The only books I read these days are other peoples’ thesis work that all have long titles with colons in them, or theory. From ‘Cinderella Dreams: the Allure of the Lavish Wedding’, which has been sitting on my kitchen table for me to re-read every time I sit down for a snack. Again, more for me. I don’t know why it has to be public. Maybe I’m an exhibitionist and I don’t know it.

“’The bride and her bridegroom are stars at their own show… with the footage, if not the ratings, to prove it.’ A photographer follows the couple’s every move so they can remember the beautiful romantic moments they shared. Prestige is a signal, whereas distinctive and romantic consumption is a fantasy of utopia. The fantasy of the wedding day is what couples (and in most cases, especially the bride) hope they can purchase from the caterer, the florist, the jeweler, and so forth. Perhaps we should think of the couple, and especially the brides, as producers of their own movies. They arrange the financing, secure the location for filming, and cast themselves in the two major roles. More and more, they hire directors to make sure the action goes smoothly and the film will be entertaining and stylish. Wedding professionals, from florists to photographers, help to create the fantasy, some by supplying the flowers and the cake, others by directing the events of the day. But the professionals whom the couples hire tend to impose a script and a schedule on the proceedings. The photographer hands the bride and groom a checklist of shots that serves as a routine for the wedding day.”

So really, I should’ve had a wedding and not a prom.

“In consumer culture, people believe that spending money will buy happiness, self-fulfillment, autonomy, and personal transformation. Moreover, the same mechanisms that support and reproduce consumer culture in Western countries – namely advertising, the media, retailing, and merchandising – now assist global marketers and manufacturers in fostering consumer desire and emulation of elite lifestyles. As a result, there is increasing emphasis on satisfying individual versus collective desires, of pursuing a ‘myself-that-could-be’ through consumption.”

“Given that consumer culture implies an increasing infatuation with goods and services, it is not surprising some scholars have noted a connection between romantic love, which emerged as a desirable basis for marrying in the nineteenth century, and the love of goods, made possible through simultaneous developments in commerce and transportation. In fact, the connection between romance and consumption has grown even closer in postmodern consumer societies, as incomes have grown and romance has become such an important appeal for advertisers. While ‘pure’ romantic love might seem at odds with the crass desire for material goods, sociologist Eva Illouz notes people seek to escape a world laden with bureaucracy and technology for a ‘romantic utopia’, and actively employ goods and services that have been accorded a sacred ‘aura’ in order to fill their lives with romantic overtones. We now inhabit a world where the ‘romanticization of commodities and the commodification of romance’ now go hand in hand.”

“Girls and women consume the goods that support a ‘love culture’: fairy tales, dolls, soap operas, romantic movies, romance novels, and popular magazines.”

“In short, people want lavish weddings because they want to experience magic in their lives.. we continually seek to re-enchant our lives through magic clothes, jewels, and perfumes. We drive magic cars. We reside in magic places and make pilgrimages to even more magical places. We eat magical foods, own magic pets, and envelope ourselves in the magic of film, television, and books.. the rational possessor is a myth that fails because it denies the inescapable and essential mysteriousness of our existence. Ritual scholar Ronald Grimes argues that magic is transformation by ritual and mysterious means, and that the magic has to ‘work’ and achieve an end. In the case of the wedding, the ritual ceremony is laden with artifacts that make people feel truly changed (even if only for a short while), and the empirical end is the creation of a paradise on earth.”

Some people get married, I go to Dig & Save. So I might be insane, but at least I’m not going to get divorced in two years.

I randomly found this on some art blog this morning, and I very much love it. I don’t know which one. My reader is completely out of control.

I was just told that it is completely okay that I feel like the oil spill is my thesis statement directly manifesting itself. I didn’t even have to say it, I sat down on her stool while she was cutting copper and I started unloading about how stressed out I’ve been partly because of this insidious crisis we can’t seem to stop, and Kim brought it up first. I couldn’t stop crying yesterday afternoon. I was reading and people watching in the sun at the co-op and I barely made it home.

I guess it’s not that I’m all that mad at BP or the government or anything, or stressed about the thing of the spill itself. All of those things are huge, incomprehensible (inherently corrupt) entities, and extra energy spent being mad at them would fry anyone’s brain. I feel that something terrible would’ve happened sooner or later, and BP was the unlucky scapegoat. It’s that the terrible something has happened; it’s here, right now. Of course it hit us where we’re the most sensitive, and of course it is of epic, global, unthinkable proportions. It feels completely terminal. And sitting in the sun yesterday, thinking about all of the people in the co-op parking lot at that exact moment in time, all of them just like me with educational backgrounds and best friends and families and goals and reasons to not sleep at night.. not necessarily unique or original, but each important. It was completely overwhelming.

“No one ever wanted to deal with any of this stuff. At the end of the day, we all just want to raise our families right and have a little fun doing it.”

(Later – Wanna know how big a dork I am?)