As a complete generalisation, we are obsessed with weddings and the literal blood, sweat and tears that go into preparing the ‘ceremony of the year’. Marriage itself isn’t such a big concern these days; you can get married on reality television or divorced in the blink of an eye. But there is nothing quite like a wedding to send a bunch of adults into tizz of expectations and out dated traditions.

A wedding is no longer a small and intimate affair in which a virgin girl is walked down the aisle and given to a new family. These days, a wedding budget swells to include photographers, videographers, event planners, several outfit changes, a hash tag, a horse and carriage, a custom made dress with 7ft train, a child prodigy cellist, a gospel choir, a flower wall and a brass band for a three-day event catering for 300 guests. All so you can watch an adult woman pretending to be a virgin walked down an aisle and given to a new family. The obsession and the social importance placed on weddings sees a lot of women patiently waiting on their best behaviour hoping and praying their partner is squirrelling away a shit ton of money for some obnoxious finger bling so they can ‘finally’ start their life together. When broken down, it’s not hard to see marriage as a vicious ritual of consumerism and subtle misogyny. But it’s a ritual none the less, one that the majority of us will subscribe to.

“For some people, there’s so much weight in the idea of the engagement ring, sometimes it’s the only way they really know their partner is actually committed to them,” Harriet told me, recalling conversations she overhears at work.

And of course, societies grand expectations constantly tell us that in hetero couples the balls are not only in the men’s pants but court as well. Concepts such as women waiting for men to propose, asking permission from their dads, fathers giving their daughters away like a sausage at a barbecue, women changing their surnames and becoming subsequently defined by their ‘hubby’ can make the independent babes of today feel like sewing their vaginas up.

The same modern wedding can be seen as both an exquisite show of love and opulence by one audience and a sad subscription to external pressures and societal acceptance by another. While weddings are being scrutinized from all angles, the marriage itself is often left undefined beyond the obligatory social media handle changes.

“So many married women are quick to change their Instagram bios to read ‘Wife of Mr So and So’. To me it just feels as though a woman’s worth or importance is based upon their ability to become wifey material,” Harriet, said. She followed that by admitting she’s usually the first to cry at a wedding.

If the wives of today are compromising their identity, the wives of yesteryear were a mere 5 O’clock shadow on the chin of the man whose name they adopted. We all know the tale; women were expected to do all the cooking, cleaning and child rearing. They said ‘I don’t’ to a career the second they said ‘I do’ to a guy they didn’t even know was a good schtoop or not.

I had an air of smugness about me before I was married. I loved that we brought our sweet little limbo-bastard into the world while muddying the waters of social expectation. But, perhaps I’ve undone all that good immoral work by subscribing to the institution of marriage.

I live in a community full of progressive left wing thinkers with a huge queer community and an undoubted sense of importance put on social justice issues. Marriage is largely seen as a tool of oppression rather than a cause for celebration. I’ll tell you what though, want to ensure you don’t become one of those women that talks non-stop about wedding plans? Move to an isolated city in the desert with heaps of educated, political and sometimes-intimidating feminists and see how great you become at avoiding the topic.

I had people say nothing but ask ‘why?’ when I told them I was getting married, more than a few times suffragette style rants would follow. Marrying my old mate, the father of my child, which was a nice private affair with our favourite people, threw my ethics and morals into a feeding frenzy of a public debate. My looming wedding became the social equivalent of being told your dress was tucked into your knickers. I was suddenly self-conscious. Considering the vile associations throughout history and within our present state, having a wedding doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal. I mean, I’m married; I’m not a Nazi. Still, this niggle of guilt around being ‘bound’ to a man is exactly why myself and other women I know mostly still refer to our husbands as a ‘partner’.

The idea of modern marriage still circles around the constraints of what marriage used to look like and consequently becomes a higgledy-piggledy mess of out-dated opinions and viewpoints. As shocking as it may seem, most of the married women I know still contribute to society. Those that don’t in a traditional employment sense are taking a short break to blow their vag’s apart and be milked on the couch while their stitches heal before heading back to down coal mine. More and more are deciding to keep their maiden name, most have been de facto for a long time. And, some of them even still have opinions. The point is, privileged women in our culture and society, have agency in how their marriages pan out.

