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.
Hey op I love fucking and I’m gonna wear white to my wedding are you mad?
I love when Tumblr trashes troll bait with historical truth bombs. Also, having recently gotten married, I really wish we could go back to the “just wear your fave dress, k?” version of weddings. Because the pressure to spend thousands of dollars on a dress that you use once is horrible.
We’ve even got an entire reality series about this “tradition” holding brides and their families hostage until they give in. “Just say ‘yes’ to the dress, will you? Say ‘yes’ to the dress!”
Playsuits, open briefs and frame bras with applique and fringe? Yes please! LoveChild’s feather capes and epaulettes also make extraordinary lingerie accessories. Check it out here: www.lovechildboudoir.com
The problem comes from people whose opinions are actually misconceptions. If you think vaccines cause autism you are expressing something factually wrong, not an opinion. The fact that you may still believe that vaccines cause autism does not move your misconception into the realm of valid opinion. Nor does the fact that many other share this opinion give it any more validity…
You can be wrong or ignorant. It will happen. Reality does not care about your feelings. Education does not exist to persecute you. The misinformed are not an ethnic minority being oppressed. What’s that? Planned Parenthood is chopping up dead babies and selling them for phat cash? No, that’s not what actually happened. No, it’s not your opinion. You’re just wrong.
Here’s the thing about Halloween: all year long if you live in America you’re under a steady assault by this right-wing traditional faux-wholesome pseudo-Christian nuclear patriot family atmosphere, and then all the sudden as the weather cools and the days shorten the country loses its marbles decking everything out in bloody corpses, demon faces, witchcraft and giant rubber bugs. Half the country thinks they’re the Addams Family for 1-3 months while a small chunk of weiners get angry that it’s “pagan” or something.
I don’t know if anyone in any other cultural environment can really understand how that feels. It’s the antithesis of the “love jesus and eagles or GIT OUT” under(over)tone American culture is usually about.
And even though it generates billions of dollars, there’s no pressure, shaming or guilting to spend money on it like there is for certain other holidays. We spend that much on Halloween just because it’s fun and we want to, rather than some unspoken (usually unspoken) rule that you must buy extravagant gifts or you’re a heathen scrooge and you don’t love your family.
and it’s when everything is themed with black and it’s totally acceptable
This is actually one of the original purposes of Halloween.
Halloween, like Mardi Gras, descends from the inversion festival. Inversion festivals were a necessary part of most highly regimented and class-divided ancient cultures, such as Rome. You spent all year keeping rigidly to your class and policing others to do the same, living a life of very public behaviors, worshipping very specifically and obeying societal laws you may not agree with and which may not be to your benefit.
But ah, then the festival time came. The rules were thrown out. Sometimes the classes were literally inverted and the nobility were forced to serve. Nothing was taboo. The macabre, the ugly, the things that violated all laws of polite society were glorified. For a period of time – often longer in proportion to how regimented your society was – you were free to do and be exactly what you wanted. You could wear a costume. You could hide from the world behind a mask. You could make all the noise you wanted and nobody would stop you because it was driving out the evil in the community (the evil often being the stress of living in a very outward-facing, regimented society).
And America, whatever anyone says, is an incredibly regimented and class-oriented society. So our lead-in to Halloween is two months long.
Halloween is one of America’s only true inversion festivals. Christmas has terribly rigid expectations and heaps of stress, Thanksgiving makes you want to kill your whole family, the fourth of July it’s too fuckin’ hot, St. Patrick’s Day is too short and it’s filled with douchebags. Memorial Day is for mourning, Labor Day you’re about to start school again. Mardi Gras is a great, very historic inversion festival, but it’s also fairly localized. Pride comes close, and is a very badly needed form of inversion festival for its participants, but it’s not universal and it also involves aspects of activism and protest which use inversion but are not part of inversion.
Halloween is it. It’s our national cut-loose party. And that’s not accidental. Halloween has been an inversion festival since before it had that name, since ancient people realized the harvest was over, the dark short days were coming, and everyone was gonna have to spend the next four months indoors trying not to murder one another.
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