Bachelor Party!

What function, exactly, do we expect bachelor and bachelorette parties to accomplish? It should be enough, I would think, to have the bride- or groom-to-be say at the end "that was really fun," but it's not, is it? No, we need it to meet expectations. "Well, we had a great time. We made omelettes and crocheted sweaters for ducks." What? No.

We expect that the bachelor or bachelorette will debase themselves in some way, that they will become horribly, abysmally drunk, that the activities will hew to gendered stereotypes (sports games, steaks, poker, whatever it is women do at bachelorette parties), and that feeble gestures of the "so, are you ready to get married?" variety will be made towards the gravity of the situation.

I like traditions as much as the next guy - probably more than the next guy - but I wonder if we think much about their sources. We talk so much about "the last night of freedom" - thus the ubiquity of strip clubs at such things - but when you cast it as the French do it comes with a bit more bite. "Enterrement de vie de garçon/jeune fille;" "the burial of the life as a young man/woman." That's dark, don't you think? I recognize that it's often meant in fun or ironically, but I sometimes find the implication for our view of married life sad. Particularly when we consider the historical disparity between the sex lives of bachelors and the "virtue" demanded of their proper counterparts, thinking of these send offs as eulogies to our boisterous youth reifies unhelpful stereotypes of both sexuality and marriage.

OK. I don't mean to sound like the wet blanket killjoy who doesn't know how to have any fun. I'm not. But for me, traditions are best when the pageantry itself focuses our attention on the import of the moment. (Remember the point I made about the Tibetan moon festival? Like hell you do.) So if what we really want these parties to do is focus attention on what our friends' allegedly won't be able to do any more - which I don't think it is and certainly shouldn't be - then let's stick with the enterrement de vie de garçon. But what if we think of them instead celebrations of the friendship between the groom and his groomsmen (or bride and her bridesmaids) and the coming change in his (or her) life?

As far as our activities, this wouldn't change all that much. We would still go out drinking, to big dinners, to baseball games, etc. - though maybe not to strip clubs... hard to figure out how that would celebrate friendships or marriage... So my point - if I have one - isn't that we need to scrap the whole practice and start from scratch, but basically just to be more critical about what we're doing and why. Traditions are best when the practices they force us to enact serve as reminders to think about or remember something important. Thanksgiving, when done right, surrounds us with family and good food, and reminds us that we are lucky to have them. Dressing up for dinner, doing it more formally than we normally do, adding in the pageantry of preparing standard dishes, all serves as a ritualized reminder that we are lucky to have friends, and food, and family, and ought to give thanks. A bachelor(ette) party can do much the same thing; in fact it inevitably does. I just want us to be clearer on what it turns our minds to.