I was chatting to my friends Heather and Hollie about this (now that I’m married I only mingle with other married women who’s name offer a tidy alliteration to my own) and we got onto the topic of power dynamics and the gender imbalance that is assumed to tear through a marriage like horny footballers in a nightclub.

We were left scratching our heads, as our relationships had all remained largely unchanged since we walked the aisle of doom and signed our lives away to the devil of the patriarchy. Surely this is because we had all adopted the ‘try before you buy’ mentality and had already lived the domestic truths of de facto partnering. We had cooked meals for each other, hung out each other’s non impressive underwear, discussed and genuinely cared about each others bowel movements, argued about finances, argued about cushions, bought puppies, bought properties. I’d even given birth on the lounge room floor in front of the man that would become my husband. Needless to say, the tone had been set and our decisions were informed.

This is not an uncommon tale. And we are lucky for that! The time spent in relationships that reflect mundane real life, as a precursor to marriage is a liberty our grandmothers and great grandmothers weren’t afforded and our generation is certainly taking advantage of that. Over 80% of Australian married couples live together before getting hitched.

But maybe the notion of women’s decision and choice as an expression of her independence is as messed up as having your marital bed sheets checked for traces of hymen by your dad. While my experience may reflect the contemporary variety of marriage, that’s not to say all do. Some women are still choosing, and rightly so, I suppose, to throw themselves into the lives of wives of yesteryear.

I know a woman who fell in love with and married a man from a traditional Italian family, knowing that she was to fill a traditional housewife role. Her husband has never dirtied his hands with the women’s work of cleaning, cooking or washing. A bit of a ‘mummies boy,’ she told me. While they had been together for many years before they married, it wasn’t until the weekend of their wedding that they moved in together.

Your mind may race to visions of a pastel coloured scene with a woman in heels, perfectly set curls, a tidy dress and her tits in the sink as a roast gently cooks in the oven waiting for her husband to return from work for his 5.30 wristy. What you’d be more likely to see is a juggling act. Gabby works part time as a teacher and is also studying her masters. Though in her husbands eyes this is secondary ‘extra curricular’ activity on top of her most important role as mum, wife, maid.

“No, there isn’t much equality here but I knew that prior to marrying him and I didn’t come into it with any mindset of changing him or the family,” she said.

I can jump up and down all I like proclaiming to have made an informed and empowered decision. And so can Gabby, but considering she’s the first to admit her relationship is inequitable, we’d be fools to pass this off as liberation. While they may not be the norm any more, there is still a huge problem with gendered power structures that restrict women, in many ways, all around the world. Passing it off as a ‘choice’ is a great distraction from that.

Though, I’d like to remind everyone that its not solely marriage that all of a sudden makes men and women fall into a heap of normative household roles.

“I’ve never had a problem with marriage as a thing,” Heather told me. “But I have had a problem with how you navigate being in a heterosexual relationship.

The issue isn’t even reserved for couples; I know a lot of share house situations with no relationships to speak of, meaning no sexual compensation that still find themselves in the perils of gendered duties.

“You want to think of yourself as a progressive feminist male? Why don’t you do your own fucking dishes once in a while” my friend Emily once ranted to me about housemates of hers.

I don’t think it’s fair to assume becoming a Mrs all of a sudden makes you submissive, or a subMrs if you will. There is a greater weight to a wedding these days than the transfer of property. This is probably the reason that every single person to tell me they’ll never get married for ‘this or that’ reason admits they “still love a wedding”.

Our dull deluge of a western culture lacks a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ when it comes to the celebratory customs of life. Birth, if you’re religious, may see some water thrown over your noggin, but that’s certainly not for everyone. Then it’s pretty much nothing until you’re 18, 21 and 30 at which point, culturally, we can offer nothing more than the ritual of getting mingin’ drunk, capturing the whole clusterfuck on social media which will haunt you for the rest of your life. Without a wedding making an appearance in your timeline, it’s just a steady and dreary decline to your funeral, which will most likely be a soulless affair in a generic funeral home with a paid director mispronouncing your name and a lot of oppressed grief in the room. Bland food, terrible dancing and no vibe is customary of our western way.

