today in french we were doing an exercise on adjective forms and some of the sentences said things like “boys prefer pretty girls,” “girls prefer muscular boys,” etc. and my 40 yr old straight married professor makes an awkward face and says “ok, wow these just got weirdly heteronormative. how about you fill in the blank with whatever noun-adjective combination you want, as long as it follows correct grammar”
and the answers that we came up with were amazing.
girls don’t prefer boys, girls prefer (fast) cars and money
boys prefer beautiful barbecues
girls prefer annoying cats
boys prefer 75 large plastic dinosaurs
and of course: pretty girls prefer pretty girls
so remember kids, heteronormativity doesn’t belong in the classroom but 75 large plastic dinosaurs do.
So I dunno if y’all have seen this, but I’ve worked a lot of weddings in my life and there’s this super funny (/sarcasm/) thing where the groom will write “help me” on the soles of his shoes, so that when the couple kneel down at the altar, everyone will see it and laugh at the fact that this poor man has been trapped into the sanctity of marriage.
Sort of like those cake toppers where the groom is attempting to run away or is being forcibly dragged to the altar with words like game over on it cause he no longer gets to have fun with his life or something because he’s getting married:
Or quite literally, a ball and chain:
Basically the whole “help me” thing? Is a continuation of the idea that there are definite gender norms, and that those genders are in direct conflict with each other, and therefore predispositioned to eventual resentment and hatred.
It’s the snarky sitcom hetero snide comedy where the wife is always nagging the husband who is the put upon joe average who had life and dreams until he got married and had kids, who now wants to just be left alone to read the paper while his wife looks after his home, his kids, his general emotional well being, and is still cast as the shrew for wanting something more from him than his dispassionate resentment that she won’t coddle him like one of the offspring.
Cause haha, it’s so awful spending the rest of your life with the person you are profess to love and adore…imagine that…imagine losing your freedom, your individuality and quite possibly your own autonomy to another person through a societal convention… *everyone not born male and white looks into the camera like they’re on the office*
Also consider, if a woman knelt down at the altar and had “help me” on her shoes? How drastically unfunny that becomes because we know, we know the way marriage is set up to give one partner the advantage over the other…
It’s just icky. It’s an icky not funny joke which I wish would die out.
People who view marriage as something that shitty shouldn’t get married.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 