My Sister Doesn’t Want My Wife at Her Wedding. She’s Threatened By Her Stunning Good Looks.

Dear Prudence Should I bring her anyway? Advice by Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Jenée Desmond-Harris? Sept 09, 20266:00 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by dcdp/iStock/Getty Images Plus and msan10/iStock/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here. Dear Prudence, My wife is smoking. She is the most gorgeous woman ever. She acts as if it’s not that bad; it’s so bad that strangers STOP on the street to look at her. I’m not joking. This devilishly smoking woman looks like a mix of Adriana Lima, Anok Yai, and Sofia Vergara—being half Brazilian and half Eritrean. My sister is getting married. She and I are basically look-alikes, meaning she’s a pretty average-looking white woman, and I’m an average-looking white man. She wants to invite my wife and me, but she is scared about attention being naturally drawn to my (her words, not mine) “exotic wifey.” To which I said, she’s not exotic; she’s just like her and me, human. She scoffed and said I am invited, but not my wife. To be fair, my wife is naturally flirty—with everyone, though, from seniors to friends. So I understand why my sister could feel a little threatened, knowing that the groom-to-be and my wife used to date for a year or two in college, long, long ago. My wife knows about this and is fine with not going and staying home. But I do not want to put down my wife because of my sister’s insecurities. If her husband-to-be truly loves her, he wouldn’t feel anything for my wife on their wedding day. So should I take my wife to the wedding? Or put my pride aside and leave her at home? —Average Husband Dear Average Husband, What a turn this took! Why did I hear about your wife’s genetic admixture before I heard about the fact that she used to date the groom? It sounds like you and your sister are equally guilty of exoticising her and creating an overblown story about her power to derail a wedding day with her appearance and flirty glances. I’d even go as far as to suggest that the whole “her parents are from these two different countries, so she’s so breathtakingly gorgeous and such a celebrity lookalike that nobody who’s near her can pay attention to anyone else” narrative gives you a thrill. I guess if that dynamic works in your marriage, that’s your business. The more disturbing part is that your sister is, as you suggest, dehumanizing her with the “exotic wifey” label, which is pretty racist. Plus, it’s a distraction from the real reason she doesn’t want your wife there: the previous relationship your wife had with the groom. It’s a simple case of jealousy. Your wife doesn’t care, thankfully. I’m happy she isn’t relying on your family for acceptance or validation. So let her stay home. And, by the way, resist telling your sister that she looks beautiful in her dress “for an average white person.” Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Prudence, I am the last of five children. I have two sisters and two brothers, all in their 60s to 70s. When we went to dinner, my 70-year-old sister and 62-year-old brother scolded me for using “ma’am” to politely address our server. I believe that server was in her 40s or 50s. My two siblings told me it was rude to use that word. When did this happen? And why is it rude? —Old School Manners Dear Old School Manners, This seems like the kind of debate that’s shaped by differences in culture, geography, and upbringing, so it’s surprising to me that you and your siblings disagree about it when you were all raised in the same household! I assume your brother and sister thought your use of “ma’am” was rude because it implied to the server that you did not see her as a young woman. Janelle Davis’ 2023 essay for CNN, “How ma’am went from being a respectful word for some but polarizing for others,” gets into this idea a little, explaining, “Historically, female youth is connected to all kinds of privileged social attributes—beauty, fertility and marriageability. If these attributes represent a subjective peak of femininity, the less young a woman is, the less compelling her social standing. When a woman is called ‘ma’am,’ even by a well-meaning stranger, it can send a specific and unwanted social message.” With this in mind, even some ma’am users might refer to a younger woman as “Ms.” instead. But the bottom line is that there’s no consensus on when it’s appropriate to use “ma’am,” or how it feels to be addressed that way. A server who interacts with hundreds of people a day, of all people, was almost certainly unfazed by it. Switching topics from etiquette to the dynamic between you and your siblings, I’m going to throw out a theory about why they reacted so negatively to your use of the term, which really wasn’t “rude” at all: You’re all getting a little bit older (and they’re even older than you are), and they may be self-conscious about behaving or speaking in ways that mark them as out of touch. Maybe they felt that your “ma’am” aged the table in the eyes of the server. Would they rather you use “bro” next time? Prudie Wants to Hear From You! Readers often have great suggestions for our letter writers, occasionally disagree with a point Prudie makes, or simply want to provide some additional advice. Each week, Prudie will be replying to some of these comments and suggestions from readers, which will be featured on the site on Fridays for Slate Plus members. Write to us! Or submit a question here. Dear Prudence, Last year, my neighbor lost her husband to a battle with cancer. Another neighbor just very recently (within the last month) lost her husband to a battle with another cancer. I am not sure they know each other, and I wonder if it would be inappropriate or not to somehow introduce the two of them. They are of a similar age, with similarly aged children, and I just feel like they might be a friend to each other right now. I only really know the two of them well enough via text messages related to neighborly things, so hosting them together would be out of character. I just want them to know they live in proximity to each other and might appreciate each other. That said, I haven’t been through anything like what they are coping with and don’t want to misstep or overreach. What do I do? Is the answer nothing? —Friends and Neighbors Dear Friends and Neighbors, This urge is very familiar to me, and I know it comes from a great place, but you should resist the urge to connect them. They are both too vulnerable right now, and there are too many unknowns. Will one person feel too depressed to respond to the other’s text and cause a rejection spiral? Will they feel obligated to become friends to avoid awkwardness even if they don’t really click? Will one share a spiritual take on loss that doesn’t land for the other and makes her feel uncomfortable? None of this would be tragic—this stuff happens in life—but you don’t want to be responsible for it or have to figure out how to proceed if one of them wants to pull back from the other and suddenly you’re being expected to provide an explanation. But if they were to connect a little more organically, that would be great. You say it would be out of character for you to host them together, but you are allowed to do things that are out of character! Pick an activity you like—a weekly walk in a local park, a wine and cheese night, a pumpkin decorating party, or an afternoon picking apples from the tree in your yard, and invite them both plus two other friends. Then do it one more time, to account for mismatched schedules. Now they’ll have an opportunity to be in the same place and to decide if they feel drawn to each other, but you won’t be in the driver’s seat. If it’s meant to be, it will be. Classic Prudie My boyfriend once dated the girl next door—literally. “Emma” played with him in the wading pool and dated him through high school and college. It is the biggest disappointment to everyone that the relationship didn’t work out. Emma is constantly present at family events with her parents. Everyone loves her and has so many stories to tell about my boyfriend and her… Advice Dear Prudence Family Marriage