I’m not suggesting you’ll not find happiness without a marriage. In fact, I wholeheartedly disagree with that. My friend Leah once told me the thought of shacking up with one person for the rest of her life was “fucking narcolepsy inducing.” I’m implying marriage and what it means to be or not to be married has changed from what it was for my Nan and her horny mates of the baby boomer era, hurriedly marrying at 18 before the miraculous and unusually early delivery of a baby.

After watching, uninterrupted, thanks to the time being one of no Netflix, Snapchat or other domestic escapism techniques, Gen X’s had the pleasure of observing those shithouse marriages of the baby boomers era, live stream straight from the kitchen. No one wants to make the mistakes their parents made and so, the inherently sceptical Gen X’s have pushed, loudly and with opinion back on the patriarchal norms of their predecessors. People found themselves choosing not to marry (gasp), have children out of wedlock (double gasp) or be openly gay (triple mega gasp). This leaves the young and supple Millennial’s, like myself, Hollie and Heather reaping the benefits of liberation. And, after last years humiliating, painful and hideously expensive plebiscite, Australian same sex couples now have the same right to divorce as the rest of us…. Only taking 16 years to catch up to the Netherlands who first passed the law in 2001.

Turns out, now that partnership is no longer seen as mandatory by society, a celebration of love and the act of bringing two families, two communities together is actually quite fucking nice.

“We have no rules and no norms to live by,” Hollie told me.

“But you know what, we are also a generation of people who are so free that in a way we have become an age of loneliness,” she said. “We are suffering from a bit of an identity crisis”.

And you know what’s great for establishing identity? Ritual and ceremony! And that’s why; every full moon, Hollie and her husband, Josh stand naked in their back yard and furiously masturbate while slaughtering virgins. No, this is a lie. But, rituals, subtly present throughout our daily habits do motivate and move us. From the perfect pot of tea for example, or the exact ratio of butter to Vegemite on your toast to taking the slightly longer but more scenic route to work. Rituals are a way in which we create and sustain our identity, they make us happy and they speak volumes to our identified community. On a larger and far more significant scale, a customized ceremony that reflects our own personalities, needs and tastes are ways in which we mark the important events in our lives. Having a baby, a meaningful birthday event or… A wedding are perfect examples of this.

Today’s marriages are (mostly) so far removed from the patriarchal and religious roots of their beginnings that I don’t believe the resurgence of young people choosing to take part even consider them. The same goes for the stereotypical and obviously backwards ‘traditions’ that make up a wedding. While the unawareness is certainly not a good thing, it’s nice to know of all the weddings I’ve attended in which the bride wears white down the aisle, not one has been a virgin. In fact, far from it. These traditions that were born as symbols of control and ownership are literally now just symbols of ‘wedding’.

Rituals such as weddings are often dismissed as old fashioned, but there’s a reason they still exist. They work. Most of the women I spoke to referred to a sense of ‘before’ and ‘after’ regarding their nuptials.

My friend Alice, whose mother has always been firmly against marriage said the ritual of a wedding ceremony has solidified the fact her husband and her are a “strong team”.

“I feel a sense of belonging,” she said.

“There is one person who will be with through life and that our marriage has cemented this”.

Marriage is hard work; I don’t think anyone would dispute that. But they are for exactly the same reasons relationships are and that is because we can all be arseholes. Constantly navigating the needs of two people with slightly differing opinions on food, wine, appropriate quantities of wine, television shows, disciplining children and the correct way to hang washing is tricky and tiring. The women that mentioned the before and after effect told me that in their experiences, marriage has provided the extra oomph and effort needed to push through inevitable turbulent times. Now that commitment is an expectation decided and defined by individual couples, it’s the individual couples that need to live up to that.

“Marriage was something I did unconventionally for me, I rebelled against myself,” My friend Alannah, (who always swore against marriage until meeting her husband and marrying him 6 weeks later, much to the shock of all of us) told me.

“If I fucked it up I was only fucking myself and I’m not about to do that. So far I haven’t had a good enough reason to walk away and break my own promise,” she said.

“I committed to making something work and besides a few bumps, it has. That’s something I’m proud of every day”.

