“Stand up for your man,” said the grandmother of a friend of mine. This was at the bridal shower of said friend, and everyone present was asked to offer some words of wisdom for the bride. “No matter what happens, you’ve got to stick up for ‘im.”

My friend’s mother had been squirming during most of the advice-giving session, and now spoke up. “I’m from the seventies, and I just can’t get behind that last one!”

The grandmother ignored her and continued on. “Your first year is going to be the hardest.” A couple of the other older women nodded and “mm hmm”-ed. “Living with him is a very different thing from dating him. You’ll learn all sorts of things, like he’ll wake up in the morning kind of sweaty and gross, and sometimes he farts. They hide that sort of thing from you when dating.” Laughter and more nodding. Thereafter followed more advice, such as “don’t let him touch your laundry” and “enthusiastically please him, and he’ll be sure to reciprocate.” All innocent, well-meaning, almost-joking offerings with troublesome subtext and implications.

During the shower, I realized two things: 1) that I’ve managed to grow up being a girl in this society and completely miss out on wedding know-how and etiquette, and 2) gender-role communication plays a large part in the wedding-planning process. Weddings are the time when the older women step in and carefully instruct the younger generation on how to be good wives and mothers. I guess I knew that from before, but it was a tad creepy watching how blatantly the process took place at that particular shower. They were all very nice ladies, but I do kind of wish there was some way I could have spoken up and said “but my boyfriend is perfectly capable of doing laundry!” or “what if he beats her? Should she stand up for him then?” without sounding like a total bridal-shower-spoiling tool.

Instead I just sat there and ate my scone and mused on the absurdity of weddings.