The other inevitable question that white people have on arrang | Lemix

The other inevitable question that white people have on arranged marriages: “Are you going to get one?”

I never know how to respond to this question. To me, it’s the same as asking whether I’ll get a tattoo. If I’m bored, maybe. I make it a habit not to take a definitive stance on things like that. I don’t want to say “No, I’ll NEVER EVER in my life EVER get a tattoo.” Then I’d look really stupid when I got one.

There are two Priyas warring in my head. Good Priya wants to be polite. Bad Priya wants to flip the script.

Bad Priya, *in a leather jacket, smoking Marlboro Reds*: Well, do you think you’ll go the other route and marry some dude you met at the bar six months ago? Whose mother you haven’t even met? One of those what-d’you-call-’ems—weird love marriages that are based entirely on fleeting sexual desire and are therefore bound to fail?

Unfortunately, Good Priya always wins, so I answer with: “Well, I don’t know.” This answer, I have learned, is the wrong answer to give. White people are never satisfied with this answer. I can feel it on their lips, the struggle to not say, “But whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?”

It’s the wrong question to ask. Who, if they had the chance to meet a decent, financially solvent, reasonably attractive, and intelligent man from a good family background, would decline? It’s no more labor than a Tinder date and potentially much more rewarding.

I tell them: “You know I can say no, right? It’s very simple . . . my parents introduce me to a man and we have a cup of coffee or get dinner together. And if I don’t like him, or he doesn’t like me, we can say ‘no.’ It’s not as if every meeting leads to marriage. You generally meet quite a few people before you find the one you’re compatible with. Just like in real life.”

They don’t know what to do with that information. They stir their coffee while they try to think of another objection.

I wonder how many of them watch The Bachelor.

The Bachelor is a deeply grotesque television show that has somehow become part of the very fabric of American culture. The essential premise is this: twenty-five women (or men, if it’s The Bachelorette) gather in a house to compete for the affections of an absolute stranger. Meanwhile, the bachelor has two months to select a fiancée from the women present.

During this process, the contestants are not allowed TV or cell phones; they are completely cut off from the world outside the Bachelor mansion. They spend their time fixing their hair, arguing, and waiting around for the bachelor to give them plastic roses.

Throughout the season, the contestants and the bachelor give interviews in which they repeatedly say, “This is a dream come true.” It’s an absolute fairy tale, chirps Kimberly, twenty-four, as she adjusts her too-tight diamanté gown. I’m the luckiest girl in the world! (As if being trapped in a house with twenty-five men isn’t the stuff of horror movies.)

I wonder how people can watch The Bachelor without seeing that it’s the less-honest version of an arranged marriage.

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