"An interesting look at the institution of marriage...This book probably won't be on the must-read lists of most brides and grooms to be, but it is an interesting look at the institution of marriage. Or, rather the industry of marriage as the author emphasizes in her clear-eyed view of weddings...Ingraham, Chair of sociology at Purchase College in New York, tears away the veil of fantasy and takes a hard look at bridal magazines, religion, the garment industry, the media, and just plain capitalism, and how they all figure into this tradition."–Los Angeles Times White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture . Written from a sociological perspective, Ingraham 'lifts the veil' on the wedding industry and systematically rips apart the classist, racist, and heterosexist seams holding this outfit together." — Cultural StudiesWhite Weddings offers more than isolated critiques of race, class, gender, and media politics. Instead, the author fluidly integrates her arguments, showing the process by which these contexts mutually affect and confound one another through both the discursive and material practices of society's most recognized ritual." — Cultural StudiesLos Angeles Times Sojourner: The Women's Forum White Weddings . The sociology professor writes about how weddings have more to do these days with marketing and economics than with spirituality and reality." — Chicago Sun TimesEmbattled Eros: Sexual Politics and Ethics in Contemporary America White Weddings is a must read." — Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw and My Gender Workbook
French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan used the term "the imaginary" to describe the unmediated relationship an infant has to its own image and to its mother. Ingraham, an associate professor of sociology at Russell Sage College for Women, borrows heavily from Lacan's concept to describe the way in which we're conditioned to think about heterosexuality and its place in traditional weddings. She describes the "heterosexual imaginary" as "a belief system that relies on romantic and sacred notions of heterosexuality in order to create and maintain the illusion of well being." According to Ingraham, this illusion is reinforced by the fetishization of weddings. In her scathing view, "the big day" reinforces a racist, classist and heterosexual social order. Ingraham skewers all aspects of the modern wedding, from the labor practices involved in the manufacture and marketing of gowns to the white-only marketing strategies of major bridal magazines. With intelligence and perception, she describes the makeup of the "wedding-industrial complex," which relentlessly markets nuptials (especially white weddings) and relies on the pervasive media images of marriage ceremonies to keep itself "recession-proof." Although her tone is academic, Ingraham's writing is lively and persuasive. One of the few studies of weddings, this important addition to cultural studies could make a few potential brides and grooms rethink that long walk to the altar. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
A brilliant (and fun!) look at the institution/industry of marriage in the late twentieth-century United States.
