Worth More than a Ring

As women, we spend most of our younger years thinking and talking about marriage, whether it’s to Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid, or Johnny from kindergarten. In the first grade I “married” a boy from my class named Conner. It seems crazy, but marriage is a societal expectation that’s been driven into girls for as long as they can remember. Girls go through their teens with the expectation of marriage sitting firmly on their shoulders, like a cloud that follows them into adulthood. How can women fight this expectation when society has convinced them that all they need to do is find someone to take care of them and settle down? If we, as a society, took the time to teach younger generations that there is more to life than a ring on their left hand, women could be left free to reach for whatever goal they desire.

Recently, I attended the wedding of a close friend with my sister. My sister and I, barely out of high school, spent the entire day being told “you’re next” or asked, “when is this going to be your wedding?” All these questions made it hard to enjoy my friend’s wedding. I felt like I couldn’t enjoy it because I was constantly fending off people who were desperate to find me a spouse. This constant questioning was a trend I experienced at just about every social event I went to. I was barely out of high school, yet I couldn’t get through a church service without being asked about the boyfriend I didn’t have. It was discouraging that nobody seemed to care about my efforts in college, and it led me to wonder if I was doing the right thing by going to college.

During high school, I often talked about marriage with the guys I dated, picturing a life where we got married right after graduation. I thought it was normal for a while, I knew that other couples talked about it too. Around this time I started to realize that I felt nowhere near ready to be someone’s wife. The idea of marrying any of my high school boyfriends seemed crazy to me. I felt like I still had so much more life to live before becoming a huge part in someone else’s life.

Graduating high school, I started seeing several classmates getting engaged and even married. Before I had been out of high school for two years, I already knew of a dozen or so engagements and weddings. Looking back at this time, I’m thankful I wasn’t dating anyone. I will always wonder that if I had been dating someone, would I have fallen prey to the same phenomenon that so many of my former classmates had? I saw so many girls give up college to just be someone’s wife. These girls had settled down with someone to take care of them because that was all that they were expected to do. This societal expectation pushed onto girls prevented my classmates from going to college and doing more with their lives.

This expectation to find a soul mate to spend forever with is seen often in the media today. Stand-up comics tell jokes about girls “on the hunt” for a man. Girls laugh because we relate to the pressure we feel to hurry up and get hitched. There are even movies out there that showcase girls struggling to balance their professional and love lives, often glorifying the sacrifice they end up making in their professional life to “get the guy”. One movie that comes to mind is My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a movie focused on a woman in her thirties who is unmarried. The movie follows the main character, Toula, on her journey to find love, while her family’s worries about the fact that she is unmarried are made into comedic material (Zwilck). What kind of message does this send to younger generations?

As women, we shouldn’t have to spend our lives dodging questions about “settling down”. The constant questions lead to a negative stigma on women who put themselves first by going to college and starting their own careers. If we as a society want our women to achieve their dreams, we need to stop placing so much worth on a ring and marriage. Associate value to girls finding their passion and striving for it. We need to teach our girls to be their best at whatever they want to do. A spouse is great, but it’s not the best thing a girl can do for herself. Encourage women every day to keep striving for what she wants in life. Stop worrying about her love life, it’s her business.

Works Cited

Zwick, Joel, director. My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Warner Bros, 2002