Say Yes To Poisoned Apples

A side note that was omitted from my last post is that I have been on/off very sick and okay for the last two weeks. Today I finally sucked it up and went to the doctor for antibiotics, but I got the one doc at the health center who thinks I'm an insane hypochondriac. I got the meds but she always makes me feel like I'm lying to her. As soon as I start talking to her I start to think I just imagined two weeks of fevers and coughing, or that I didn't REALLY bash my nose last weekend. I don't know how she does this but I'd like to learn.

So anyway, sick. And because I've had a fever there's a severe limit to what I can do, so I've mostly been doing only things I can do while laying down. That includes TV, video games, and the Internet. The weird thing is that these are the only three things I usually do with my time, only normally I do them sitting upright instead of curled up on my bed frowning and squinting because my eyes are all fever sore. But to my great amusement there have been multi-hour marathons of one of my favorite shows recently: Say Yes to the Dress.

If you've never seen it, the premise is simple. It follows the sales people in a high end NYC bridal salon as they attempt to pick the right wedding dress for each client. That's it. Every episode they'll show three to five brides picking out dresses with friends/family gushing over how beautiful they look. Nothing interesting really happens, and there are not real plots. And it is probably the best show on TV right now.

My medical anth prof loves this show. He justifies it like he does all other weird hobbies of his: "It's very anthropological." While he may be stretching a bit in this case, he is right about one thing; it's really interesting to see how different families treat this process. Each one tends to be different, with some doting on their little princesses and some tearing apart every dress like it's directly responsible for the Holocaust. The best part is that all the dresses look the freaking same. Never have I seen so many wildly polarized emotions over a series of almost identical objects. I saw one woman show her sister what I swear was the same damn strapless a-line lace dress over and over for twenty minutes and the sister's range of reactions could have won her an Oscar if this had actually been a movie about the Holocaust and/or high school sports.

So for a week now I've been sitting here coughing and sniffling watching people cry tears of joy/horror at a bunch of nearly identical strapless white gowns. It's amazing. I can't stop watching because I can't figure out what's really going on. What is it about the dress they pick, the one that makes them cry in the store and say "This is the dress!" between sobs, that makes it ANY different from the others? I feel like Jane Goodall trying to decipher gorilla behavior. Though occasionally there's a bride who's like me and doesn't really get the whole dress shopping *thing* and the sales people are always so puzzled and frustrated by them, which is extra funny somehow.

I've heard the word "princess" so many times in the last week, though, that the word has lost all meaning. I'm so tired of hearing it, in fact, that I now have a very specific plan in case I ever do get engaged. I'm going to go to Kleinfelds and tell the sales lady I don't want to look like a princess, I want to look like the evil queen. The reason is because the evil queen actually looks like an adult, for one. Something about grown women excitedly yelling "I look like a princess!" just sounds weird to me, it's like saying "I look like a child! My ideals have not changed since I was four!" Come on, ladies, let's upgrade from Exiled Teenager to Woman Who Runs The God Damn Kingdom. On top of that she's beautiful, too, in a way that lets you wear red lipstick instead of boring nudes. And I'm pretty sure Snow White's skin was supposed to be paler than those dresses anyway, which I guarantee would make her look like a pasty naked mermaid in that generic white strapless number. But if they ask me why I'm going to tell them "Because fuck Snow White, that's why."


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