God, I am so with you on this. Everything has to have a label now. I'm 70, and I never even heard of the concept of a "mixed weight marriage" until this year, and suddenly I've heard it 100 times. Until now, it wasn't a cultural idea, and in fact, such marriages were almost the rule. Just look at old photos, movies, or old New Yorker cartoons. A wife much heavier than the husband was a cultural cliche. Once people reached their early middle years, thin wasn't an expectation for a woman, and fat men with skinny wives was also common. For either sex, being fat was a sign that you were rich enough to be able to get fat. Nobody dwelt on it.
Who suddenly decided to make "mixed weight" a thing?! All of these absurdities emanate from a very narrow cultural cadre of upper-middle class, Eastern US, cultural elite that went to a handful of culturally dominant universities. (I went to one myself.) One of the most prominent features of these people is an almost hermetic inexperience with anyone who is not of their own narrow social class. It's not a racial grouping---it's a culture/class to which persons of any race can belong.
They have constructed a system of rampant conformism where every possible mode of life has to have a label and a rigid set of expectations.
In many ways, the world has become vastly more prejudiced and hateful than it used to be. Old fashioned, obvious racism, sexism, and homophobia are out of fashion (thank god), but judging people by countless more subtle categories, many of which in fact include race, sex, and gender, and above all, social class, is much worse.
I never thought I'd live to see a time when it is the left (my people) and not the right wing crazies, who are the ones most concerned with the "one drop" rule, and categorizing everyone by race and gender. To say nothing of the profound bitter hatred of people who are not on the left. We all used to be able to go to the same parties! Read almost any mid-Century fiction. Parties with lefties arguing with right-wingers and Catholic clergy was a trope. The "bull session" where people of every political stripe argued it out was a staple of college life.
For anyone over the age of sixty, it's bizarre, and seems highly retrograde. For any politician who is not cis and white, their race and gender is all anyone in the media talks about. Absolutely the least interesting thing about Kamala Harris and Barak Obama is the fact that they are not white--why is that the main thing that the media ever talks about? Or Pete Buttigieg--seriously, is the only thing interesting about his that he's gay? Is the only notable thing about Chris Christie that he's fat?
