The Unblushing Bride


Played at a wedding recently which still sticks in the mind. This one, like so many others, was remarkable for the astonishing immodesty of the dresses on the bride's maids. They would almost be appropriate if we had become pagan enough to consider a wedding as some sort of fertility rite. But, of course, fertility is the last thing on anyone's mind, except insofar as it needs to be counter-acted with the appropriate pharmaceuticals. So I suppose it's just immodesty for the sake of immodesty. But why does the bride want her friends to dress like that? Another, it seems, of the ever-multiplying number of things which I don't understand.

And then there is the law of unintended consequences. At least, I think it was unintended. Everything matched, of course: shoes, dresses, ribbons in hair, the lot. The one thing that didn't match was the back of #3 which sported a whacking great butterfly tattoo in living colour - shoulderblade to shoulderblade - fully revealed by the backless dress. So, of course, that was the centerpiece of the ceremony. Not the bride or the groom or the clergyperson (yes, it was a "clergyperson"). Had the bride ever gone to the beach with this lady? I.e., did she know the butterfly was there when she chose the bride's maid dress with the coccyx-level back? Or was it intentional after all? Perhaps she was socially insecure and wanted to be sure all eyes were fixed elsewhere than on herself.

Yes, another post with deep social significance which, alas, you will have to work out for yourselves. Far too confusing for me.