Many Are Called

I recently pitched a story to the radio program This American Life, about the significance of the wedding ceremony in America. It's a story that I'd like to develop some day:

I have a friend Sophia, who really dislikes weddings. "As an institution," she says, "they stand for so many traditional, old-school American values-- obedience, social acceptance, gender norms." As a senior at University of Vermont, she wrote an essay dissecting how the modern American wedding, as constructed by the media and popular culture, is a way for men and women to confirm traditional gender norms, and therefore resist social change. "Simply put," she says, "I will never have a wedding, because I hate them." But for all Sophia's confidence, her plan has one glaring weak spot. She's a wedding photographer, and she loves her job. "I love going to weddings and photographing the happy couples, seeing what dress the bride wears, what the cake looks like. I think about that stuff all the time. I've even gone on wedding websites and spent hours planning my own, everything down to the color of the napkins."

What? Sophia's story is one of contradiction. How can someone so openly opposed to weddings as an institution be so infatuated with their charm?"I kind of live two lives," she offers. "Inside, I have a strong, undeniable urge to marry someone nice, and have this big corny celebration. It's something I've felt since I was a little girl. But on the outside, I'm clear, weddings are not my thing." Then again, on the outside, she's a wedding photographer, and I'm sure in her professional moments she keeps those political opinions on the inside. Sophia is part of a generation of youth that finds itself torn between
rejecting long-upheld social values, and affirming the desires they've aquired from a lifetime of cultural consumption. Sophia's situation might be unique, but she's not alone in confusion.

Weddings have become a linchpin in America's conflict over social values, and in the process have themselves become a confused, often conflicted ritual. This May, for example, my sister Maddy got married to her longtime girlfriend Sarah, in Massachusetts, one of the few states where same-sex marriage is legal. Regardless of your stance on that issue, I'm sure you can imagine how the marriage ceremony itself was an epicenter of confusion, for its rules have traditionally been established by clearcut male-female gender roles. Why was Sarah in a tuxedo and Maddy in a dress, if they were both calling each other their wife? Why a traditional wedding at all (with procession, rings, etc...), seeing as their relationship owed very little to American tradition?

I'm proposing an episode about contemporary weddings, because they inform us so acutely of our current social and political dilemmas, and yet at the same time are sites of deep emotion. They are prime examples of the intersection of the personal and political, something which is often pondered on This American Life. What does the modern American wedding look like, if there is such a thing? What is its antithesis? And how are people, like Sophia and Maddy and Sarah, dealing with its complexities and contradictions? Wedding stories alone are often entertaining, but I don't imagine this episode as a simple compendium. Rather, I imagine it to be an important investigation into the American social and political zeitgeist.