TikTokers Are Offering Their Hand in Lavender Marriage
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In case you’re happily coupled and/or trust-funded enough not to have noticed, being single is fucking expensive. Which is one of the reasons TikTokers have flooded the platform in recent months to offer their hand in lavender marriage.
Historically, a “lavender marriage” referred to a seemingly heterosexual union between a man and a woman wherein one or both parties was secretly part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Designed to conceal sexual orientation in a time when being queer could result in severe discrimination or violence, the term is most famously linked to early 20th-century Hollywood, when queer stars entered straight-presenting marriages to protect their image and reputation—and, of course, “their value to studios as box office draws,” says queer historian Justin Bengry.
Fast-forward several decades, and, in yet another sign of our regressive times, lavender marriages are back on trend—but this time with a uniquely 2020s twist. While some of TikTok’s lavender marriage renaissance is tied to anxieties about the future of LGBTQIA+ rights under Trump’s America: Part II, the sham marriages Gen Zs are joking (kind of) about seem to have less to do with obscuring queer identity and more more to do with achieving financial security and stable companionship in a time when both have become increasingly elusive, particularly for those of us navigating early adulthood in an age of inflation and loneliness epidemics.
Back in September, queer TikToker Robbie Scott was among the first to kick off the trend when he announced applications were now open to be his partner in lavender marriage. “I can be your husband, I can be your wife, I can be your dog, I can be whatever the fuck you want me to be,” he says in the video. “All you have to do is marry me so that I can afford to pay a mortgage, utilities, and taxes, that’s it. You can mess around with whoever you want whenever you want. In fact, I encourage it.” Robbie specifies that men need not apply—not because he’s trying to hide his sexuality behind a wife, but seemingly in an attempt to avoid mixing something as precarious as love and sex with the state-sanctioned financial stability an “I do” can yield.
And therein lies the crux of a seemingly frothy, tongue-in-cheek TikTok trend where the financial desperation of late-stage capitalism meets the romantic disillusionment of the post-Tinder era. In short, to paraphrase a perennially memed Pride and Prejudice quote: We’re 27 years old. We’ve no money and no prospects. We’re already a burden to our parents. And we’re frightened! Perhaps, like many an insufficiently doweried Jane Austen heroine before us, a marriage of convenience is the answer.
Lavender Marriage Then and Now
So how did lavender marriages go from a 20th-century survival tactic to a 2020s TikTok trend?
“Historically, lavender marriages have been a strategic way for LGBTQIA+ individuals to conceal one or both partners’ sexual orientation in order to access some of the privileges of heterosexual marriages, including legal protections, economic security, and social stability,” explains sex therapist Casey Tanner, a sexpert for Lelo. “Gen Z has adapted this term to describe partnerships in which the conventional romantic and sexual components of the relationship are less important than financial security and mutual support.”
On some level, TikTok’s reimagining of the lavender marriage of yore may seem like something of a misguided repurposing of the term, or even a potentially appropriative one that glosses over the very real dangers LGBTQIA+ folks sought protection from in historical lavender marriages.
“The original concept of a lavender marriage is deeply tied to queer history and the struggles LGBTQIA+ individuals faced in navigating oppressive societal structures,” says sociologist Jennifer Gunsaullus, PhD, a sexologist and relationship expert.”Repurposing it without acknowledging this history can erase the very real and often painful reasons these marriages existed.”
On the other hand, while the TikTokification of lavender marriage may be more about prioritizing financial security over romantic love than fending off homophobic discrimination, unions that fell under the original iteration of the term were not without fiscal motivations of their own. “Both are a response by people with less privilege to the economic realities of capitalism that serve to marginalize them further,” says Bengry, noting that while historical lavender marriages primarily served to “protect queer people from violence and ostracism,” they also enabled lavender brides and grooms to secure and retain employment in a time when workplace discrimination was alive, well, and lawful, as well as to access many of the same financial benefits that TikTokers are now seeking in their own “lavender marriages.”
Moreover, if these two conceptions of lavender marriage differ somewhat in their most immediate purpose, they are ultimately both subversive methods of leveraging oppressive standards to the advantage of the oppressed, of navigating the socioeconomic injustices of a given era.
“While the rebirth of the term ‘lavender marriage’ may be more cheeky and playful than its historic usage, it is powerful in that it reveals the longstanding and ongoing pressures individuals face as they negotiate between their values of economic stability and personal fulfillment,” says Tanner. “The meaning has expanded, but the sociopolitical context that privileges the traditional family unit has not.”
Regardless of the genders or sexualities of those involved in modern day lavender marriage à la TikTok, these unions (whether real or imagined) still represent a way of queering traditional family values, of breaking with gendered, heteronormative, and patriarchal expectations of what a marriage “should” be.
In the past, “these marriages were deeply rooted in survival and the need for safety in an oppressive society,” says Gunsaullus. “While this modern approach lacks the historical weight of necessity, it reflects a broader cultural shift toward questioning traditional relationship norms and creatively exploring new ways to build meaningful partnerships.”
Unlike the queer-masking lavender marriages of the previous century whose purpose was to blend in with heterosexual norms, today’s trend “isn’t about creating marriages that look like everyone else’s marriages,” says Tanner. “This is about forging new kinds of partnership that are more equitable and sustainable in the modern landscape.”
