I had never visited a bridal store until last Friday. My own wedding dress was bought off the rack at a Laura Ashley’s. The pastel flowery concoction received the dry comment of “You look like Alice in Wonderland,” from one of the more observant wedding guests.

(Yes, we do like jokes in our family…even for the official wedding picture)

Judge for yourself, but it is true that I was looking for adventure and I certainly share Alice’s curiosity and willingness to go to strange places.

Hilary Schor who teaches English and Comparative Literature at USC argued that Alice in Wonderland  can be read as a feminist text. Alice went underground to question the rules, is not punished for her refusal to obey commands and above all, gets away with her curiosity. Curiosity did not just kill the cat – think about all the stories where it was cause for the downfall of women – Eve, Pandora, Lot’s and Bluebeard’s wives – you name it. Curious women can, after all, acquire knowledge which in turn could threaten patriarchy.

Well, here it’s 2017 and it seems we are all going down the rabbit hole, encountering people as rabid as Carrol’s anthropomorphic counterparts. Just think of the debate around issues of equality in large corporations, or congress men calling for women to go back to being mothers and housewives, or women being advised by a female (!) Fox host “to engage in a little horizontal hula and then make him a sandwich,” or urged to be “the beta in a marriage…by Phyllis Shlafley’s daughter

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/is-this-the-most-sexist-fox-news-clip-ever-natural-state-of-women-is-to-be-the-beta-in-marriage/

I felt like an old grouch thinking these thoughts while photographing a radiant, beautiful young bride trying on her wedding gown. Her thoughts were on anything but the future of feminism, and of course they shouldn’t be. She was surrounded by lace, and satin, and pearls and all things glittery, clad in a modern gown equally romantic and sexy.

There will be time to think about it later. When the moment arrives, there will also be good books to read: the attached review spells it out in detail.

The future of feminism

And as a bonus we can throw in some thoughts on fake feminism.

 

The Sculpture of a “Fearless Girl” on Wall Street Is Fake Corporate Feminism

For now I wish the young couple all the best, and the kind of happiness I felt for 31 years now in a truly egalitarian marriage. (Do I hear someone muttering in the background that he’s doing all the cooking?)