{"id":2794,"date":"2025-04-07T01:44:17","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T05:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=2794"},"modified":"2025-04-07T01:44:17","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T05:44:17","slug":"we-aint-getting-no-younger-we-might-as-well-do-it-jagged-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2025\/04\/07\/we-aint-getting-no-younger-we-might-as-well-do-it-jagged-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"“We ain’t getting no younger, we might as well do it” – Jagged Edge"},"content":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/youtu.be\/A9jZOoMaK5U?si=Mi6opSa55IMCRoV5<\/a><\/p>\n

For this week\u2019s blog post, I want to connect the YouTube video \u201cWhy I\u2019m Not Married\u201d by Gloom (Kassie) with Eve Sedgwick\u2019s essay Christmas Effects<\/em> from Queer and Now<\/em>. In the video, Kassie addresses a recurring question she gets from friends, family, and followers: \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you married, even though you got engaged five years ago?\u201d The video opens with Kassie describing herself as someone with a \u201cvery defiant personality.\u201d Since childhood, she explains, she needed to understand exactly why<\/em> she had to do something and if she didn\u2019t get a clear or compelling reason, her answer was simply no (2025). She follows this statement with an anecdote from elementary school. During a birthday celebration, her teacher asked each student to wish a classmate happy birthday. When it was Kassie\u2019s turn, she refused. Even after being told to say it, she refused, which eventually led to the teacher calling Kassie’s parents to report her behavior. This anecdote might seem trivial, or like Kassie was just being a jerk, but it actually echoes the ideas Sedgwick covers in Christmas Effects<\/em>. Sedgwick writes that certain times of year like Christmas can feel depressing because \u201call the institutions are speaking with one voice\u201d (1993). Everything around us during that time of year seems to expect the same emotional response or behavior, and any resistance can feel isolating. Sedgwick uses Christmas as a metaphor, but the effect extends to other social institutions as well such as marriage. Similar to Christmas, marriage often carries expectations of conformity. It\u2019s not just a romantic or legal union but a combination of a “normal” family unit: a shared surname, an economic unit, a legal unit, a system of companionship and a mechanism to care for children (1993). Kassie\u2019s resistance to marriage, then, feels like a continuation of the same impulse that made her resist saying \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d as a child. It\u2019s not that she opposes celebration, it’s the feeling of being pressured to participate in something simply because it\u2019s expected. Kassie ends the video by revealing that her relationship feels good in its current form. The societal pressure to marry makes her question whether she ever truly wanted it in the first place. Similar to Sedgwick\u2019s analysis of Christmas, Kassie\u2019s story is a reflection on how societal expectations can blur the line between genuine desire and social obligation. Her answer to \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you married?\u201d is ultimately simple: she\u2019s still figuring out if it\u2019s something she wants, not just committing to something she\u2019s supposed to do. She’s in no rush to throw a party where she’s the “last to arrive and the first to leave” even though the wedding is designed to be for her (2025).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/youtu.be\/A9jZOoMaK5U?si=Mi6opSa55IMCRoV5 For this week\u2019s blog post, I want to connect the YouTube video \u201cWhy I\u2019m Not Married\u201d by Gloom (Kassie) with Eve Sedgwick\u2019s essay Christmas Effects from Queer and Now. In the video, Kassie addresses a recurring question she gets from friends, family, and followers: \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you married, even though you got engaged five … Continue reading “We ain’t getting no younger, we might as well do it” – Jagged Edge<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5321,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-class-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5321"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}