The Bachelorette Capital of the World
Nashville, gender and the female gaze
I’m currently sitting in a Nashville airport.
It’s 4:50am, I’m eating an $80 sandwich, and a woman just walked by with an oversized coffee and a smirk. A smirk that says, can you believe it’s 4:50am? You said it, sister.
Right behind her, and again I stress it’s 4:50am, strides a woman in a red sequined miniskirt. The sequins are the big kind, individual discs of plastic strung together in a sheet of tacky fun. She wears cowboy boots and bouncy, highlighted curls, the thousandth head of perfectly styled hair I’ve seen on my trip here.
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I came to Nashville to visit my friend, a mom of three boys. But I knew her when we both had acne. More accurately, I had acne, she only got it in her hairline where no one could see it, and I was jealous. Not envious, jealous. She had lovely skin, and while I’ve always been more vain, she was the carefree beauty in high school. The one who barely knows what to do with eyeliner, while I’m over here studying Seventeen like it’s actual scripture. She never wore makeup. I wore it all wrong.
The high-rise we’re staying in is a gift from my client, who happens to be a sexologist.
What does she do? my friend asks. I explain as best I can.
Outside, nineteen floors above downtown Nashville, buses of squealing bachelorettes roll by.
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The first thing you notice is they’re themed, these buses. Often with tropes of masculinity. I saw at least 20 truck-with-a-trailer bachelorette buses, bales of hay for seating. I saw a tractor declaring the words “Farm Party” across the sides. I even saw a military-style vehicle with a driver dressed up as a soldier, looking bored at a red light while women WOOOOO!’d in the back. There were gyrating to blaring country music, daring fellow motorists to honk, doing it all in matching pink shirts.
Everyone dresses like little teams here.
I ask people where the bachelorette capital status came from. No one seems to know, but I did a little research.
The Tennesean tells me that it’s central and affordable. But the local paper of record also gushes that Nashville has “an amazing foodie scene!” and “live music galore!” so their findings might be suspect. Anne Helen Petersen, a culture writer I enjoy with a popular Substack, says that “bachelorettes are a vivid symbol of the city’s rapid gentrification — and the pitfalls of a new, “experience”-driven brand of tourism.” That seems closer. Hers is an in-depth think piece on class, segregation, the performance of leisure and social media-juiced capitalism: it’s really good, and if that sounds interesting to you, you should read it.
But I’m more interested in the gender side of things.
As the tip of the spear for heteronormativity, it feels like there’s something additional going on with Nashville, and all those bachelorettes.
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For me personally, skipping makeup is like an invisibility cloak. I leave it off, shop’s closed. The second I put it on, it’s like I’ve flipped a neon sign. OPEN, it says.
Nashville men talk to me. On the elevator. At the coffee shop. At the bar. No wedding ring? One comes right out and asks. I explain that I’m married, actually, but my partner and I never wear our rings. We use our hands a lot. Oh yeah? he asks suggestively.
The gender signals in Nashville are big and obvious, with a distinct absence of fluidity. I imagine my more queer friends chuckling at The Gulch, a brunch-laden neighborhood that specifically caters to bachelorettes, amused by the femme/masc polarity of it all.
You are unambiguously, unironically women, aren’t you, I think, as a bachelorette group walks by me. Each is clad in creative uses of denim and rhinestones that spell words.
One of them smells really, really good.
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Here’s something I think about all the time.
We, the collective we, live inside the 50-year legacy of a Supreme Court ruling that drastically changed women’s sexual autonomy. And for all the talk about Roe, no one really talks about Eisenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that made it legal for unmarried people (women) to get birth control.
After the case and the precedent before it (Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, which legalized birth control for married couples), things really changed for women. Between 1960 and 2011, the number of women who completed four or more years of college multiplied by six. That’s a lot.
More women are educated now, with more job options. In 2023, I see that female spending power at Milk & Honey, a Gulch brunch spot with a two-and-a-half hour wait.
I see a more lively illustration of that spending power, living it up in those truck beds.
The gender flip of Las Vegas maybe, where guys in a limo get chauffeured to strip clubs, dollar bills at the ready.
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I am 41 years old. One generation above mine, women got married resigned to the fact that they’d have to satisfy their man sometimes – and, just deal with the consequences of possible pregnancy. The mother of a friend of mine received the advice to keep a romance novel on her bedside table, because, as her own mother put it, she wouldn’t always be in the mood. But he would be, always. So.
Meanwhile, one generation below mine, sex positive girlies can walk into a CVS and buy a vibrator. I read Bellesa’s Instagram account a lot for work, a sea of Gen Z humor and G-spot orgasms. They are boisterously entitled to their own pleasure, they reclaimed the word “slut” years ago, wouldn’t dream of allowing a guest into their bed who refused to go down on them. LOL, nope.
I was having these thoughts walking down 11th Avenue, when the military truck rolled by.
He’s not my type, but I did notice the driver, who was muscley. Conventionally hot, square jaw, shoulders, blah blah blah. The woo!-ing girls in the back seemed vaguely mid-30s, not much younger than me.
And, it made me think about the female gaze.
It made me think about the driver’s potential work day.
It made me think about the next morning, when I’d be touching down in Austin, and he might be sweeping glitter off his truck bed. Feathers too, probably. It made me think about Venmo tips, and if he’d get one that said thx sexy! 😘
It made me think about his age, and if he’d eventually age out of this line of work.
It made me think about the fit of his shirt, and if he chose one that emphasized certain features of his body. Tighter across the chest.
It made me think he might have to work out to have this job.
It made me think that tomorrow might be leg day for him, but then he might also check his docket, and see that Madison’s 34 and getting married this weekend. It made me think her friend might have paid extra for a strip tease.
Maybe it’s chest day, too.
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I used to work in an office with a window facing West 5th Street. In springtime, starting every Thursday after lunch, I'd hear the distant "wooooo" calls from down the street beyond Donn's Depot. I'd be putting proposals together, so I'd put down my work and wait by the window for the slow crawl of the Trolley Pub to make its way down the street with about 8-10 bachelorettes on board. There was something so strange about the routine nature of it, but it was captivating every time. It was like a slow-motion wave of cavalry-in-cut-offs letting us know that winter was finally over. It was also very much the meme of Squidward looking out the window and seeing SpongeBob and Patrick run around gleefully. Now that I work 45 minutes north of downtown, I kinda miss it.
As someone who has lived in Nashville for the majority of my “adult” life, I remember when the bachelorette meanderings made their way out of solely downtown roundabouts 10 years ago. And I remember when it was irritating and then I remember when I started to allow myself to laugh about it and accept the reality and then I remember when it started to just sort of feel normalized to life experience here and now I’m sort of indifferent about it. I sure have met some people over the years that made some damn good money creating experiences for bachelorettes tho.
“As the tip of the spear for heteronormativity...” Curious what you’re implying about Nashville there. Even though I know it’s true 😂 🗡️
Enjoying your writings