This blog post is from HitchDied, one of the blogs on our blogroll this month. HitchDied took on the wedding magazine challenge of finding representation of gay couples.
Whenever I write a guest post, the introductory blurb always mentions my wedding magazine reviews. So when So You’re EnGAYged asked me for a post, I thought, “I’ll give the people what they want!” I would review wedding magazines looking specifically for coverage of gay couples. I’d just picked up a registry brochure from Crate & Barrel, and been delighted to see that one of the six couples depicted on the cover was two dudes. I knew that was a little unusual or it wouldn’t have caught my attention, but I thought I’d get some data on just how often wedding marketing includes gay couples.
So I turned to my big stack of wedding magazines to look for more inclusive advertising and coverage of same-sex couples in the content. I flipped. And flipped. And flipped. Until I got to the bottom of my stack. And across ten magazines1 I didn’t see a single. gay. couple.
Well, I can pretend these two bridesmaids are in love, right? Because their knees are touching? That body language is universally understood as “we have sex with each other, or at least really really want to,” right? Am I reaching? I’m reaching.
So I went back to the top of the stack. This time, I counted straight couples. Just to provide some context for the erasure of gay couples in wedding magazines. In ten magazines there were 674 straight couples depicted. 674 straight couples, 0 gay couples. There were more pictures of horses (8 horses across five different magazines) than of gay people in love.
No gay couples getting married. No gay couples frolicking on a tropical beach on a perfect honeymoon. No gay couples cooking together with the new gadgets they registered for at Macy’s. No gay couples dancing, even as guests at a straight couple’s wedding.
Even Crate & Barrel’s registry ad got straight-washed:
The heteronormativity doesn’t stop there. I looked at the articles scattered throughout the advertising and found further erasure of gay couples. A article on women proposing marriage somehow goes on for 1000+ words without mentioning lesbian couples. An article on the trials of the first year of marriage lists 10 stereotypes about masculinity under “the truth about husbands.” Both The Knot and Pittsburgh magazine provide the legal details for obtaining a marriage license, neither mentioning that in Pennsylvania and Delaware you can’t get a marriage license if your partner shares your sex. That seems like a pretty vital detail to include. Unless you’ve assumed your audience is entirely straight.
Which seems to be what these bridal mags have done. Which is unfair. And uncool. And unreal! I’m guessing it’s not just straight chicks who buy three or four of these overpriced ad-bundles within the first week of their engagement. And it’s not like straight readers (well, save the most hateful of them) would stop reading if they saw a feature on Jenny & Louise’s bohemian beach wedding. These magazines have no excuse for erasing and ignoring the existence of gay couples. 674:0 is an unacceptable ratio.
1 I looked at six issues of Brides (November 2010 through May 2011, minus the February issue because I couldn’t find it) and one issue each of Martha Stewart Weddings (Spring 2010), InStyle Weddings (Winter 2010), The Knot (Pennsylvania/Delaware Spring/Summer 2010), and Pittsburgh Magazine Weddings (2011). I wanted to grab a copy of a gay-focused wedding magazine for comparison purposes, but my local bookstore didn’t have any among the eight bridal titles in stock, and the creepily-named “Lifestyles” section began and ended with a single issue of Out.
I have never bought/read any of those magazines for the same reason. And also because 70% are ads so pretty useless. The way I see it, these magazines don’t want to upset some of their audience, those who don’t believe we should have the same rights.
But to Martha Stewart’s benefit, I think it was in 2009 (for one of the magazine’s anniversary) they included for the first time a real gay wedding of blogger Jeremy Hooper and his partner. I am not sure how many have done -if any- anything like it.
Of course not. They’d rather continue to marginalize and exclude the minority than risk offending the conservative masses.
Excellent post! I track similar information. Here’s the list of print magazines which have featured same-sex weddings: http://gayweddinginstitute.com/gay-weddings-in-the-media.htm
I’ve definitely also noticed the complete lack of gay weddings in the wedding magazines. It’s sad and surprising. I mean, it would seem to me like you’d want to broaden your audience. The only one I’ve ever seen represented (which someone else also mentioned) was in Martha Stewart Weddings: http://www.goodasyou.org/marthajeremyandrew2.pdf
[...] case you missed it (I did, because I was up to my nose in invitations), I wrote a guest post for So You’re EnGAYged about the representation of gay couples in wedding magazines. Or (spoiler alert) the total lack [...]
Sigh. It’s so true. When my partner and I were planning our wedding (we got married last August!), wedding magazines were even more useless for us than for straight couples (which, I would argue, is still pretty useless dues to the huge percentage of magazines devoted to advertising.) We turned instead to more open online wedding blogs and communities, such as So You’re EnGAYed, A Practical Wedding (apracticalwedding.com) and 2000 Dollar Wedding (http://2000dollarwedding.com). There are lots of resources out there, just not so many magazines.
This really does surprise me because we all know that what the advertisers want more than anything is to make money! I would think that someone would tap into this (huge) market ASAP and risk alienating the “most hateful” minority.
The flip side of this is that gay weddings are a lot less tainted with the “things you HAVE to have.” Once the WIC latches on, I bet there will be similar pressure to spend spend spend b/c that is “how it is done” or you will look tacky or worse, poor.
may we take comfort in the fact that all other minority groups (some *much* larger than the gay population) have also been erased in these magazines?
only, please except the wealthy – most definitely a minority, but in no way underserved – from my statement.
[...] Guest post from HitchDied, discussing lack of LGBT presence in the wedding industry. Why no love? http://www.soyoureengayged.com/?p=32538 [...]
Do you own a magazine?? My fiance Chetty and I are actually on this website because we are getting married in July and would just like to say that if you do own a magazine, my fiance and I would love to do an article for it!
I just think that the world hasn’t FULLY accepted gay people because they do not understand why we “choose” to go against the “norm” our society has bestowed upon us. What they do not realize is that being gay is not a choice, and like lady gaga said, “we were born this way.” In time we will rule the world and let them know what we are truly capable of…so loook out world=)
[...] venue had to offer. And there were horses. Yes, horses. I had to laugh and tell them that a recent guest post on So You’re EnGAYged had talked about how there were more horses in wedding magazines than [...]