Regarding Bridezillas (DISH Network channel 128, Sundays, 9 PM):
The first season of this candid reality program, which follows brides, their families, and, on great occasion, the groom, was a glimpse into the lives of otherwise normal women who flip out during wedding planning. It truly served as a lens on reality; the ever-ballooning wedding industry (emphasis on industry) takes advantage of a self-esteem indoctrinated, largely coddled generation which has been marketed to since the womb. It’s YOOOOOOUUUUUUR special day, ladies! YOU matter, and any old hapless busser, baker, or pending husband had better not get in the way of it.
Pour this flaming attitude of entitlement atop a Long Island Iced Tea’s worth of family tension, job changes, and potential changes in living arrangements, and what you have is one unhappy woman in tulle. I wasn’t immune, myself; in the final weeks before my wedding, I threw a purse across my living room, yelled at my mother, and hung up on my fiancé when he tangled with me over the bridesmaids dresses.
But what I didn’t do was hit my future husband and tell him that he was never seeing his friends again, suggest to a caterer a wedding cake shaped like a vagina, abscond from a seamstress’ living room with a wedding dress I hadn’t paid for, spend my family into oblivion, or hire security to keep my pending mother in law from attending the wedding. All these happened on the current season of Bridezillas. It’s The Jerry Springer Show with a limousine and table favors.
And whether this behavior is for real or simply for the benefit of the cameras, it says something absolutely terrifying about American culture: Either our citizens actually act like this, or we want to invite people who do into our living rooms.