Marriage isn’t necessary and a wedding is an expense that would probably be better spent on a house or long holiday. You could have a ceremony without signing any papers (though I think nothing gets international guests to travel like a wedding will); you can elope or just throw a party. But, declaring a bond in front of whomever you want, however you want is romantic as fuck. And you know what? Knowing my husband can easily make a call on my behalf if I find myself incapacitated on a hospital bed is an added bonus. Am I glad I did it? Yes, I thought it was a great and meaningful celebration and we are left with incredible photos to remind us of it. Would I do it again? Hell no, that shit is exhausting and expensive.  We can always go down the road of sacrificial virgin backyard wanking if we need to fill a void.

 

 

As adults, we are the proud products of many uncomfortable years of adolescent lessons. Early dabbles in finger bashings at the cinema, trying to smoke the contents of your parents spice rack and awkward relationships are the cringe worthy developments of our identity. I wish I could say it’s a literal ‘coming’ of age but I’d be lying- not enough teenagers know what to do with the bean.

Once you’ve left high school you have a little more ownership over how you run the race to satisfied individuality. You find space to explore your personality, sexuality, creativity, your ethical standings and whatever else you want to pursue. Your full and plump life is ready for harvesting, and you can pick and pluck whomever and whatever makes your mouth sweat. Slowly, sometimes painfully slowly, our identity develops.

Not realising the importance of my own character and identity, I undertook a simple yet incredibly complicated test to see how I’d fare with a shattered sense of self. First, I took heaps of party drugs at a Pride celebration in Central Australia and followed that with a bout of unprotected sex with my partner. Ten months after that, we had a baby. This is most likely the most offensively heterosexual way to start a family.

While it’s brutal going from a hangover to morning sickness, these were the self-inflicted cards I dealt myself and perhaps even the punishment I deserved. At the very least, the guilt and fear regarding my stint with party pills was a sign of things to come throughout the perpetual mind fuck that is pregnancy and parenthood.

From the very beginning, the pressure of parenthood bears down like a tardy foetus on your bladder at 42 weeks gestation. On one hand, a bombardment of horror stories that inevitably end in a vaganus and a suture ordeal are flying at you from all directions. To counteract that you’ll likely be told you can’t expect to be a decent mother if you can’t birth naturally and without pain relief. Though don’t tread too closely to the line and mention a homebirth, unless of course you are a negligent witch with no interest in your child’s survival.

Funnily enough, the reverse fisting your vagina receives through the miracle that is childbirth is nothing compared to the flogging of your self-confidence that is yet to come. Postpartum is no post party, people. After the feeling of elation and trepidation that I can only liken to being on a smacky pill wears off, you’re left with a six week old human, a weeping pussy and questions such as “what is baby?”.

You’d have to be a bit of a dumb-dumb to assume parenting a newborn was going to be a walk in the park. ‘Parenting is difficult’ is not a new concept. On a technical level, it’s hard enough to walk around your house without feeling as though your guts aren’t going to drop through your arsehole, let alone a metaphorical walk through green pastures.

But just in case the illusion of an easy ride is still in tact, the bleary-eyed café-culture-mothers-group-monsters bobbing little Satan on their hip are there to bring you back to reality. The constant “enjoy your sleep while it lasts” shot out like venom is sure to simultaneously prepare you for what lies ahead and ruin your last guilt free weeks of relaxation. Even still, you can find yourself lulled into a sense of security, believing the tough times are made up of sleepless nights, sore tits and realising you have a gunt. It’s a phase, you tell yourself. Just get through the first three months.

There’s an undeniable bubble that encapsulates life with a newborn, the expected tiredness, tenderness and emotional exhaustion is overthrown by the bewilderment and adoration you have for your body and your growing family. It’s why newborns come out so fucking cute and powerless. Imagine trying to bond with a toddler insisting on pulling off and passing you excessive amounts of toilet paper after barging in on your morning poo straight off the bat. Catchya.

Eventually though, the bubble pops. The community nurse stops visiting, the meals from friends stop appearing in your kitchen, visiting family head home and maybe your partner heads back to work. It’s just you and a baby dependent on your tits and care for survival attempting to get back to life as normal. But it’s not you, is it? At least it’s not the way you remember yourself. And as it turns out, the mundane, the ‘getting on with it’, is fucking dull.

“I’ve said it before but having a kid completely broke me down to nothing, and I’m still in the process of rebuilding,” my friend Reka told me.

Reka’s birth was a slog; it left her physically injured which of course added to the difficulty of her recovery. I’m sure her story is now being echoed around cafes across the country, adding to the anxiety of many more pregnant women trying to enjoy their weak latte.

