A while back, one of our readers mentioned that there was a new Canadian reality show called Bulging Brides. You can just imagine what this show is about. (Think Biggest Loser meets Say Yes to the Dress.) The synopsis reads:
Here comes the bride, all dressed and…wide? After months of stressful planning and bank-breaking expenses, the real test of a bride’s nerves is the stroll down the aisle in her wedding dress. She knows that all eyes are trained on her, examining every inch of her body in that revealing, ultra-fem gown. No woman wants to be a bulging bride! The bride has her wedding dress, but it doesn’t fit. Racked by tension from the bridal arrangements and petrified by the thought of looking chunky on her big day, the bride-to-be has turned to the Dream Team as a last resort to lose her flab and look breathtaking in her gown.
Our last post that dealt with the pressure brides feel to be super thin on their wedding day generated a lot of great feedback and revealed how real this pressure really is. But I think this Show takes it to a whole new level. The title of the show alone is ridiculous and infers that somehow being “bulging” on your wedding day is a horrible fate that no bride would ever want. I looked up the definition of bulging and here is what I found:
Synonyms: bulge, balloon, belly, jut, overhang, project, protrude
These verbs mean to curve, spread, or extend outward past the normal or usual limit
So the show is basically taking women who are seen as extending “past the normal or usual limit” and trying to make them thinner so they will be the “most beautiful” they can be. The whole concept of this show makes the assumption that thin=beautiful and bulding=ugly.
And then to say that brides are “petrified by the thought of looking chunky on their big day” is just a little too much. I’m not saying that the pressure to look thin on your wedding day is not real. But to capitalize on women’s insecurities by making a reality show out of the pressure brides feel to be thin is just not right.
I really do hate that our society is so obsessed with weight and weight-loss to the point that we will tune in every week to see a person’s deepest insecurities exploited on national television as trainers and nutritionists belittle them in order to “help” them lose as much as they can.
Why do we watch it? What keeps us coming back for more of this garbage television? I think part of it is that we are fascinated with self-improvement, and weight loss is the ultimate form of self-improvement. I think we find a sense of satisfaction when we see another person losing exorbitant amounts of weight right before our eyes. It’s a form of vicarious life (as all television is).
But in real life, we must learn to accept our bodies and love them for what they are. And in real life, we must accept the fact that we are not meant to look like the bride on the cover of a bridal fashion magazine; we are supposed to look like the woman that the person we are marrying fell in love with.
The “Bride Fetish” and the also-popular “Childbearing Fetish” completely elude me.
Instead of a “bulging bride” how about…Buxom Brides! Bodacious Brides! Juicy Brides! Ripe Brides! Battle of the Badonkadonk Brides! Beautiful Booty Brides! Unbridled Brides! Brides that Take the Cake and Eat it too! *hahaha!* Brides’ Best Backsides!
wait…that’s getting into another genre, isn’t it. *ha*
Why is how you look on your wedding day so much more important than how you look on any other given day? Especially when so many people get divorced??
just another case of the objectification of woman. on her wedding day, a woman is a “bride”, something to stare at. i have controversial ideas, but i think the whole thing is weird.why does a grown woman wear a strange Barbie doll outfit with some veil covering her face? it’s always seemed odd to me. isn’t it time that we’re over the virgin treasure being “given” to some big strong man?
i sound mean – still, that’s what i think. i don’t begrudge any woman anything she wants to do — hope she enjoys it, but it still just makes no sense to me
That part about people staring at every inch of the bride’s body just rubs me the wrong way. Why are they looking? You are not looking good for them. What is their problem with the way you look?
It make$ $en$e to me…competitive capitalism hinged on wrongheaded views of women! Brides are getting pimped to the merchandi$er$!
I agree with you, Melissa.
And after she’s objectified as a Bride, then she becomes objectified as a Newlywed, then as a Wife, then a Mother.
Women: remember, your Personal Identity matters less than your dress size! Reduce yourself! Reduce, I say! ( not.)
Absolutely about the veil. I refused to wear a veil on my wedding day for just that reason. I did wear a white dress, but it wasn’t the pile of bead and lace and satin that the traditional dress is.
And the idea of losing weight for your wedding is stupid, plus, given the general success rate of diets, most of the weight comes back for most of the people. . Me, I wouldn’t diet for the wedding and it happens that my gown would actually be too big for me at the this moment. At the time, I was heavier than I am now, I think because of birth control pills, and since I’ve been off them, my weight has drifted back down to about what it was before I started taking the pill.
I got married last May, on a very tight budget. Not that we lacked the cash, but we prefered to spend our dough on two weeks of fun with my best friend who flew in from the US to attend our Aussie nuptuals.
So off a-shopping I went, with my naturally thin aunt-in-law and sister-in-law. Four or so stores into it, we spotted a gorgeous Aussie size 14 (american 12-ish) evening gown of gossamer gold with a greco-roman flow that set across my then-US-18/20 figure gorgeously. Sadly, the bust was too small to fit my 38-E/Fs and the gown wouldn’t zip.
$150 for the dress plus $100 for the seamstress who expertly took the excess length (I’m a shorty) and added it to the bust, and I had my beautiful dress which shimmered like fairydust in the sunset light of our beach wedding.
On our wedding day, my weight was it’s second highest in recent history…and I don’t even recall being terribly aware of it. I didn’t even begin to focus on health/fitness until several months into marriage, simply because I was tired of feeling tired.
