Engagement Ring? Check. Diet Pills? Double Check.

Here is the thing: I’m not unhappy with the way I look. Sure, there are things I’d like to change, but noth­ing I want badly enough to, like, WORK, on it. Plus, I kind of hate working out. I mean, I have no objection to daily physical activity – riding my bike to class, etc.

But I have never been much for doing repetitive motions on a sticky mat while surrounded by lots of other, fitter people. Beyond that, I’m a busy person; it’s not like I’ve got a lot of free time I want to spend on the non-chased variety of running. Given all that, you might think I would be one of the last people you would find in a gym. But you’d be wrong. And oddly enough, it’s because of my wedding to the man who loves me no matter what I look like.

To clarify, this actually has very little to do with my fiancé. He is 100% consistent in affirming that he loves me no matter how I look (which, if you’ve seen me when I’m sick, you know is a good thing). Like I said before, it isn’t really about me, either. Until I started planning my wed­ding, I thought about my weight approximately never.

What it IS about is the fact that, once I was en­gaged, I found out that the already-ubiquitous “only-skin­ny-is-pretty” message is thrown at brides-to-be even harder than it is at women in general. In the bridal and wedding planning magazines, on websites, in stores and especially in the ads targeted toward me, the message is the same: “It’s your big day, and you want to look your best. Bet­ter start shedding those pounds!” And while I would have thought I’d be the last person in the world to be affected by that message, it has had a surprising and negative effect on my self-esteem.

For better or worse, weddings are an industry. Hon­estly, that’s part of what makes them fun: buying the dress, the invitations, figuring out all the little specifics, and de­ciding how to tweak all the details to make it an awesome celebration. But obviously, the industry has a negative side as well. A lot of people are highly invested in getting future brides and grooms to spend money, and a good way to do that is to convince said brides and grooms that they need what is being sold.

This is nothing new – creating markets is how cap­italism continues to function, and products to make you “look better” (whatever that means) comprise a pretty lu­crative market. For some reason though (naïveté?), I wasn’t expecting such a bombardment on the wedding front. A lot of the advertising is really easy to turn down; I feel con­fident about getting through my wedding day without the aid of a monogrammed plastic cake slicer or confetti that spells “Congratulations!”

However, some of it is a little harder to ignore. It was really surprising to me how much I found myself being drawn in by the ads trying to convince me that I need to lose weight, especially because most of the weight-loss ads really are stu­pid. On the scale of legitimacy from “confetti” to “a well-made dress,” the weight loss ads tend to fall way down on the confetti side.

If I’m going to lose weight, it’s not going to be with “Strip That Fat,” “Bridal Bootcamp” or “AcaiSlim” (I didn’t see a single one suggesting the old “moderate diet and exercise” regime). In fact, I’m pretty sure that there’s a rule book for writing weight-loss ads, because they all follow pretty much the same formula.

They start by featuring a sad, pathetic “before” photo of the “fat” person who is “miserable” because of her (and it’s almost always her) weight. Then come the outlandish promises about fantastic success with no effort, and the talk about all the health ben­efits of weight loss in general and the product in particular. Next, they an­nounce what a fabulous, money-sav­ing, one-time-only deal the product is. Finally, there is the prominently displayed “after” photo of the made-over, better photographed, airbrushed “skinny person” who is so much hap­pier, thanks to this wonderful product!

The particularly devious as­pect of these ads isn’t that they are so convincing; it’s that they are ev­erywhere. As you might expect, I first noticed these ads on Facebook, after the all-important switching-of-the-relationship-status to “engaged.”

I didn’t notice right away, probably because I was responding to the thousands of “Congrats!” wall posts, but at some point, I realized that all the ads that used to encour­age me to see a movie or become an egg donor (a whole new can of weird, weird worms) were now making help­ful suggestions about losing “all that weight” before the wedding. I’m talk­ing about 95% of all the ads Facebook shows me. While I get the occasional advertisement for a photographer or wedding planner, the overwhelming majority are about weight loss. And since they only appeared once I was “engaged,” it’s clear that they’re tar­geted towards the wedding crowd.

My fiancé, by the way, has gotten no similar ads on his Facebook. Not only has he not seen any ads about losing weight, he hasn’t seen a single one about anything to do with his ap­pearance. Mostly, his ads are about movies, with the occasional photogra­pher or honeymoon suggestion thrown in. He does get those emails adver­tising various “male enhancement” products, but that’s a whole different kettle of proverbial fish.

Of course, wedding weight-loss ads are not limited to Facebook. Wedding magazines and wedding plan­ning websites are only two of the other most obvious examples. Inter­estingly, I haven’t seen any ads for weight-loss in or near any wedding dress stores. I would guess this is be­cause these stores are already trying to sell me something, and they don’t want to encourage me to spend money on anything else.

Don’t worry, though: these stores make up for the lack of ads with a surfeit of size zero models, gleefully prancing around in the dresses I’m about to try on. There are very few advertisements featuring “plus size” women, or any women above a size zero, and, of those, none of them ap­pear in ads with the same degree of polish and couture that the “regular” women receive.

Granted, this is true of any clothing advertisements, but wedding dresses receive special scrutiny. “The most important dress you’ll ever buy” is just one of the terrifying titles a wedding dress gets, and dress adver­tisers do their best to reinforce that message. In other words, wedding dress shopping hardly provides any re­lief from the self-esteem barrage.

Clearly I’m aware that the presence of these ads doesn’t mean that I, personally, need to lose weight. I should pretty much be able to say, “Give me a break” and move on. But for some reason, since I’ve been en­gaged, my self-esteem has taken a dis­tinct downturn.

And despite my long-standing dislike of gyms and having the busi­est semester since I came to college, I have started going to the gym twice a week with my fiancé. I know that exercise is good for me – it gives me more energy, keeps me healthy, all that good stuff. But knowing all that has never made it worth my while be­fore. The fact is that common roman­ticisms about the “beautiful bride” can seem like a lot of pressure when they’re turned on you. And some­times, all the knowledge about unhealthy gender expectations in the world doesn’t make you feel any better when you look in the mirror.

Let’s take a moment to revel in the irony here. Isn’t the point of getting married that you’ve found someone who loves you uncon­ditionally, at your best and your worst? I mean, I’m all for looking one’s best in any situation, and, ok, let’s be clear: I’m certainly planning on looking my best for my wedding. But I don’t think “looking my best” should require the sacrifice of my peace of mind.

A wedding should be about celebrating the fact that two people have decided to commit themselves to each other. It isn’t about proving to my future spouse, or anyone else, that I’m pretty enough to marry him. If I’m supposed to spend my time preparing for it by making myself as beautiful as I can be, a wedding sounds like a pretty shallow celebration of love.

As much as I can, I try not to let the pressure get me down. I know I should be too self-confident to lose weight just because a wedding maga­zine tells me to. Still, on my bad days, something about the experience of be­ing targeted by weight-loss ads makes me feel like maybe I’m just not quite good enough. Overall, the “be skin­nier” message is only one message among many other positive ones, and the bad days are pretty rare. Still, I think it’s worth noting that it is a mes­sage at all. In the midst all the joy a wedding entails, this is one message I haven’t quite been able to tune out.