The mundane madness came to a head when she realised she couldn’t grasp her old efficiency. Of course, like all good first world domestic dramas, this one involves a renovation.

“I was so frustrated, angry and frantic that I couldn’t even get one wall painted because Sadie would only sleep for 40 minutes at a time.”

“My identity was so tied up in ‘getting it done’ and being the most efficient, practical person I knew that being useless, sleep deprived and not to mention physically injured from the birth, really screwed with me,” she said.

Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for ones productivity. You’ve either got it or you just don’t. Luckily for Reka, she found a doctor that must have been well acquainted with symptoms attached to a classic case of pushing-shit-up-hill and prescribed her with a glass of wine and half a valium at bath and bedtime. This of course was targeted towards her mental health rather than her efficiency.

“It honestly saved my life,” she said… most likely blissfully off her tits.

I put this dilemma out to the cyber space of mums groups a little while ago and the response was astounding. Of course, this is the best medium for asking mums a question as entertainment at home can begin to bore. There’s nothing quite like riling a mum up and asking her opinion about something on social media, while she’s being milked on the couch.

Zoë, who I actually know in the real world as well as the online mum pages, had obviously given this some thought and came back to me with the theory of panicked reactions.

To the outside world, Zoë seemed to be grabbing motherhood by the horns. An hour after her son, Teo was born she got up and emptied her own birth pool. What seemed like four minutes after that, she also got back in to her nursing degree. Of course the outside perspective so rarely matches the inside.

“I don’t actually think it was a good thing that I went back to study when Teo was eleven weeks old,” she said, admitting that it was a panicked reaction to motherhood.

This wasn’t the only involuntary response her mind gave into post birth. Zoë really let loose with the knee jerk reactions, tapping her entire life like a doctor with a reflex hammer.

Before she knew it she was moving between franticly cleaning the house and loading teeny tiny Teo into a cargo bike and riding all over town rather than catching a bus, determined to feel a sense of freedom. While she may have felt like a crazy lady I’m sure she looked like superwoman.

I can relate. When my daughter, Dot was fresh out the vag, I became obsessed with cleaning as well. Every moment she slept, I cleaned. I cleaned because I needed to have just a snifter of control over something, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be one of those mothers that live in a pool of sick and piles of washing. I had the same mentality with her sleep and my exercise, soon becoming a sleep training totalitarian. When I wasn’t crouched over her cot tapping her arse to lull her back to sleep, I was dusting the individual blades of the ceiling fan and the second my partner came home I was off to the gym.

I had to be efficient at being a mum, because in my mind I needed to validate myself; I needed to justify being home all fucking day. Of course, no one else actually gave a shit, and this is a complete recipe for disaster.

But why are we so hard on ourselves?

It’s 2018 and as modern women, we have been told that we can have it all! We can have the children, a career, a house, a small business, a partner, a domestic pet of some description and potentially still have time to pick up some sort of needlecraft we aren’t even good at. While we tip our hats to our passed sisters that have made this possible for us, we still cant help feeling a bit lost in our freedom.

We find ourselves in a situation where being a housewife doesn’t quite cut the mustard. Our culture highly values jobs, careers and achievements and we often describe ‘mother’ with a ‘just’ in front of it. We are invisible women on the lowest rungs of society, questioning our life and tactics of contraception in the Centrelink line. A lot of us devalue the role of mother; I’m certainly guilty of it! We see mums as lacking ambition and their own identity, quite happy to forgo their own dreams to be a slave to nappies, naps and night feeds. I always used to think being a stay at home mother looked like the most boring job in the world, and to a certain extent I still do (though I now disagree that it is an easier option). I want more. We want more.

The problem is, how can you even expect to define ‘having it all’? For me it could look like being a published writer who can priorities fitness, healthy meals on the table, an exceptional wardrobe and lots of time for gin. For another woman it could mean being a respected surgeon that has time to help with homework and occasionally rub one out.

‘Having it all’ is a trap. It should be removed from the feminist lexicon and thrown in the bin.

A friend of mine, Madi once told me she completely dreads being asked by people what she’s been up to lately.

“How do I even put into words what I have been up to,” she shouted while wielding a toddler.

