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Oct 1, 2015 at 4:34 pm
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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
What adult woman thinks it's funny or fun to suck on a tiny penis-shaped lollipop?
When, how, and why did stooopid scenes like this become the expectation for a bachelorette party?
Two weeks before I got married I had a bachelorette party: first we went out to dinner and drank a lot. Then we went bowling. It was lots of fun. No lesbians felt uncomfortable. Neither did my mother, who was one of the guests.
I agree Dan in theory to email the Maid of honour, and tell her to go fuck herself.. It's just that it will leave the Wedding feeling awkward. And this woman wants her best guy friend to get married well. Not have the bridesmaids fighting each other with Vibes.
Just ignore her, LW. Don't worry the Bride.. Just go to what you feel comfortable going to. If Madame MofH the Stormtrooper, wines to the Bride and then the Bride contacts you, then explain how the theme makes you feel uncomfortable. Do not make a big thing out of it.
Or, get some vagina type parapanalia and take your own straw.
But if the LW is more friends with the groom, and not the bride, I can see the hesitation. The MOH is way out of line.
However-I can certainly understand that someone might have problems with penises being shoved down their throats trigger warning style-but this lw seems to just not like dick. Imho you show up, do your best, and if those dick things are ickie go over the top with your ick and laugh at yourself and have a good time with it. I hate squash and eggplant, but if that is the only thing on the menu I will try my best to not make a big deal of it and go with the flow.
With everyone getting married these days, I think we all need to put on a grown up pants and just deal with whatever are friends are into-it is their wedding after all. You are there to honor them, not get all prissy with whatever genitalia they like...
It would be a different story if LW had said there was going to be male strippers at the party, but objecting to plastic penis straws and penis shaped Jello on the basis of one's sexual orientation doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I don't get it because I am straight, and therefore don't know what it is like to not feel secure and confident in my sexual orientation... straws and Jellos shots have no connection to my sexual orientation.
Generally speaking, though, I think if you're the kind of people who enjoy jelly-dick sucking parties, you're not mature enough to get married.
I understand bowing to the tower of power that is women with titles in weddings, but this is still fully in the writer's court. If the friend getting married isn't even understanding, skip the party and save your own dignity and maybe consider taking that friend down a notch for putting you in such a spot in the first place.
Thoughts...hmmm.... LW should ask her "best buddy" for some advice on this one. I assume he knows his soon-to-be-wife well enough to know whether this should all be up front.... or if it might be better to quietly disappear after dinner that night?
Personally... i understand the LWs hesitation at just going along with it. I am personally really uncomfortable when i feel like a fish out of water. Under normal circumstances... where i can just grin and bear it... its all good. But in a raucous setting like this penis themed bachelorette party? you know they are going to be hazing each other relentlessly.... in my experience (with THIS kind of party) it could get ugly for her...
It most definitely is a maturity thing.
That being said, no one should force you to do something you really don't want to do. True friends will respect your choices merely because they ARE your choices. Whatever you decide, talk it over with the bride-to-be, she's the only one who deserves any explanation, and if anyone tries to make you feel bad, fuck 'em they're garden-variety inconsiderate assholes.
I also wonder whether she knows for sure that she's going to be inundated with penis paraphernalia or if she's just making an assumption about what type of party this will be.
I don't know and have never known any woman who would participate in this sort of thing. They would all consider this utterly, pathetically ridiculous, childish and, worst of all, tacky.
Obviously, my female friends have a sense of dignity. Maybe yours don't.
I'll amend it, though: I do know one woman who enjoys this sort of thing. Not a friend, but an acquaintance of mine and of various friends, who all find her pathetic, ridiculous, childish and tacky.
Having said all that, I will admit, one of my favorite bachelorette party experiences was playing a game of "have you ever" over dinner with a group of bridesmaids and that is *really* immature! (but super fun.)
I'd say this is your buddies wedding, and you should make sure this doesn't affect you nor your relationship to his future wife, so avoid creating drama of any kind. E.g. I'd definitely not send a en e-mail of any kind to the MoH.
I'd go to the dinner and then leave with some excuse. That's what I'd do for a strip club bachelor party, which I have no interest in attending.
