In case you haven’t heard, it’s been two months since my girlfriend proposed to me and just one month since I proposed to her. We’ve already settled into engaged life, chosen a wedding date, a venue, a caterer and someone to marry us. It’s amazing what two underemployed lesbians can do with google, an excel chart and two Macs. We even started a couple of wedding registries because apparently when you get hitched, people want to give you stuff. I’m not arguing.
So last night my now fiancée and I stopped by Crate and Barrel to check out some items for our registry in person. It wasn’t until we left that we took a closer look at the brochure and noticed something that caused us to shake our heads vigorously, make strange wounded animal noises and question whether we wanted to register there at all.
Ok, first of all their brochure is filled with images of nothing but young, skinny, straight, heterosexual hipsters. Fine. Not a shocker. But on top of that, each pair of models — I mean, engaged couple — matched each other exactly in skin color and (perceived) ethnicity. A perfectly trendy Asian couple stood hand-in-hand amidst the bedding items. A guy with a goatee and a Fedora wrapped his arm around a dark-haired beauty between potholders and dishcloths. An olive-skinned pair was caught mid-romantic moment in the decor section and a medium brown couple grinned from ear to ear between pasta cookers and double boilers.
This last couple irked me the most because I am so sick of seeing mixed race people clearly used to satisfy the black quota in advertising. I think we all know that if a person’s skin resembles a cup of coffee with about twenty tablespoons of cream, and that person is not an albino, they are probably not one hundred percent black. So if you’re gonna go this tired route, why not throw a couple of espresso-skinned people in there? What are you trying to say, Crate and Barrel? Black people don’t get married? You don’t think their families can afford your sixteen dollar water pitchers?
The best — I mean, worst — part of the whole thing was the cover. In an astounding nod to conventional, mainstream, imperialist, commercial conformity, they slapped a preppy, white couple on the front page. But they decided that it was ok for white couples to have different hair colors, as long as the girl was blonde.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that C&B had a few meetings about how to make money off — I mean, appeal to — every race, color and ethnicity in their registry pamphlet. I just can’t believe THIS is what they came up with. Last time I checked interracial marriage was legal, and not that uncommon. And news alert, same sex marriage is now a thing.
When we realized the extent of the distance between C&B’s worldview and ours, we decided that we couldn’t ask our family and friends to spend their money there, nor did we want those artisanal, robin’s egg blue, hand-antiqued plates that badly. No matter how well they matched each other, they didn’t match us.
We are aware that almost every gigantic, national chain store is more interested in profits than people, but here’s a clue: try to fake it. And if your ads look anything like this: try harder.
….they’ll be on the gay bandwagon soon I’m sure, for the profits…but that race issue sure is stubborn.
Haha, I’m in the same boat as you, so now I know to skip Crate and Barrel. Not that there’s (checks quick) one around here.
But Bed Bath and Beyond is still cool, right? Cause I love me some of that place.
Congrats, too!
Let me preface this by saying, as the Jewish half of a Chinese-Jewish marriage, I completely agree with you that inter-ethnic couples & queer people should be included in catalogs. Having worked in advertising, I know it can be difficult for the art department to photograph “espresso-skinned” people. It takes a higher caliber art director to photograph the nuances in darker people. That said, I think there is an internalized racism to the choices made by marketing departments. So many cultures place higher value on lighter-skinned cohorts and I think this plays into people’s choices. It’s not just a Corporation that puts out a catalog: the process is managed by a marketer at the company and carried out by an ad agency. I think their thinking is “blacks wont be offended by a lighter skinned version of themselves, and that’ll be less off-putting for our white customer base.” Or it may not even be that developed. It may just be the internalized trope about lighter skinned people “being more attractive.” I think this is part of the institutional racism that doesn’t get discussed in mainstream society. Congratulations on finding your soul mate and getting engaged!
C.J…ugh you spelled it out…the depth of shallow thinking. But the point about it being difficult to photograph the nuances in darker people doesn’t fit with the abundance of photos of black clothing, as is the color black. The problems of nuance didn’t seem to stop that practice in the least!
Biracial people need to stop calling themselves black. It’s such a misrepresentation. So what if racist people treat them bad? It doesnt mean they’re black!
WHy cant they represent their own group? You wont see me calling myself mixed or talking about knowing what its like to be mixed.
Congrats on the engagement! (Oh, and bummer on the stupid registry ad.)
blackperson: I see your point and yet that sort of implies that there’s something derogatory about the word “mixed”. I mean, you are saying “stop calling yourselves black”, and also saying you wouldn’t use the word “mixed”. If a new word is made up to “represent their own group”, then it is just another word meaning something like….a combination of what is erroneously considered pure races or ethnicities. And then it creates another “group” that is separate again. So, in a way “Mixed” is kind of true term that we all are actually…not just about black and white but all ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, nationalities. What word would you suggest? How about American, New Yorker, Humanistan?
I’m so happy. My daughter, Maya is studying race in school. I got to show her your post from April 2011 (Me, a name I call myself.), about the bill you worked on in the New York State legislature. She is very interested in this, thinking about it for a long time.
It would be very smart of every marketing team to have a Gender Studies major! Gah, I’m sorry that you face these sorts of things while planning for your wedding. I wish you all the best!