“It would sound like a lot of cooking, cleaning, laundry, school drop offs and pick ups but that wouldn’t even come close to describing my days, and by that point the person I’m talking to would have fallen asleep.”

It’s a sentiment I have struggled with as well; I’ve always found the question to be a trigger for shame and resentment. Even going back to work doesn’t please everyone.

“Oh, only three days a week, how nice for you,” an acquaintance will state from time to time.

Though I smile and nod I really feel like screaming. Going to work and sitting down while I eat my lunch is a holiday, the real work waits for me within the walls of domestic doom. I quite often fantasize about watching our roles reverse for a little minute. In fact, I would love to see a lot of my childless peers rushing through the house in the morning tidying up after a perpetual cyclone. All the while trying to dress yourself and another moving target that has somehow just got into a bag of flour. Organising your bag, the kids bag, a gym bag and a bit of lunch and lugging them all to the car, carefully trying to avoid the snot demon coming at you with arms raised. Finally, with a bead of sweat reaching your underwear you get the kid into the car seat with three minutes to spare, only for them to point down at their nappy, look up at you and say, “poo?”

I know it’s sounding like I’m really trying to claim friendship with a lot of women here, but… Another pal of mine, Anya who was a full time artist before having her son Harry, became all kinds of antsy post baby. Not being able to create all the time was a huge restriction on her former identity. She once told me, “as soon as you push a pram around, you are invisible”. Her reaction to this is perhaps my favourite, or at the very least the most visually pleasing.

Anya is known for her bright work, grand pieces that ooze bold, vivid colours and often take up entire walls of vast urban buildings. Pent up creativity certainly burst out of her in a spectacular fashion.

“I just tapped into that next level, not giving a fuck and started wearing the most ridiculous clothing ever,” she said.

She was certainly invisible no longer. To paint a picture, highly patterned flared pants paired with an oversized top and white cons with socks that are not invisible, in fact maybe in another circumstance even a little daggy. The look would be complete with an extremely oversized jacket, bold earrings and sunglasses.

“In winter, my go to was lots of dresses with ridiculous leggings underneath and a little jacket with crazy patterns and a big jacket over that”.

“Lots of layers, lots of accessories”.

This reaction is a lesson in the ‘fake it till you make it’ school of thought and the power in treating yourself. Sure, the tactic is a completely superficial and a trivial Band-Aid for what can be a hugely debilitating problem but the point here is to actively take some control over your individuality. Solo walks, swimming laps, maybe a new Lonely Lingerie set or whatever falls within reasonable reach for you is well worth the effort. It’s no ground-breaking piece of advice and it’s certainly easier said than done but there should be no shame in spending a little time looking after numero uno. The little dependent life suckers do require you to be functioning at a rate of sanity, it’s the least you could do for yourself.

After all, motherhood is the perfect opportunity to hold up a mirror, analyse yourself and realise you’re actually an arsehole. Throughout the struggle with your new role it becomes quite clear that in fact you are selfish, stubborn and impatient. It can be quite the uncomfortable understanding. I’ve resented Dot when I’ve copped a glance of my naked body in the mirror. I’ve looked at her little face after a sleepless night with such intent and thought, ‘I hate you’. I’ve been mad at my partner for being able to go to work every day. And there were also times I was too focused on social media during a morning feed that I’ve dropped my phone right on to her head… What an arsehole.

Of course, verbalising any of this can also leave you riddled with guilt and you obviously don’t want any mothers at Tiny Tots thinking you’re ungrateful. You love your baby, but you sure as shit don’t have to enjoy them all the time, no one would ever have more than one if that were the case.

Ambitions, priorities and any expectations may fly straight out the window, down the street and into landfill when you become a mother, but you can’t deny the gems of wisdom the little bastards are. It’s got to be one of the biggest lessons of your life, an outrageous statement coming from a privileged 29-year-old woman, I know. While I’ve bitched and moaned and seriously questioned the decisions that have got me to where I am, I’m beginning to enjoy the reinvention phase. Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, motherhood is just another awkward notch in the belt of our identities. While confronting, physically and mentally exhausting, being forced to adapt and grow is quite liberating; just like being fingered in the cinema. I, for one, reckon I’ll probably be dumb enough to get knocked up again. Lonely Lingerie has just bought out a maternity range after all.