Jesus. One wedding every five years is about the maximum I can stand. I'd say you have more than done your duty, just skip the annoying "stag party" with some excuse. After all, the groom is your friend here, not the bride, right?
Hen nights/bachelorette parties are not supposed to be sexy, and no one is going because they think it's a comfortable way to spend the evening. Any anthropologist will tell you they play a very different function, all about breaking taboos and so on. For one person to say out loud that they're declining because the activities are embarrassing and a little disgusting breaks an unspoken rule. It's going to be embarrassing and a little disgusting for everybody, and the women involved are putting themselves through this as a gesture of solidarity with the bride.
But either way, if you say you're opting out of a ritual because it's not enjoyable, you've dropped a social clanger because the ritual isn't primarily intended to be enjoyable. It's like, I don't know, saying you're going to drop team swimming practice the week before the big competition, because you don't like sore muscles. Side-eye would ensue.
What a lot of crazy goes into these things.
Many years ago, before same-sex marriage, a bi friend decided that she'd spend the rest of her life looking at a naked man so she decided to take her bachelorette party to see female strippers. They loved us. So Groomsmaid, I endorse this idea for your upcoming nuptials!
I see what you mean. However, I can't help but admire someone who "breaks the taboo" by saying out loud what other don't dare to say: that they're opting out because it isn't enjoyable.
People who live in teeny tiny studio apartments? Other than that, I got nothin'; that part of being 20 kind of sucked.
Wish we could've known whether the MOH let her decline politely... because it doesn't completely sound like LW did decline politely.
If I were in this situation and the groom was my friend, I would either wear a suit and stand on his side, or attend the wedding and reception enthusiastically as a guest.
Two things strike me from the letter. First this "I’m not going for the same reason the straight groomsmen aren’t going; it’s awkward." And then " For my bachelorette party I'd like to hit up a regular strip club. I will invite everybody I want to invite, but not pressure anyone if they decline."
So it isn't the objectification of body parts she's objecting too, but rather the particular genitalia involved? This seems hypocritical to me. I would suck it up (pun intended) and go to the party and pretend to enjoy myself if I had too. She can always bail early if she's super uncomfortable or if the attendees are being obnoxious to her, but if the extent of the penis at the party are edibles in the shapes of penises - she needs to get over herself. After all, at her hypothetical bachelorette party, there will be actual T&A.
I wonder if any of the attendees were closeted gay men (none were openly gay), and if so, how that felt.
But I guess that’s because I’m fairly autonomous, feel free to walk away and value that freedom. If I needed to feel part of the group then it might have a bonding effect. Hazing and all. But what is the group being hazed? It’s not a sorority. Or is the idea that “the girls I endured that traumatic bachelorette party with” will all stick together and defend one another’s lives for eternity?
Or is it to make divorce even more shameful? It’s one thing to declare vows in front of a crowd if the crowd are having a nice time. You can divorce and the crowd won’t be mad at you. But if you made them endure something humiliating and ridiculous you’d better have a damned good reason to call it off. So your bachelorette party friends would be the ones to take you in when your partner has beaten you up, give you a nice bath and a pep talk and send you home?
It's not so much about bonding with the person actually making you do this, which is why everyone involved tries to maintain the polite fiction that it's just obligatory, rather than that they're being coerced by any particular person.
It's more "The girls and I endured that obnoxious bachelorette party, now we're going to go get drunk and laugh and gripe about it, and that'll be fun." It works, which is why people keep doing it, but it works much less well if someone says something to break the suspension of disbelief. Which is probably why LW got that strongly-worded email.
Alternative explanation: MoH is an asshole. My guess would be some of both.
If no actual naked male penises are involved at all.... i think this lesbian bridesmaid is being childish about it all. I keep flipping my position a bit... but ultimately... i'd side with the LW if she objected to the entire thing (and not just the genitals in question).... I hate these kinds of parties myself... ick. So NOT fun.
So your take is that it’s a short-term thing strictly for the benefit of the attendees, that the payoff is leaving the party together and commiserating. The occasion could be anything, we generally prefer unpleasant parties and gatherings to pleasant ones, and part of the human social contract is to provide occasions for other people to have a rotten time and then leave together?
