Im a sophomore in high school. My friend is a senior. I was raised as a christian, so naturally I met my best friend at church. Her parents are wayyy more fundamentalist and strict than my single mother though. I remember wearing a skirt to her place and she looked at me incredulously and said, "Wear leggings underneath your skirt! Do you want to get raped?" Back then, rape to me was still a relatively new and horrifying concept so that statement of hers harmed me. I now realize that it was indicative of the TOXICITY that her parents put on her. I can only imagine what rhetoric that they were teaching her behind closed doors. I remember another incident where she discovered a picture of me holding the middle finger up and went on a crying rant about the "sins of life" where she raved about what I was going to do with my life to prepare for eternity in heaven.

I know that if I was raised like she was, it would take years to deprogram myself of the misogynistic teachings and close minded beliefs. Don't get me wrong-my family is not any better, they still believe that anyone who is not a Christian is somehow morally degenerate because they dont have to rely on a god's law to dictate whether or not murder is wrong or something.

Her mother has always encouraged her to go after good, decent, CHRISTIAN men. Almost nobody would meet the mark because her mother was so judgmental. She and my mother both are the biggest shit-talkers I've ever seen, and the had no other hobbies other than slutshaming other women who dont fit into societal standards. It was then that my friend met her future husband. Despite the fact that he was 26 years old and she was only 16, her mother was enamored. She encouraged closely supervised dates between her and the man, and he brought her cakes every week and gave her lavish designer gifts. He seemed like a "Good guy" because he graduated from an Ivy League school, went to church, and was relatively making money (although I heard he got laid off of his job). Her parents (and mine) love to justify it by saying he's a GOOD CHRISTIAN MAN WHO CAN'T DO NO HARM and saying that her parents had an age gap too, it's totally fine! (except they were in their twenties/thirties when they met.)

And now he has proposed to her. They're getting married when she turns eighteen.

He's been grooming her for two years. Two years, and I was too concerned with my own life to notice because I thought her parents would have more sense.

I'm terrified. She's going to live the rest of her life as a Stepford wife to a man who groomed her. I can't live knowing that I could have told her my opinion. I can't live knowing the true extent of my family's radical beliefs, so radical they would support this. I'm hopeless.

We truly live in a world where women hate themselves enough to justify doing this to their own daughters. Women who uphold chastity and purity all for the approval of men and society. Pick-meism is more that just a surface level trait. It is much, much deeper than that.