Why we should care about weddings | Jen Siomacco | TEDxRVA
so I am here today to talk to you about weddings and that might seem like a kind of strange topic this is a day about change and innovation and weddings are all about tradition right well that's kind of the problem so who here recognizes this image of course you do Disney is a part of the American consciousness and pretty much since birth it's likely that Disney has been a part of your life and that means weddings have been a part of your life for more than 70 years Disney has shown us images of the fairy tale wedding which as we know is the end of every great love story and once married all that really matters is that the couple lived happily ever after even cartoon animals can't escape this social construct let's not blame it all on Disney from willing Kate to movies musicals TV shows comic books and more we have been told that everyone's quest for happiness means wedding it is universal and it's ubiquitous so if everyone in America is told that they need to get married in order to be happy why do all the wedding magazines look like this so one of these all have in common they are almost all of white thin twenty-something cisgender Brides apparently diversity in the wedding industry means olive skin and brunette hair a 2013 academic research study from the University of Wisconsin showed that ninety percent of the women in these magazines were white census data shows that white people actually make up closer to 60% of the population that's not hard math to do so to add to that when a woman of color does show up in the pages of these magazines she was usually light skinned or her photos had been edited to make her skin look even lighter sometimes to the point where her race was hard to determine at all we have seen that research reinforced time and again as women of color have had their photos edited to make their skin look lighter just take for example these two covers of InStyle magazine hard who believe that these are both images of Kerry Washington so when we are taught since birth that the only way to live happily ever after is to get married but we leave out huge swathes of the population I have to wonder if as a society we are trying to say that these people don't deserve happiness couples like ty and Jared and the 38% of people in this country who are Americans of color couples like Gina and Nicole and the eight and a half percent of Americans living with disabilities couples like Nora and Ben and the thirteen and a half percent of Americans living in poverty or who simply cannot fathom spending eight months of paychecks on a one day wedding and instead up to elope couples like Massino and graham and the 14 percent of americans in interracial relationships relationship couples like adding it and Raymond and seriously his smile is amazing and all of those who marry are remarry later in life couples like Pez and Sophia and all those whose gender identity doesn't match their birth sex or doesn't fit into the male-female binary and also couples like jasmine and jasmine and all those who identify as lesbian gay bisexual or queer and finally people like me people whose bodies don't align to the size to ideal of beauty do all of us not deserve the love and happiness that we are taught comes with being partnered well once again magazines like this say no in the average 300 page wedding magazine 200 of those pages are gonna be filled with ads those ads are gonna try to sell you everything from dresses to resorts to Botox and weight-loss drugs in the remaining hundred pages you're only likely to see about 20 photos of actual couples and those are probably gonna be celebrities with the wedding is so extravagant that they might as well be actual royalty so while pop culture has told us that the only way to live happily ever after is to get married wedding media instead has told us that it's about selling you an unattainable image and emptying your bank account so how do we change that narrative how do we redirect the moving train that is the nearly seventy billion dollar wedding industry just to put that even more into context that's about the same amount of money as the proposed 2018 federal education budget how do we disrupt something that we stopped questioning almost at birth well but simply representation matters it matters who we see in magazines it matters who we see in leading roles in movies and television and matters who we see recognized with Oscars and accolades in our society the media is responsible for making sure that all people are represented and in turn are made to feel like they belong so that's where I come in I am a creative director for a wedding magazine dedicated to inclusivity love and happiness for all but but it's not enough for us to just change the faces of the people that we see in these magazines we also have to shift away from the consumerism up weddings and that fairy tale mentality that we see time and again we and that means everyone here in this audience needs to change how we talk about weddings we have to stop putting so much focus on material things when it comes to weddings can each of you think back to a time when someone you knew was getting married did anybody ask them about their engagement ring post those pictures on facebook asking you about your dress your suit your venue or your decorations I know when I was getting married it's all anyone seemed to care about nobody asked me about my partnership my vows are my commitment to stand by and love another person for the rest of my life we also have to stop putting so much focus on appearance and expecting people especially women to change their appearance for their wedding day think back again to a time when you knew somebody who is getting married did anyone ask them if they were planning to go on a diet lose some weight even just ask them how they were planning to wear their hair or their makeup all of these questions just continue to feed into the expectation that people need to change who they are in order to deserve the love of their partner when really we just need to celebrate that people are being accepted for exactly who they are and finally we need to resist the narrative that the only way to be happy is to be partnered we need to celebrate [Applause] we need to celebrate all kinds of love that means friend love family loves and self love so we can finally live in a society where truly everyone feels equally deserving of happiness thank you [Applause]