When I was about eight or nine, I went to a bridal shower with my mother. I remember this party vividly, because there was something about it that confused me, and still confuses me to this day.
The guests at the party played a game where they guessed trivia about the groom. The groom wasn't even there. I didn't like this game; this party was supposed to be about the bride, not the groom. The man had his bachelor party, and even then, I could never see a bunch of men answering questions about a woman. Why all this attention, when the party was about women, and one woman in particular, and her man wasn't even there?
( I'm really proud of my little baby feminist self; can you tell?)
The answers were baffling to me. And boring, when they weren't creepy. It didn't help that the groom had the same first name as my dad, and so I imagined my own dad giving these strange answers as his favorite things (though I knew it was a different person)
Favorite car? I thought it should be the Batmobile, naturally! I can't remember what the groom's favorite car was (probably some sports car), but that wasn't it. I was extremely disappointed; what a boring answer. Typical grownup.
Favorite song? Apparently, it was "Hit Me Baby One More Time" by Brittany Spears. I remember thinking it was incredibly off-putting, that he liked a "girl's song," and one loved by young girls like me.
That party was creepy and un-feminist on so many disturbing levels. In my admittedly limited knowledge, I've never heard of another party like that one, before or since.
But when I was there, I did what I always did when I got bored, which was make up Buzz and Woody stories in my mind. (I still do that, after a few years of giving it up because I loved it too much and thought that God would surely think it was an idol. I now have permission to be my childhood self.)
In this particular fantasy, I imagined Jessie and Buzz were getting married, and Bo threw her a bridal shower. The women there answered trivia questions about Buzz's favorite things, and Woody happened to be walking through the room at the moment. He started easily answering all of the questions, that the bride herself didn't even know, because he knew Buzz best. He stole the show and made everyone angry, and proved that he was closest to Buzz, and not her.
And looking back on the things I came up with, I can see a whole lot of homoerotic subtext there. Woody was obviously Buzz's true soulmate all along, even if convention said that Buzz should marry a woman. I now laugh and symbolically pat my inner child on the back. Even before knowing much about gay people at all, she sure knew how to ship them! She may have even known something about my bisexuality, too, before I discovered it only a few years ago.
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