Bachelorette parties are like the Title IX of weddings: they’re supposed to make the girls equal to the boys. If the groomsmen can take their boy out for a “last hurrah,” so can we, right? After all, now that she has a matching set of Pyrex casserole dishes, she'll probably never go to a bar ever again. She'll be too busy darning the holes in her man's socks.
— Ellen Horowitz and Joanna Dreifus, www.bridesmaidaid.com
Bachelor parties date back to 5th Century BCE Sparta—or so the story goes. Far from the bacchanalia of today, the Spartans held formal dinners to honor their comrade. It took the Victorians to add a hint of the forbidden to the affair, when a bachelor’s friends would give him one last chance to say his goodbyes to the friends his wife may not approve of once he was wed. Although unlikely to include a Hollywood-ready parade of narcotics and prostitutes, these Victorian evenings had a sense of the “last night of freedom” that would come to define both bachelor and bachelorette bashes.
Bridal showers date back some 300 years. These events focus on preparing ummarried women to become housewives, and were developed to provide dowry-less women with the means to outfit their kitchens and dining rooms. Bachelorette parties, with their focus on the activities of the bedroom, came into fashion with second-wave feminism in the 1960s. They began somewhat tamely by today’s standards, serving as a chance to give lingerie and other gifts to suggest postnuptial sexual adventure. The search for those adventures themselves developed in a broad way over the 1980s and ’90s, coming to represent the last days of the affianced woman’s sexual freedom. As they have grown in popularity and ambition, bachelorette parties have developed into a multi-million dollar industry. According to sociologist Laura Grindstaff, bachelorette parties “tacitly acknowledge the importance of homosocial bonds and that women, too, make sacrifices when they marry.”
While the women of Bachelorette are loathe to admit any sacrifices—in friendship or otherwise— the now-familiar backdrop for girls gone wild sets the tone for Headland’s acid-edged investigation of excess, addiction, and compulsive behavior.