The thing that came up during my recent Twitter surge…

Well, the thing other than wedding dress porn. (You note the absence of a link.)

Was the idea of symbols. Well, that’s what came up for me. What came up for a lot of people, apparently, was YOU’RE WRONG!!!

I had raised the question of whether a white wedding dress symbolizing virginity is overtly sexual.

Well, obviously, in 170,000 (plus or minus) views, there were a few people who had to tell me I’m wrong, and a nifty assortment of other things white symbolizes and/or origin stories for where white wedding dresses come from. (None of them had an opinion on whether white wedding dresses are overtly sexual, except, of course, for the wedding dress porn guy. His opinion was “sure, and here are some things we can make them MORE overt.”

The glories of white wedding dresses.

If I ever get married, I’ll probably wear a hospital gown, symbolizing the idea of “Gee, I wonder what brain tumor made me think this was a good idea?”

There’s a range of symbolism in white wedding dresses. On the one hand, my friend… the one with the list… which was three pages… (front and back)… with little asterisks where she’d forgotten a sex partner’s name… wore white to her wedding. Because she wanted to, and that was more or less as far as it went.

On the other hand, if someone says his daughter will be wearing white to her wedding, it’s a fair guess that he doesn’t mean white’s her favorite color.

More often than not, symbols are an AND proposition.

You can’t argue that white doesn’t represent virginity, but you can point out that it has other meanings, too. You can add your own meaning to the list, and you can wear whatever the hell you want. Even at your mother’s wedding.

Anything else is like arguing that a cross doesn’t represent the Klan, it represents some little Jewish sect in 2nd Temple Palestine. It may represent both, but people are still going to be upset when they find one burning in their front yards.