Not all brides buy into the mania…even among those of us who want to be dolled up on the big day.
P.S. – I don’t agree that we, as a whole, watch these shows as a way of witnessing some form of self-improvement. I think the majority watch these shows, and ugly-duckling shows, and save-my-family shows, to revel in the misery/humiliation of others. I think most viewers enjoy the momentary sense of superiority granted by playing voyeur on someone percieved to be less fortunate. Schadenfreude is a powerful force.
Gee, it seems much easier to BUY A DRESS THAT FITS YOU AND IS FLATTERING TO YOUR ACTUAL BODY than to starve and exercise yourself into a whole other person, at a time when you should be focusing on a) a major life transition (marriage) and, to a much lesser extent, b) a giant party with all your friends and family, and all your spouse’s friends and family.
I loved my wedding, because it was a giant party with my and my husband’s friends and family. It was the only time my college friends and my cousins and my husband’s cousins and his college friends, etc., were ever likely to be in the same room, and that was AMAZING.
If I had been obsessing about it like it was a fashion show or a Broadway opening, I would have missed a lot of the joy, I think. (I had a beautiful day-length dress made for me out of silver shot silk, and I beaded it with black faux pearls, and I felt and looked festive and lovely!)
I’m embarrassed to say that when I first heard about this particular show, I thought it was about women who are in the latter days of pregnancy as the wedding date looms in the near future. :shakehead:
I don’t understand why trying to drastically lose weight for one day is so important. The husbands-to-be fell in love and proposed marriage without caring at all about weight, so why even do it in the first place? Yes, it is difficult for the most part to find a decent dress if you’re bigger (especially if you are my size, a 26/28) but dresses don’t have to be bought off the rack. Too many women are all about the wedding and not the marriage today.
I do agree with Kelly that these shows are popular because seeing people freaking out on national TV makes viewers feel better. This whole “reality” trend really needs to die a quick death.
I would love to see this black dress wearing, no bridesmaid havin’, no heteronormativing, no dad giving away, last name keepin’, no weight losing, no blood diamond wearing and showing off, ecumenical, no gift begging, no gift registering ARMY of feminists who finally spoke truth to power
Hey, that’s me! Except my dress was silver.
And we did register. With charities, including Planned Parenthood, Lambda Legal Defense Fund, the National Urban League, and a local charity for homeless women.
Lambda and the homeless women cleaned up the most. Which made us so much happier than getting silver or china or what-not.
It was me who left the comment about the “Bulging Brides” show on the last post!! O_O
Oh my goodness gracious, I’m so glad you decided to look it up and write about it.
Yes, those women get put through a lot of pressure to “slim down for the gown” in six weeks but what I find is that they also seem to be somewhat humiliated during the process as well. I remember one woman had to do the “Ball and Chain” exercise in which they tied a weight ball around her waist with a chain and made her run up and down hills. I thought it was pretty disturbing because…not even dogs are treated that way.
These women are not overweight or fat (not that it would justify the show if they were); they’re what would be defined as the “average size” North American woman so it gets even scarier. Besides, who DOESN’T like over-indulging in more delicious foods before their wedding?
I still really don’t understand why these brides buy dresses that do not fit in the first place before going on the show and decide to crash diet just for that one day.
Also, the people who created that show have another one running as well called “The Last Ten Pounds Bootcamp”. You can only IMAGINE what that one’s like! It makes me feel so bad about myself sometimes.
Hope just about said it all.
My wedding date is in August and I am proud to say that I haven’t even thought of trying to lose any weight.
It seems so many folks are caught up in the idea that their wedding day is supposed to be superficially perfect… maybe our focus on superficial perfection has something to do with our high divorce rate, eh?
The biggest problem I have with this show- about 90% of the episodes I’ve seen feature women who are not fat. Maybe they are size 8/10. Yes, they could do with some toning in a lot of cases. But these women all stupidly bought their dresses 1/2 sizes too small. Are they going to keep this up after the wedding? I kind of doubt it.
Hey Tiffabee, I just wanted to say that bulimia absolutely stole my spirit and, in the last three months of my 6 year battle with it, I lost my voice. I needed to let you know that thanks to your blog, your words of inspiration and encouragement and other ED writers like you I’ve been able to find recovery and I’m now able to begin pursuing a career in music. Your own recovery has given me such strength and I can’t thank you enough!
Hey Tiffabee, love your blog and this post! I agree with what you said about how we love to watch people lose weight. I used to be a fan of The Biggest Loser but had to stop watching. I couldn’t stand watching the look on Jillian’s face when one of her team members didn’t lost 10 pounds in one week. It’s unhealthy to lose that much weight so quickly (especailly when the contestants get close to a healthy weight) and I felt they were sending the wrong message.
On a side note, when I was engaged to my ex husband I felt the pressure to lose weight and I did. 25 pounds and I wasn’t really overweight to begin with. When I got married for the second time I had no desire to starve myself and over exercise again. I knew my husband loved me no matter what, unlike the first husband.
I found a lovely, off the rack, on supersale wedding gown that fit me perfectly without alterations. It was $2500 off normal price, or I’d have never been able to afford it. It was covered in Swarvoski crystals, and the bodice could *not* be taken in at all without destroying their pattern.
As such, as the stress of planning a wedding and being in grad school at the same time lead to some natural weight loss in the months before the wedding, and so I totally got to stand on the scale and go “Dammit! Must gain weight so the dress still fits!” Heh, those were some of the most fun months I’ve ever had!