Dying Bride To Bring Happiness to My Complicated, Unmarried Life

So I received this email forward from a well-intentioned though completely clueless family member. As my mouse was hovering over the delete button, I decided to take a second look at it, because there are actually some interesting things being said in this email about how we view women, especially young pretty women, in relation to marriage.

So the jist of it is, “Katie” is engaged and dying of cancer but is going ahead and having a gigantic wedding anyway.

The caption underneath reads:

Even in pain and dealing with her organs shutting down, with the help of morphine, Katie took care of every single wedding planning.
Her dress had to be adjusted several times due to Katie’s constant weight loss.

This seemed horrifying to me. The girl is dying and she’s spending her last minutes booking a DJ and going to the tailor? The point is supposed to be that she’s being heroic, but to me this seems like straight-out masochism.

We also find out:

The other couple in this picture are Nick’s parents, very emotional with the wedding and of course to see their son marrying the girl he fell in love when he was an adolescent.

Marrying your childhood sweetheart= Fairytale

And:

Katie died 5 days after her wedding. To see a fragile woman dress as bride with a beautiful smile makes you think… Happiness is always there within reach, no matter how long it lasts…..lets enjoy life and don’t live a complicated life. Life is too short.

There’s a lot going on in that paragraph. Why is seeing this woman, who is in extreme physical and probably emotional pain, smile her way though a wedding reaffirm that happiness is out there? What’s really being said is “Look, if this dying girl can get married you could be happy too if you just live simply.” And to break it down for the girls out there, living simply=getting married.

I should clarify I don’t know if these are real people, and if they are I fully respect Katie’s choice to get married. But I suspect she and her husband might have a problem with her choice being reduced to a lame “live for the day” anecdote.

If this email is being forwarded to women all over the place, I don’t respect the implication that I should spend my life caring about “simple things” like weddings in case I die tomorrow.

And don’t even get me started on the beautiful dying white girl fetish. Would we have seen these pictures if she was bald or non-causcasion? Probably not.

Thoughts?

 

Why I am now going to read those little instructions that come with prescriptions

Wow, this article kind of scared the crap out of me:

Six years ago, Sarah was one of the first Canadians to take Diane-35. She believes it was the likely cause of her blood clot. Sarah says she was told it was a birth control pill that would also clear up her occasional pimple.

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What Sarah didn’t know was that because of health concerns, Health Canada says Diane-35 should never be prescribed as birth control, that it’s meant to treat severe acne. And even then, Health Canada says you should stop taking Diane-35 a couple of months after your severe acne clears up.

I was on Diane-35 for about four years as a contraceptive. I was never told anything about these risks, and though blood-clots might have been among usual line-up of possible side effects listed on the package, so was just about every other possible aliment the company wanted to save its ass from being accused of causing. But not this: “Health Canada also says Diane-35 may have contributed to the deaths of five Canadian women.” I don’t remember death being one of the symptoms listed. Jesus. Anyway, I’ve switched to Alesse since Diane-35 was taken off the market, and though I’m glad I did I just wish there was an effective birth control product out there that didn’t put my health at risk at all. Any thoughts from fellow uterus owners?