Daddy-Daughter Rings: Cute or Creepy?

By Judy Lee ‘17

While scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed the other day, I came across a particular story on CNN detailing a “giving-away” ceremony held between a young girl and her dying father.

While this “feel good” story is sentimental and viewed by many as sweet, I find it rather disturbing that a young girl of ten is not only getting pseudo-married to her dad, but that it is a father’s last wish not to see his daughter graduate, get her dream job and travel the world, but to see her get married (as if this were her ultimate goal in life, and the one he values the most).

Watching the video, the first thing I notice about this girl is the streaks of pink in her hair. It makes me reminisce of the years when everyone I knew wanted a streak in their hair. It makes me think of adjusting to middle school and homework that included more than just a one-sided worksheet to take home at night. It makes me want to know more about her—her thoughts, dreams, aspirations.

I want to know how she feels about the prospect of losing her father. It didn’t seem as if she had comprehended that he was going away forever, and understandably so. I don’t know of many ten-year-olds who are capable of fathoming something as significant as death.

Marriage, however, seems to fall outside the category of “unfathomable.”

“Later in life when I get married when I’m, like, twenty,” says a contemplative Nicole Wells, “my little flower girl is going to wear this dress that I’m wearing right now.”

To Nicole, I ask: why the rush? To those couples that get married at a young age of their own volition, hats off to them. I respect those who know what they want and have the conviction to pursue it. However, hearing those words from a ten-year-old girl dressed in a miniature wedding dress seems so horribly confining to me.

Doesn’t she want to discover what else she could possibly be doing at age twenty? She could be enrolled in university, taking a breath of fresh air on the edge of a beach, sipping a cappuccino and sharing a smile with someone across the café. She could be swimming with dolphins and acquiring research on their behavior, shouting in a protest rally for something she believes in defending, discovering her inner strength during a thunderstorm—anything she wanted to do.

Who knows? She could very well choose to get married at age twenty, but I sincerely hope that it would ultimately be her own decision.

This isn’t just about a ten-year-old girl and her father. This issue dates back to dated kinship conventions of marriage as not a link between a man and a woman, but a business deal between a father and a husband, the wife being a vessel by which to secure family bonds.

I’m not attacking this particular father himself, but the societal notion that a woman’s worth is in the man she associates herself with. What is marriage, at its most objective core, but a contract?

In essence, this ten-year-old girl has been entered into a binding contract with her father until she can find another man to replace him in protecting her and catering to her supposed dependency on male figures.

Over a ring, I would have personally preferred a telescope so that I may gain foresight and wisdom. I would have preferred a piece of bamboo so I remember that sometimes, strength is knowing when to bend with the wind. I would have preferred a tattered patch from a quilt so I remember that while individuals are uniquely beautiful, they are but pieces of a larger tapestry.  I would have preferred a compass to remind me that no matter how lost I get, I can always choose to find my way home.

As the daughter of a single mom, I will, one, never receive those things from my father and, two, never have my father walk me down an aisle in the event that I choose to get married.

And while that’s a saddening prospect to those around me, I find it more saddening when those people suggest different males in my life to "give me away." Is it so hard to fathom that I can give myself away to whomever I want? Is that not part of falling in love? The real tragedy doesn’t lie in my absent father, but the assumption of my absent autonomy.

Contrary to numerous heated conversations sparked by this “feel-good” news story, I strongly believe that the core of this is not “creepy, incestuous” undertones, but rather the problem of stripping the freedom of choice away from a young girl.

Suggesting that she doesn’t have enough individuality and independence to pilot the world without a dominant male figure in her life is a lot of weight to place on the narrow shoulders of a preteen girl who once asked for pink streaks in her hair. 

Rather than enforcing “I do,” how about we start with “I can.”