Doesn’t quite make sense to me. Hazing is typically about building long-term loyalty to a very specific group. Most social gatherings do not have a hazing component, and most corporate team-building exercises are engaging — at a minimum, standing around the lawnmower style — even if they aren’t what you’d have chosen to do with your time if you’d been doing the choosing.
Bachelor and bachelorette parties can seem to have a vengeful quality to them (the ones I hear about anyway), where the peer group is punishing one of their own for leaving.
Thoughts?
Strippers show up without any music or anything to play it on. Unfortunately, the bride was moving out of state after the wedding and so had packed almost everything including her stereo. Stripper's "manager"/girlfriend leaves to go get something and leaves the stripper there. He sits in the kitchen while the groom's mom makes awkward small talk with him while we play a game that involves references to the groom's penis size. Girlfriend comes back with a tiny boom box with the worst sound quality ever but no music, so the only way to play anything is to plug the guy's discman in with an aux cable. Stripper, who is wearing one of those rasta hats with fake dreds, removes said hat as part of his routine but leaves his socks and tightie whities on. He also kind of smelled. All the women kept giving him dollars hoping he would have what he wanted and go "dance" with someone else.
To add to the awkwardness, afterward, I went out with the groom's sister (I was his friend since first grade), and she unloaded about how his family thought the bride was a golddigger and how much they hated her. So because I'm not friends with the bride, I never got to hear her opinion of the world's worst stripper.
I don't understand bachelor/ette parties. The only one I have been to was so hincky, I felt like I was in some kind of social experiment gone horribly wrong. And yet, it was precisely the kind of traditional crap that this MOH is pushing for. I only went because it was a dear friend getting married and even she seemed flummoxed by the goings-on. Never again.
I used to work at a place where a bunch of guys talked about their favorite local strip club and they referred to the strippers with nicknames that suggested they appreciated seeing their skin but not their faces. I'd have a hard time compartmentalizing in such a case. If I'm objectifying someone for strictly sexual purposes, it's hard for me to block some parts out and focus on others.
I have no opinions on bachelor/ette parties. They are entirely outside my sphere of experience. Never been invited to one, don’t go to bars or even drink much, where I live most couples never marry even if they have children, my entire wedding party (including guests) consisted of my beloved, the JP and me with immediate family notified after the event. They clearly serve a function in certain subcultures but since these subcultures don’t intersect with mine I have no experience to go on.
I’m responding to misspiggy @50/52 where she stated that bachelor/ette parties are disagreeable on purpose. She characterizes them as unsexy, uncomfortable, taboo-breaking, embarrassing, disgusting, a gesture of solidarity and humiliating, but not enjoyable and not supposed to be. My question is about what the purpose is. Is it to break a taboo about talking about penises because the bride will shortly see one for the first time in her life? (That would explain why they aren’t needed in my subculture.)
Euadaemonic’s theory is just that they’re specific example of the “it feels so good when it stops” phenomenon, which is plausible but has me asking why just bachelor/ette parties?
I find the virginal parties with ribbon games totally bizarre, like I'm a victim of time warp, though I will participate and keep those thoughts to myself. I guess those are usually called Bridal Showers, so maybe that's a different thing. The co-ed parties are usual less time warpy, but they're like any other party, or like a wedding rehearsal dinner.
I can appreciate the bachelorette parties that are comprised of an intimate circle of friends and include some girl talk, reminiscing about sex, old flames, wild times together, acknowledging the bachelorette is moving into a new chapter of life. But only if that's appealing to all the attendees. I think that's the general purpose of these parties. Acknowledging that a new chapter is about to begin. It's just expressed in so many different ways and no one way is appealing to everyone.
I didn't hear them, of course, but your anecdote makes me think that maybe the men were bonding over insulting the women, and the insults may not reflect their actual thoughts about whether the strippers were pretty or not. Rather, the insults may be a way for the men to take back power when sexual neediness makes them feel disempowered.
