Once again it’s the season for big brash vulgar ostentatious kitschy exhibitionistic flaunting, and what better way to encapsulate the whole package of poshlost than your very own wedding by the Bosphorus?
Every little girl dreams of it: bright lights, a beautiful setting, hundreds of important people in thousand-dollar frocks and tuxedos gathered just for her, camera flashes going off in her face, fireworks going off in the air, the ring on the finger, the wedding dress, the dance, the whole world telling her how pretty she looks… Finally, it’s the night when hours of solarium time, litres of hair-care products, kilos of make-up, thousands of dollars worth of planning, shopping and organization – and a good long bout of determined anorexia – finally pay off. Precious Princess at last has her day, and she’s relieved to have finally shut her mother and aunties up, made her friends (and that ex of hers whom she dated for 8 years) jealous, and fulfilled daddy’s and society’s expectations. And even if the marriage doesn’t work out, she’ll at least have been married before 30. In other words, she won. Finally, she can have a kid and be fat again and live happily (read bored) ever after.
But as everyone except the bride knows, a wedding isn’t only about the bride. In fact, the bride is more of a decoy – as is what’s-his-name by her side over there. Instead, the wedding is an exposition of patriarchal power and influence; this is manifest in the big booming fireworks display (that threatens to go wrong at any moment and burn down a historic wooden Ottoman mansion next door); in the array of cheesy cigar-toting wanna-be-Latino hotshot businessmen with their starving fake-orange-tanned rhinoplastic wives who threaten to gouge out an eye with their uniform pointy noses every time they move in to give another insincere air-kiss; in the press coverage represented by the paparazzi rats scurrying around on behalf of socialite mags like Alem, Şamdan and Hello, in the next issues of which the guests’ blown up over-lit photos will reveal enough cavities, wrinkles and acne to satisfy even the most jealous of friends; in the size of the cake, the size of the venue, the size of the stereo system, the size of the food portions, the size of the boxes of champagne bottles, and the size of the overall bill, all of which reflects favourably on the size of the bride’s father’s enormous… power and influence.
And what of the bride and groom? They’re of secondary importance since the wedding is more of a social obligation for them. Their job isn’t to have fun; it’s to maintain a constant frozen smile on their faces as they go to personally greet each and every one of the seated guests, thus reinforcing the implicit sense of duty and conformity implied in the whole wedding ceremony. Afterall, what a wedding actually is – besides a venue for the bride’s father to show everyone the size of his aforementioned power and influence – is a social bond between two families as part of a ritual inaugurating the young couple’s advent into society before all the gathered eyes of that very society into which they’re seeking acceptance, thus leaving the private domain (‘aile evi’) for the first time and entering the public one (‘dünyaevi’). That’s why we say that those who are married have ‘entered the world/society’ (‘dünyaevine girmiş’), while those left unmarried are said to have been ‘left at home’ (‘evde kalmış’). This makes sense considering we have a culture in which leaving the family home unmarried is still not an accepted practice. Marriage is the only accepted way of leaving home and entering the ‘world’ (i.e. the rigidly regulated network of family and acquaintances) as a respected (read ‘enmeshed’) member of society. And so our two protagonists just have to grin and bear the stifling demands of their social responsibility toward this imposed duty until it’s all finally over and they can look forward to a brief honeymoon respite.
But that’s not to say that weddings aren’t fun… eventually. Once you get enough booze into everyone the social masks melt off along with the make-up, bowties dangle limp from loosened collars, the gelled hair gets slightly unset (although not exactly dishevelled), everyone starts dancing to tacky pop songs, and finally, at the end of the ordeal, even the bride and groom can relax a little and have a modicum of fun. Around this time you can see newly met cousins from the two families snogging in a corner, formerly obsequious wedding photographers and waiters with now-disdainful faces scrounging around asking for money from the drunk guests, and one or two raised voices, usually involving a female guest who’s up way past her bedtime scolding her midlife-crisis-suffering husband for awkwardly flirting with some far-too-young friend of the bride. Last but not least, if you stick around to the end, you’ll see a messy disgusting wasteland of half-eaten slabs of cake stabbed with cigarette butts next to fingerprint-smudged wineglasses with bits of food and saliva on the rim amidst a sea of lipstick-stained napkins, ignored gift baskets, wine-drenched tablecloths, a cheap guest asking for a tinfoil doggy bag, the odd puddle of vomit, and an overwhelmingly human stench of sweat, pheromones and suffering. All in all, an appropriate beginning to a lifetime of marital bliss yet to come.