Love and Lavender Marriage
But the lavender marriage talk making the rounds on TikTok today isn’t just about money—it’s also about love. Or, rather, lack thereof. If lavender unions of yore were designed to help people who legally couldn’t marry who they loved reap the rewards of state-sanctioned matrimony, today’s version aims to do the same for those who fear we simply never will—the lonely and lovelorn and/or bored and burnt out who have neither the time nor the financial recourse to sit around waiting for “the one” to gain access to the fiscal, societal, and personal benefits of legal partnership.
Most TikTokers who have hopped on the trend seem to propose a platonic arrangement based on financial stability and companionship rather than romantic love—the subtext being that the financial security marriage affords feels substantially more secure when it’s not tied to something as precarious as romance. It’s a defensive move, one deployed to varying degrees by trad- and trophy wives alike: marrying for money. But if traditional lavender marriages were meant to be a facade, modern ones are the opposite—financially convenient arrangements that don’t pretend to be anything else.
In some ways, this is a radical idea, one that may even reflect Relationship Anarchist principles that argue love needn’t be imprisoned within hierarchies and relationships should be about fostering community rather than forging nuclear-family-sized factions. At the same time, this concept isn’t really so very foreign at all. The idea that lasting, stable, socioeconomically advantageous relationships likely aren’t the most romantic or sexually passionate is widely acknowledged, if often softened from a hard truth into a palatable piece of practical dating advice. We’re told and then tell ourselves that lust is the enemy of “real” love, excitement the opposite of stability. Burn too hot, burn out too fast. A “serious,” stable relationship is supposed to be a little boring, right? If a marriage doesn’t start out platonic, we’re generally led to believe it will end up that way eventually.
At the same time, of course, partners who’ve opted for stability over excitement, companionship over passion, are still meant to parade around as if they’re madly in love. Who among us has not listened to a friend complain about her boyfriend for years only to watch her gush over “the love of my life” on Instagram and thought, “Sure, Jan.”
TikTok’s lavender marriage trend proposes a practical alternative, one that, as Tanner notes, encourages authenticity and embraces non-monogamy: What if we could access the stable finances and long-term companionship of marriage sans the riskiness of romance, the pressure to “find the one,” and the pageantry of pretending we’ve all somehow managed to nail down our soulmates? What if we could do it all without sacrificing romantic freedom and sexual novelty? Maybe we don’t have to trade romance for socioeconomic security—we can just keep them separate. Maybe, these TikToks quietly posit, it was a mistake to ever combine them in the first place.
Are Lavender Marriages Really the Future?
“Is this really a thing or is it just something I saw on TikTok?” is a question I think we could all stand to ask ourselves a little more often. When it comes to TikTok’s lavender marriages, it’s hard to tell how widespread this practice is or will become in real life—in part because marriage certificates don’t have a box to check if you consider yours to be lavender in nature. But Gunsaullus echoes my suspicion that these TikTok proposals are more about voicing generational woes than actually taking a trip down the aisle.
“This trend feels more like a theoretical representation of Gen Z’s disillusionment with traditional romance, sex, monogamy, and the pressures of modern life than a widespread movement toward legal lavender marriages,” she says. However, Gunsaullus adds that the underlying sentiment here “reflects a deeper desire to reframe relationships in a way that prioritizes autonomy, practicality, and the depth of ‘chosen’ family.”
In this way, while TikTok’s lavender marriages may not be directly linked to a significant percentage of the weddings you’ll be overspending to attend this year, they do exist in the same universe as other (very real) alternative relationship styles that have become increasingly visible in recent years, including queerplatonic partnerships and the COVID-era “platonic marriage” trend.
And regardless of whether or not these lavender marriages are “real” in the “going to the chapel and we’re gonna get married” sense, the socioeconomic turmoil that sparked the trend couldn’t be more real.
“These new so-called lavender marriages are hardly a cheeky rebranding and more a pragmatic or even desperate response to ongoing economic precarity and danger that characterizes late capitalism,” says Bengry. “These threats to people’s (including queer people) safety and wellbeing exist independently of social media, catchwords, and branding.”
On the bright side, if the dangerous economic conditions that have Gen Z in a lavender haze are all too real, so are the shifting attitudes toward traditional relationships this trend reflects.
“As a relationship therapist, this generational shift in approach to marriage has been very apparent in my sessions,” says Tanner. “Conversations revolve less around finding ‘the one,’ and are more centered on how marriage fits into one’s overall concept of community, romance, sexuality and security.”
Whether in practice or only in theory, TikTok’s lavender marriages “reflect a desire to break free from rigid relationship norms, highlighting a growing inclusivity in how people view relationships,” says Gunsaullus. “If approached thoughtfully, this trend can encourage meaningful dialogue about the evolving definitions of relationships and partnerships and the importance of building them based on trust, shared goals, and mutual support.”
In an ideal world, of course, we wouldn’t need to either contort or conform to an outdated patriarchal structure like marriage just to survive. But we don’t live in an ideal world; we live in one that is quite literally on fire. And in the absence of a society that doesn’t hoard valuable perks and protections for the dutifully wed, TikTok’s lavender marriages—like the queer-shielding ones before it—emerge as a crafty workaround, a way of beating patriarchy at its own game.
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