I sit once again for my bridal makeup, for that day that has the old adage ‘best day of a girl’s life’ attached to it.
Ironically, I am not too fond of weddings myself. No, I’m not a killjoy (except on bad hair days maybe) and yes, I do enjoy them as much as the next person when it’s a friend’s wedding or when a close relative marries. But it becomes a little hard to look past the at times needless expenditure and the chagrin of those family members and friends who are missing in action all year round, yet all too keen to express anger at not receiving an invitation.
I am lucky I am getting ready for a wedding that is only make-believe. Also, very glad the make-up artist cannot hear my thoughts as she fiddles enthusiastically with my hair. Don’t want her to think I am some kind of a weirdo.
So as she does my hair, I think about this. The hair, the makeup, the day, the institution, the life. Aside from our own selves that change through and in time, so does society and the value it places on certain things.
Marriage has changed or rather evolved greatly over the past few decades, where it once belonged only to members of the opposite gender, in some countries it has now extended its arms to anyone to wishes to be married, irrespective of gender. Yet, while some covet inclusion in this institution, there are others who have written it off altogether as redundant or dead. A failed institution.
Technology gave us the illusion of being connected to so many people all at once. But you might find the person next to you doesn’t really know you at all, doesn’t find your imperfections endearing, doesn’t notice the way your eyes look when you smile or remember that you hate olives in your sandwiches.
So cut to some thirty or forty years ago. Our parents, that is, the generation before us, is getting ready to tie the knot. Because that is what you do when you are of a certain age in the 1960s-70s in Pakistan – you don’t go backpacking across Europe, you don’t take a summer off to stay at home and learn a language, you don’t live up the single life… you get married. That is what you do.
Soon after, you learn your partner isn’t well suited to you at all. That he/she doesn’t understand you, is abusive, is unkind or simply just doesn’t cut it. So what do you do? Do you walk away? Nope. Maybe that’s not who are you, maybe you’re afraid of the societal stigma attached to divorce or maybe you want to but you just can’t for various reasons. So you think well, this is it. This is my life, I have made my bed, might as well lie in it. And you decide to have kids and they experience your story.