Lockdown felt, at times, like a rabbit hole down which one sinks with remorseless ease. Its progress or regress could be expressed most simply in terms of television viewing habits. But I feared that under the surface, far more insidious changes are happening.
It started with "Say, yes to the dress" a programme where women young and old come to find their bridal outfit in a plush shop in New York City. There, they spend small fortunes to find that mystical dress that will transform their wedding into a fantasy story. In the plush, spoiled environment they prance and complain and demand still more. After a while one grows tired of their demands and expectations. You simply become bored with their selfish absorption of how they want to look on the big day. It is no coincidence that even the most expensive extreme dress is not quite enough and disappointment is often clear on their cosmetically enhanced features.
Beauty and folly are often companions. French Proverb
So I turned to another type of wedding outfitters. Nazranaa Diaries offered a much more extreme range of dresses in terms of colour and richness both for brides and bridegrooms. The vivid colours and range of styles make the ordinary bride wear very humdrum indeed.
However, it is the young brides who usually dictate the colour and design of both bridal outfits. Remonstrating with their groom-to-be about the colours of the wedding venue, their chosen colour palette and how the groom's outfit has to fit with her dress. Her bridesmaids often have strong opinions too and the grooms are commonly paraded in increasingly bizarre clothes that are chosen for them whatever their own wishes. It suddenly occurs to the viewer that this does not bode well for the future of the marriage. Just once a groom held firm to his favourite outfit and his bride sulked and threatened him. Her bridesmaid told him it made him look ridiculous. He decided he wanted it anyway. After a hundred episodes of hen picked grooms it was a wonder to behold. "But it clashes with my dress!" His bride cried real tears to get her way. In the awkward moments that followed of his weeping tear-stained bride, he fixed her with a steely glare and said: "I want this one!" I wanted to stand and clap in satisfaction. But there are only so many Asian outfits despite the wider range of colours and shapes and sizes one can watch. I grew weary of the expense and the shallowness of all it portrayed.
After that, I turned to the series on Big Fat Gipsy Weddings where the wedding dresses are so extreme and over the top that after only a few episodes I wearied of the excesses. Somehow the outfits remind me of the tackiness and creepiness of Punch and Judy puppets. I don't know why?
“Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.” Confucius
By this stage, I was sickening of the self-obsessed prancing of brides-to-be in front of mirrors and screams of "Oh how beautiful I look!" Quite frankly their happiness neither pleased nor entertained but merely bored me. I needed something more hard-hitting, more emotion-inducing. I found it in the series Curvy Brides Boutique. Here very fat brides go to a wedding dress shop in the countryside designed for the larger woman. Instead of being disappointed at finding one or no dresses to fit them, they are delighted to find an entire shop full of wedding dresses that actually fit them. Nearly all these fat woman hate their image in the mirror so much that they don't like looking at themselves at all. Their humility and lack of pride are refreshing. They come across as so much nicer people. Modest and self-effacing. Prepared to laugh at themselves and with the very lowest of expectations regarding their wedding dress. They just want to find a dress that fits, that will do. So watching them get perfect makeup and hair then being given a dress that, with corsets, creates a waist was like watching Cinderella being transformed for the ball. A kindly, fat, lacking in confidence Cinderella that deserved to have her big moment. The look on their faces when the right dress is found is not triumphant but emotional and tearful. They look genuinely surprised at their reflection in the mirror and say things like "I cannot believe I look alright in this dress". As if being hideous was their birthright. Their happiness makes them beautiful and you suddenly see that too. All have stories and many touch your heart. So many have been bullied because of their weight throughout school and they speak of the unkindness of others. One feels ashamed at the cruelty of humankind and how much damage is inflicted to sweet souls every single day because of how they look. A large young twenty-four-year-old had donated one kidney to her Mum and had put on a lot of weight since the operation. Her bravery and act of selflessness which saved her mother's life spoke of the quality of this young lady and suddenly you realised what a lucky man her groom was. The compassion and kindness of these self-deprecating ladies was the perfect antidote to the self-absorption of those earlier skinny brides.
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” Rumi
Then, I grew tired of this rabbit hole entirely and saught the light. Watching TV is such a degrading sedentary practice in so many ways. You spend so much time digesting stuff that is unwholesome searching for more extreme versions of what you have already seen. Your taste becomes odder and quirkier and jaded. I call it a descent into madness and I tell the tale as a warning. Avoid this particular rabbit hole and choose a healthier and more productive path. WE are what we Do.
