Beaded Pants and White Harleys

When I was engaged and wedding dress hunting, I found a beautiful wedding outfit in the pages of Vogue.  I say outfit because it wasn’t exactly a dress.  It was a stunning, hand-beaded top and pants.  Since I wanted to ride in on a white Harley, I thought pants would be perfect.  They were definitely dressy enough, in my opinion.

I shared my enthusiasm for this outfit with my best friend, who immediately shut me down.

“You don’t wear the pants,” she said.  “The man does.”

This didn’t sit well with me at the time.  I was a very independent woman, raised by a very strong mother, and surrounded by many strong women – my sister, cousins, aunts and friends.  I took so many women’s classes at Boston College I could have had a women’s studies minor.

I grew up observing the couples in my family.  My parents were an equal partnership.  My father respected my mother’s opinions and always took her feelings and thoughts into consideration – but he made the final decisions.  However, I noticed that in many relationships, that wasn’t always the case.  Those strong, opinionated Armenian women always seemed to have the last word.

I don’t know if it was because the men were passive or if the women were especially cunning, but those Armenian wives always seemed to get their way.  At least that’s how it seemed to me.  Maybe they were just louder, or maybe that’s how they wanted things to seem when talking with the other women.

I don’t know that it’s just with Armenians, either.  Watch any sitcom on tv and the wife is the smart, organized one while the husband is the clueless oaf who can’t even put his pants on without her help.  Forget about taking care of the children or running the household.  The husband is made out to be a bumbling idiot, and the wife is a shrew.

I find it odd that women find this empowering – that they’re proud to “wear the pants.”  Biblically, this is not how God designed families.  It took me a long time to understand this (still working on it!).  Submission is a hot topic, especially for an independent woman like me.  I’ll have to continue my thoughts on this in another post.

I’m grateful for my best friend who convinced me to wear a wedding dress.  It didn’t make me any less strong.  I should have stuck to my guns about the white Harley, though!

OK, I’m getting off my shoebox now.