Girls Gone Weird
Remember, bridesmaids, it's okay sometimes to just say no.
Dear Kacey Knauer:
It is the mission of this particular space to monitor the various ways in which our culture completely has gone mad. So I thank you for telling The New York Times that the members of your bridal party all went off together to the offices of a personal "aesthetician," where they were variously peeled, scraped, and shot full of sausage poison as a gift, and for the purposes of looking better in the photos of your upcoming nuptials. This enabled the newspaper to go off giddily in search of a trend, and, by God, it found one. My own personal favorite is the woman who wanted all of her attendants to have breast-enhancement surgery. It used to be the worst thing you could inflict on your bridesmaids was your fat cousin with the chronic sniffles. The simple act of asking your bridesmaids to have this surgery seems to me vastly more insulting than either of those, but what do I know about the modern world? Happy couples are entitled to ask a lot of the people whom they make part of their big days. On one memorable occasion, I was an usher in a wedding where it was decided that we would have our picture taken on the 17th fairway of the country club at which the wedding was being held. Unfortunately, somebody neglected to tell the golfers, and there is one photo of us all hitting the deck while an incoming 5-wood whistles over our heads. I'd be willing to take a Titleist to my noggin before I would a hypodermic full of paralytic agents, thank you very much. Tailor the suits, if you must, but not the people in them. If grooms get into this kind of thing, I'm moving to Turkmenistan before any of my children get married.
Charles P. Pierce
cpierce@globe.com 