Wedding season is about to get 1,000 times more obnoxious — at least, if a disturbing new microtrend gets legs. Self-marriage, a public ceremony wherein an uncoupled individual dons formalwear and promises to be true and honest to themselves in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others etc. is apparently becoming A Thing. Dearly beloved: we are gathered here today to shower gifts on an asshat who invited us all here so she could pump her friends for fancy towels and serving dishes from Crate & Barrel.
While most of us would qualify being born in a particular body a self-commitment ceremony that just happens naturally, for the self-married, being born and existing as an individual is not enough — it needs to be reaffirmed. In public. And there comes a time in life for people to just stop casually fucking around with themselves and move on to seriously dating themselves, followed by a long engagement where they cry nightly about how much the wedding is going to cost and have big, door slamming fights with themselves, followed by a commitment ceremony where the one side of the family manages to stop expressing doubts about who their progeny is marrying (a bum with no job who treats her like crap!) for long enough to enjoy some cake. Forever alone!
Obviously, self-marriage isn't a legal ceremony because it doesn't newly commit anything; it's just one person standing there and being like, "I'm awesome!" which I suppose means that a self-marriage ceremony has a lot in common with a Kanye West show or being around someone on PCP.
In a world that's a veritable blizzard of special snowflakes, it's surprising that self-marriage isn't more common. But so far, only a few scattered weirdos have taken the plunge. One self-married Boston man divorced himself after realizing that he and himself were just not meant to be.
If this becomes A Thing, I blame Glee and Oprah. The former elevates self-absorption and self-regard into something resembling a virtue — embedded in every episode of is the moral that what is most important in life is to "be true to yourself." Wear clothes that truly represent your soul, say everything you really feel — let your unfettered emotions and reactions and impressions flop around like the penis of a man running naked across center field and never for one second consider the fact that you could be wrong (well, if a character does end up being wrong, it's somehow due to the fact that they were Not Being True To Themselves). Oprah advocated constant self-affirmation — you could be awesome if you just sat around being happy with how things were at that moment, or you could be awesome if you made a big fucking deal about changing something in your life; as long as you were Being True to Yourself, everything became a sacrement. A journaled and scrapbooked journey to lose five pounds is more righteous than taking a monthlong trip to Thailand and not being up your own ass about it.
So do you, (insert your name here), take you (insert your name here, again) to be your lawfully wedded douchenozzle until death do you part?
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