(If you’d like an alternative look at weddings from someone who’s not a complete sociopath and is actually invited to them – albeit against her will – check out Emine Yildirim’s ‘Bored of the Rings’ in TOIST, October 2005, or on-line at www.timeout.com.tr)
Every little girl dreams of it: bright lights, a beautiful setting, hundreds of important people in thousand-dollar frocks and tuxedos gathered just for her, camera flashes going off in her face, fireworks going off in the air, the ring on the finger, the wedding dress, the dance, the whole world telling her how pretty she looks… Finally, it’s the night when hours of solarium time, litres of hair-care products, kilos of make-up, thousands of dollars worth of planning, shopping and organization – and a good long bout of determined anorexia – finally pay off. Precious Princess at last has her day, and she’s relieved to have finally shut her mother and aunties up, made her friends (and that ex of hers whom she dated for 8 years) jealous, and fulfilled daddy’s and society’s expectations. And even if the marriage doesn’t work out, she’ll at least have been married before 30. In other words, she won. Finally, she can have a kid and be fat again and live happily (read bored) ever after.
But as everyone except the bride knows, a wedding isn’t only about the bride. In fact, the bride is more of a decoy – as is what’s-his-name by her side over there. Instead, the wedding is an exposition of patriarchal power and influence; this is manifest in the big booming fireworks display (that threatens to go wrong at any moment and burn down a historic wooden Ottoman mansion next door); in the array of cheesy cigar-toting wanna-be-Latino hotshot businessmen with their starving fake-orange-tanned rhinoplastic wives who threaten to gouge out an eye with their uniform pointy noses every time they move in to give another insincere air-kiss; in the press coverage represented by the paparazzi rats scurrying around on behalf of socialite mags like Alem, Şamdan and Hello, in the next issues of which the guests’ blown up over-lit photos will reveal enough cavities, wrinkles and acne to satisfy even the most jealous of friends; in the size of the cake, the size of the venue, the size of the stereo system, the size of the food portions, the size of the boxes of champagne bottles, and the size of the overall bill, all of which reflects favourably on the size of the bride’s father’s enormous… power and influence.
And what of the bride and groom? They’re of secondary importance since the wedding is more of a social obligation for them. Their job isn’t to have fun; it’s to maintain a constant frozen smile on their faces as they go to personally greet each and every one of the seated guests, thus reinforcing the implicit sense of duty and conformity implied in the whole wedding ceremony. Afterall, what a wedding actually is – besides a venue for the bride’s father to show everyone the size of his aforementioned power and influence – is a social bond between two families as part of a ritual inaugurating the young couple’s advent into society before all the gathered eyes of that very society into which they’re seeking acceptance, thus leaving the private domain (‘aile evi’) for the first time and entering the public one (‘dünyaevi’). That’s why we say that those who are married have ‘entered the world/society’ (‘dünyaevine girmiş’), while those left unmarried are said to have been ‘left at home’ (‘evde kalmış’). This makes sense considering we have a culture in which leaving the family home unmarried is still not an accepted practice. Marriage is the only accepted way of leaving home and entering the ‘world’ (i.e. the rigidly regulated network of family and acquaintances) as a respected (read ‘enmeshed’) member of society. And so our two protagonists just have to grin and bear the stifling demands of their social responsibility toward this imposed duty until it’s all finally over and they can look forward to a brief honeymoon respite.
But that’s not to say that weddings aren’t fun… eventually. Once you get enough booze into everyone the social masks melt off along with the make-up, bowties dangle limp from loosened collars, the gelled hair gets slightly unset (although not exactly dishevelled), everyone starts dancing to tacky pop songs, and finally, at the end of the ordeal, even the bride and groom can relax a little and have a modicum of fun. Around this time you can see newly met cousins from the two families snogging in a corner, formerly obsequious wedding photographers and waiters with now-disdainful faces scrounging around asking for money from the drunk guests, and one or two raised voices, usually involving a female guest who’s up way past her bedtime scolding her midlife-crisis-suffering husband for awkwardly flirting with some far-too-young friend of the bride. Last but not least, if you stick around to the end, you’ll see a messy disgusting wasteland of half-eaten slabs of cake stabbed with cigarette butts next to fingerprint-smudged wineglasses with bits of food and saliva on the rim amidst a sea of lipstick-stained napkins, ignored gift baskets, wine-drenched tablecloths, a cheap guest asking for a tinfoil doggy bag, the odd puddle of vomit, and an overwhelmingly human stench of sweat, pheromones and suffering. All in all, an appropriate beginning to a lifetime of marital bliss yet to come.
(If you’d like an alternative look at weddings from someone who’s not a complete sociopath and is actually invited to them – albeit against her will – check out Emine Yildirim’s ‘Bored of the Rings’ in TOIST, October 2005, or on-line at www.timeout.com.tr)
