The New York Times' Latest Trend Article isn't Fluff, It's Offensive

Posted by Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon at 8:56 AM on July 25, 2008.

Shoot me now. The NY Times has a trend piece about how the new thing, when you're getting married, is to get Botox treatments for all your bridesmaids. Because god forbid anyone actually smile for the pictures.

The unsubtle implication is that women, by putting off their weddings from the proper bridal age of 19 to the wretchedly old early 30s, have to go to great measures to conceal what wretched old hags they and their friends are. The other implication, standard to these pieces, is that no matter how accomplished or intelligent a woman is, she's not validated as a woman until some random dude decides he'd like to see her doing his dishes. And that if you're marrying in your 30s, you've been waiting so long for admission to the human race that you completely lose your mind with excitement, micromanaging every detail down to the color of your bridesmaids' pubic hair.

Everything has to match, you know.

That they find enough women that actually think this way to write a trend piece about it shows the power these very same trend pieces have to brainwash at least a segment of the population.

Tagged as: sexism, ageism, msm sucks, the new york times, weddings botox

Amanda Marcotte co-writes the popular blog Pandagon. She is the author of It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.