Most advertisements in this publication feature fabulous wedding dresses, the ultimate honeymoon locations, and stunning engagement bands. This advertisement caught my eye for an interesting reason; unlike most of the other advertisements, this one actually featured a man and a woman. A novel idea considering this far into the magazine I was beginning to question whether a man would even be involved in the wedding.

It was harder than I had expected to find an advertisement that

In the foreground, it shows a typical engaged couple: a man and a woman (the woman, of course, has a large engagement ring on her finger). They are Caucasian and appear to be upper middle-class. This stays in keeping with most of the other advertisements, since the magazine’s target audience is mostly in those same categories (though not necessarily Caucasian). The man is clean cut and neatly dressed in a sports jersey. He is standing in a somewhat dominating way; arms crossed, shoulders wide, and a large confident smile. The woman, apparently his bride-to-be, is to his left. While she is also nicely dressed, her hair is somewhat disheveled as though she has been cooking, or maybe cleaning. She is holding a bouquet of flowers, her shoulders are rounded, her head is tilted down and away from her “fiancée”, and she is looking at him out of the corner of her eye with a coy smile. These examples of body language are considered socially acceptable; the male is dominating the woman by taking up more physical space, whereas the woman is taking up much less.

Also of utmost importance is the background of the picture. A vertical line drawn between the couple reinforces the idea of “opposite sexes”. The

Some topics in this essay:
JC Penny, Stewart Weddings, Gender Media, traditional roles, dreaming wishing planning, roles marriage, hoping dreaming wishing, capable using, hoping dreaming, woman taking, wishing planning, dreaming wishing, gender media,