Far more troubling, I would argue, is that the ceaseless obsession with and exultation over Chelsea’s upcoming nuptials is emblematic of how our culture rewards women who marry, decorously or not. The hyperventilation over a woman’s nuptial day — a frenzy so outsize that the media applies investigative efforts that might be better suited to, say, the BP disaster — leaves me even more troubled than the (admittedly sad) violation of Chelsea’s privacy.

When Bill later told People magazine that Chelsea’s wedding would be “the biggest day in her life, probably,” I’m sure he meant well, but I kind of wanted to throttle him. What about the days on which she might pick up her master’s degree, run a company, have a child, win the presidency? What about the day, already past, on which she fell in love with her betrothed, surely as life-changing as the one on which they will make it legal?

There are a lot of people who don’t get married. There are a lot of people who can’t get married. If Chelsea Clinton, by chance or design, had fallen into one of these two categories, would it mean that her parents had not done what they were supposed to do, that they would feel less pride in her, that her life would lack its most important moment? I wonder if those focusing so hard on her wedding wouldthink it meant she was any less well-adjusted, or any less beautiful. 

The fevered fetishization of the marital day is not just irritating, it’s destructive. It reproduces attitudes about personal — and especially female — achievement that are far past their sell date: that marrying is the goal toward which all of us strive, that our weddings are somehow the most exalted expressions of our accomplishments and of ourselves. That they are proof, validation, some sure sign that we turned out OK.

You know what weddings are? They are parties.

- Rebecca Traister, Broadsheet at Salon.com