For the future, and for anyone accepting the "honor" of being a bridesmaid, the first question ought to be "what are my responsibilities if I accept?" The 2nd question is "And what does this cost?" Bridal shower (sometimes more than one), rehearsal dinner, wedding gift, dress, shoes, flowers, contribution to honeymoon fund, airfare to the wedding location, time off from work, hotel once you're there. The wedding industry has done a good job of convincing couples that it's okay to pawn these expenses off on the people they most wish to "honor" and to put the screws on them if they realize they're in over their heads with expensive commitments. Just say no. Offer no excuses having to do with either dicks or jello.
To me, LW shouldn't have agreed to be part of the wedding party in the first place if she wasn't willing to be part of all the other festivities. I mean, it's one of your best friends, it's going to be one of the most important times in her life, why would you let your own hangups rob her of your company during what should be one of the happiest times in her life? You should be doing your damnedest to reduce her stress, not add to it. You don't have to stuff dollar bills into the stripper's g-string if you don't want to, you can ask for a regular straw if you don't want to sip your drink out of a plastic dick, and so on. You're all supposedly adults and you're not entitled to live in a bubble of your choosing, despite what the internet has told you.
That said, telling the MOH that you wouldn't be there was a total bonehead move. If you weren't willing to fake happiness for your friend, you should have at least faked an illness the day of, even though it's an absolute chickenshit move.
Bottom line, I think you should suck it up (figuratively) and go have fun with your friend and her friends! This time is about what the bride wants, not what you want.
For the record, my husband and I had a coed bachelor/ette at a regular strip club (naked ladies) followed by partying at a friend's house. I would not have pressured anyone to attend, but I probably would have been privately bummed out if any of our closest friends had bowed out citing "discomfort". Luckily, our friends are mostly laid back good sports who knew we'd do the same for them. In the years since, we have done the same for many of them, and without complaint.
May the Wedding go without much drama, LW. Seems to be a consensus here, that you take it on the chin, go to the party and smile.
Think you got me wrong, I was referring to your feud with Ricardo and just wanted everyone (mostly him) to take a chill pill. We all have the right to our opinions.
I’m mystified. I have no feud with Ricardo. Where did you get that?
He is a sweety once you get to know him.
And I didn't get into a feud with Amanda, I just basically told her that I didn't care if she didn't want to spend some time with someone like me. Why should I care? She's a stranger on the Internet.
But for the record and so as to avoid any misunderstanding, I think Alison C. is pretty cool and I respect her opinions.
The one bachelorette party I was explicitly told to show up for, I declined SO HARD. It was my brother's wedding and his wife wanted to include me. We had to buy specific fabric, make dresses, then buy the wedding dresses and all that. In simplistic terms, my sister in law comes from a rich family and I couldn't keep up. Meanwhile, my brother didn't know what the hell was going on just like the groom in this scenario might not know what's going on. All my brother heard was that I wasn't showing up to her party and how I'm anti social. From her and the other bridesmaids. I had to explain to him that spending about 350$ on the bridesmaid dress in addition to the 'reception dress'(spent 150 on it) was not my idea of being social.
Their marriage is still going strong in their 4th year. My non-participation didn't ruin their marriage or their 70,000$ party. Weddings are not cheap and with all the financial commitments bridal parties already make,why coerce them into making more?
I'd offer a suggestion for the LW as a bridesmaid and future bride and to any brides reading: BEFORE you ask someone to be part of your "big day", give them a realistic ball park figure of their expected financial expenses. If you absolutely must have someone, pay their way or pay for the necessary things (bridesmaid dresses etc). Part of the reason for my brother's 70K price tag was due to renting out hotel rooms for out of town friends and my sister in law paid for flights for her bridal party flying in from outside the continental USA. It's your day,not mine. I get to choose whether I participate or not in the frivolous BS.
I feel like the LW has a good reason because she falls back on the dick jellos. Ma'am, if you're reading this and you have a good reason, speak the hell up. Go directly to the bride and the groom and air your issues; sadly, having to eat is NOT an issue. I'm a fattie,so any excuse for food is welcome. BUT if you can't afford the shenanigans, speak the hell up. I feel like the time you spent writing to Mr. Savage should've been spent calling up your friend and his wife and explaining your side (if it's more reasonable than they have questionable taste in food).