On Reality TV Marriage Proposals

Dear future wife,

It is really late, and I should be in bed.  Why I’m writing to you at such a time and so far in advance of our loving each other in kind is well beyond my ability to explain, though I’m sure it owes a little to me feeling kind of bored and horny, and who on earth will be a better object of my baser yearnings than you, my dearly beloved?  I justify my obstinacy in this hour by saying that I’m studying for an important test tomorrow, but the test is all about Genesis, and I’m half-listening to junky reality TV in the background as I read my notes.  I wouldn’t say this impairs my preparation because the program in question doesn’t intrigue me in the slightest and I’m only watching in anticipation that someone, anyone will dare to sing a song of actual, legitimate quality.  Alack and alas, so far I’ve been foiled by an endless succession of excruciating country ballads, sappy R&B soul, and sellout Ed Jazeeran singer-songwriter schlock.  I think it’s safe to say that no one will be singing Radiohead, unless they take a swing at Creep, you know, that Radiohead song everybody who doesn’t like Radiohead claims to like – the one from their most uninspired, generically alt-rock album Pablo Honey.  Hell, at this point I’d be astonished to hear anybody cover No Doubt, Maroon 5, or Pharrell, all of whom make decidedly safe and mainstream genre music that may still be too edgy and experimental for this show despite their leaders sitting on the judges’ – that is, the coaches’ panel.  What was I talking about?  Oh, right.  Netflix, Starbucks, Chipotle, Starbucks, Netflix, Spotify, iPhone, iPad, Facebook, Starbucks, Insta, Netflix, Radiohead.

Still, the deficiency of all these wannabe singers’ musical tastes is hardly Problematic enough for me to write a letter to my future wife, representing nothing more or less than the run-of-the-mill radio jams one should expect of such reality programming aimed at an audience that can’t be bothered to listen to Real Music even when it’s all online for no additional charge.  But tonight the show did something so vexing and abhorrent to my conscience that I couldn’t miss a chance to call it out.

Dearly beloved, when I ask you for your hand in marriage, I won’t be asking on a television show in front of hundreds of live strangers and millions of later couch potatoes.  How would it occur to me that such a gesture could possibly be a good idea?  If I truly loved you and strove to put your safety and needs before my own, why would I force you under such a spotlight and effectively strip you of your negating power in the most significant decision you’ll make all your life?  It certainly wouldn’t be to prove my own bravado or manhood, because how could you deny me before so many prying, begging, tear-filled eyes of so many lifeless, brainwashed proles?  How much more valiant, how much more earned would it be if I proposed to you alone in the untouched solitude of some romantic venue, or in the great expanse of nature, where no spectators would raptly look on our affair, excitedly beseeching your acceptance?

But my proposal will have nothing to do with proving myself a man; as far as I’m concerned, I already did that by convincing you to go out on a second date, saying nothing of the first date, which was in itself a Herculean labor to initiate and took a lot more stress and patience than they care to replicate in all the movies.  Regardless of the efforts I go to in order to win your heart, I won’t propose to prove a point or assert some confidence in my masculinity.  A wise man once thought silently to himself, “It’s not about you; it’s about her,” and so it goes with proposals.  It’s not about making me look good, at least not to anyone but you, and the point is really just to make you happy.  So it goes with weddings.  Nobody cares about the groom’s apparel, because the wedding’s not about him, so whose business is it how he got the bride to say yes?  It may be our family’s or our closer friends’, but it’s certainly not a stranger’s or the whole wide world’s.  It’s not the business of some random housewife watching The Voice at night after reading Wild or Lean In or Gone Girl or Unbroken or some John Green horse crap written for moody teenage girls.  It is only the most intimate, meaningful, and personal moment most couples will share before their wedding day.

Dearly beloved, why would I sensationalize that moment for myself, ruin its profundity for you?  Why would I take the most precious and pivotal landmark of our relationship and reduce it to a reality television farce for sadder people’s amusement?  What joy or rush could I derive from dropping to my knees like an idiot and embarrassing us in front of millions of people?

Dearly beloved, for now I’m finished ranting about reality TV and the nonsense people do on it.  Until the next time you don’t read my letter, I’ll be processing my feelings on the utter uselessness of makedown and the social causes that impel people to use it... I’m just kidding.  There are much more worthy things to get angry over in this world than makedown, and with such a quantity of outrage tinder proliferating in today’s news, I don’t get that outraged over makedown anymore.  Makedown is annoying, dearly beloved, and most men find it really stupid, but a little makedown never killed anybody, nor is it a part of womynshellf, unlike birth control, abortion, sex change surgery, etc.