sologamy

A thoughtful, reflexive essay on the trend of self-marriage, after indulging us with a personal peek at the private-public declarations of matrimony (held in a karaoke bar in the former no-man’s land between East and West Berlin), poses the question whether the rite is an emancipation from having to prove one’s worth by merit of relationship status or an oppressive, pathetic totem of self-absorption and a photo-opportunity.
While marriage and companionship has had a lot heaped on it in the past few decades—radically transformed from a utilitarian and practical arrangement that was essentially a commercial transaction to one with heady, superlative expectations of romance, protection, friendship, counsellor and a dozen other roles that might have been cast across a wider social network, it still seems robust and resilient enough to bear that burden. For those whom marriage might not impart an element of social mobility, however, self-marriage might not just be the trite amour-propre of narcissism that it seems to be and rather the staging that culminates in a ceremony (executed or not) is certainly a rebuke for spinster and crone (or whore) and all the other nasty terms that society directs at single women—who are the majority of participants. What do you think? Commandeering social conventions are a way of highlighting the constraints and limitations of our society but rather than betraying ourselves as needy and infantile, and I believe the author’s exercise was neither endorsement or condemnation but rather an expose and exploration worth contemplating on the nature of sanction and the sacrosanct but we’re probably each other’s own best allies for keeping us in good health, accountable and sane, morally and ethically.