My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding: Grabbing

In the reality TV show, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, it is about Irish, English, and Scottish traveling gypsy's who get married very young and how their lives are much more than unusual. They get married around 16 or 17 years old and go on to move into trailers with their husbands and start a family. The man is always in charge and is the breadwinner in the family, the women's or should i say girls, responsibility is to get pregnant and take care of the "home". The young guys and girls begin to interactive at out age 13-15 years old. The one thing that truly disturbed me about this show was a typical ritual that these young kids deal with called "grabbing". It is when the boy grabs and almost hurts the girl, until the girl gives him a kiss. It is apart of their culture but at the same time it is just another example of how guys think they need to be strong and forceful to get respect and girls. In the show they interview the girls about the grabbing and many of them say they hate it and do not like it but they put up with the grabbing because that's how they find a mate. It is a sad and unfortunate event that goes on in the youth of the gypsy culture and one of the many reasons that men think they must have power and physical control in a relationship therefore allowing abuse in the relationship. Much like we saw today in Jackson Katz documentary that these types of ideas and practices that we have in different cultures are what leads to the problems we have in our gender war over power.