comments:
Post a Comment