Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Vapidly ever after...

People love a fairytale. I don't have to elaborate on why -- we all know it's got to do with our fantasies being a lot more fun and pleasant than reality in a lot of cases.
But the problem is, the fairytale is the template for reality.
Take, for instance, the recent royal wedding. The amount of excitement this generated was way beyond anything that the tale of two young people -- much richer and, at least in the girl's case, better looking than anyone deserves to be -- getting married should generate.
The gushing cliches that accompanied it, not only from magazines that you'd expect that kind of thing from, but from TV news, newspapers, and other mainstream news sources, were nausea-inducing.
This all came to mind again this week when I was thumbing through People magazine and came across the incredibly substance-less, trite and downright bizarre when you think about it story of the "fairytale" engagement of Kim Kardashian, famous for simply being famous, and NBA star Kris Humphries.
The whole thing was "a dream come true"!
The 20-plus-carat ring brings this line from People: Kardashian had "long dreamed of the perfect man -- and the perfect ring"!
They had an engagement party that rivaled a state dinner to celebrate Kim's "Cinderella moment" (People's words, not mine). This was chronicled over several pages in the magazine, complete with photos of the proposal being spelled out in rose petals on the living room rug and the "princess themed" cake that cost thousands of dollars.
Now, I know it's People magazine and not The New Yorker. But I'd say People mirrors our attitudes as a society a whole lot more than probably any other popular publication.
And so, there we have it: a very rich young lady who is a "reality show" star with a B-list famous late dad (OJ Simpson lawyer Robert Kardashian) and B-list famous step dad (Olympian Bruce Jenner) and an NBA star.
They've known each other since November so they "took the right amount of time and made sure it was right," according to Kardashian.
He asked her step-father's permission to marry her.
She has "always dreamed of a big wedding" so will "do something really over-the-top."
Now a lot of people may be saying, "Yeah, so? Sounds really romantic to me."
And that's the issue -- we are programmed to think all this is just great. Particularly women.
"Every little girl dreams of being a princess and marrying a handsome prince."
I heard that phrase so many times before, during, and after the royal wedding I was ready to go looking for a prince and princess and stick of TNT.

And Kardashian. Cinderella? Guess again. More like one of the stepsisters -- rich, privileged, and entitled.
He asks her dad for her hand. Why? She's a grown woman.
Oh, but it's so romantic.
And she's dreamed of such a perfect engagement.
How about teaching little girls, and bigger ones for that matter, and maybe even the fellas, that instead of dreaming of weddings, spelling out proposals in rose petals, pretending to be princesses, we dream of a perfect marriage with equal partners who discuss their values, expectations and yes, dreams, before taking the plunge. 
The guy asks the dad for her hand instead of the two adults sitting down and discussing -- seriously -- what kind of life they expect to have with each other.
Every girl dreams of being a princess.
And that's the problem. No one dreams of a perfect marriage. Just the engagement. Just the wedding.
All that hype the royal wedding got never talked about the royal marriage, except maybe to speculate on where they would live. How about girls dreaming of being strong, independent people who know what they want out of life and achieving it on their own merits?
So the Kardashian story is another example of  the fluff and superficiality that we like to base our beliefs on.
Cliches carry so much more weight than looking at something realistically, logically, and pragmatically.
And it carries over to the way we view the world around us.
People running for office mouth cliches that mean nothing, and everyone jumps on board because it is what every little taxpayer dreams of. But no one can really tell you what the substance is behind it. Or how we're REALLY going to run our government or country.
A horrible tragedy happens and everyone grabs a candle and goes to a vigil and says things like "no one deserves this" and vilifies the bad guy without maybe wondering what caused the whole thing to happen in the first place.
We care about the blond-haired, blue-eyed child who died because it's a big fairy tale to grab the candle, be on TV, cry for a child you don't know and be part of the fairytale that we live in a society that is divided into good and bad, princesses and evil stepsisters.
But what about all the other thousands of children in this country who are in equally precarious situations, and what about the circumstances that put them there? What about the things we support as a society that can cause so much damage to thousands of people, children, we don't even know?
Where's their candle? Their vigil?

Here's what we accept as true, good and romantic: A little girl dreams of the perfect wedding ring. The bigger the better.

What does that say about what we expect as a society, both of little girls and of ourselves?

1 comment:

  1. I love a fairy tale, too. But one great thing about fairy tales is that they leave out all the messy details. "Happily ever after" is a lie, even for great marriages. We need some fairy tales that tell about the mortgage payments, the broken down car, and the sick child who needs one of his two working parents to pick him up at school - when neither one of them can afford to leave work early. Let's call them "Weary Tales."

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