Column:

Weddings bring out the worst in cable TV

Networks aimed at women prey on the wedding craze with satirical stereotyping.

By ChaToyya Sewell

Published June 2, 2009

My mother loves wedding shows. If it comes on WE, Oxygen, TLC or Lifetime, she is there, tissues and telephone at the ready for any necessary weeping or indignant phone calls. I have bore witness to this at home for the last week, barely masking my contempt from the loveseat. My mother thinks me to be shrewish: how can I not weep at the sight of a Marchesa gown, not sigh at a six-tiered wedding cake? This is partially true. Try as I might to stir up some delight in the expensive follies of others, I really don't care. Unless that cake is tangible, mixed with ice cream and placed before me, I can't muster any excitement. But this is not all, for at the foundation I find these shows not only boring in the utmost, but annoying and sexist.

The first line of defense against these claims of misogyny is these shows often appear on networks aimed at women. This is true, the Oxygens and the WEs of the world are a masterful mix of marketing and advertisment and vertible hodgepodge of what society thinks women are and need: diet shows, makeover shows, wedding shows and a little women-scorned drama for the bitter divorcee in us all. The rigidly set roles for women on these networks drip down like poison into their wedding show offerings.

Wedding shows present four archetypical brides. You've got your rich brides, poor brides, mean brides and fat brides. Your rich brides are presented as the ones to emulate: healthy and successful (i.e. rich). They are the type presented in hour-long specials which operate as thinly-veiled commercials for the maker of the dress and the cake, which you, if you have any taste, will run out to book as soon as you are so lucky to get engaged.

Your poor brides are those deserving of pity. Generally, they’re nice girls who are just looking for a good old-fashioned contest for the wedding of their dreams. Mean brides are there for your derision. They are often tacky and hateful, raging through full episodes of bridezillas throwing tantrums over flowers and seating arrangements.

And finally you've got your fat brides, or more accurately, your “not within the socially acceptably skinny range brides.” These brides are not morbidly obese, they are attractive and they are engaged, so regardless of what these channels would suggest, someone loves their body. Yet they are often forced into a dress a size too small under harsh studio light so everyone at home can gain some grim satisfaction at the first glance of unseemly “back fat.” Then we can all cheer in her favor as she must endure an intense crash diet for the big day.

These shows are type-cast enough to be borderline satirical genius if one could believe anyone intended these as a discourse of American culture. Not only do they follow a narrow criteria, they include a narrow range of people.

In preparation for this column I watched 14 hours of different wedding shows throughout the week. This undertaking was barely scientific (I barely paid attention to some of them) but I did make note of the show and characteristics of the couple. Of that, I never saw any LGBTQ couples and few people of color. Possibly the most damning, that show that had the most people of color that I saw was, not surprisingly, bridezillas. And where were the partners? I mean, they were sort of there, in a background, foil-to-the-bride sort of way. But they did not exist independently in the episodes, except to proclaim their everlasting adoration for these women or to argue briefly in favor of including one masculine influence or a minibar or something. At the end of my gluttonous week of wedding show offerings I was tired, annoyed and I still hold that the biggest day of my life will always be that time I saw Bruce Willis on a bridge at a zoo.