People announces today that Olympian Michelle Kwan is married. Her wedding photograph is below. Nowhere in the announcement–nor on the internet, that I can find–does it say that she is pregnant, but, well, her figure and their pose sure makes it look like she is pregnant.
Which reminded me of the photograph not long ago of Drew Barrymore on her wedding day:
She has since become a proud new mother.
It’s a powerful image, the visibly pregnant bride in white, the handsome groom in a suit proudly touching her belly and the baby he presumably put there.
Is this the new iconic wedding photograph?
Categories: Childbearing, Marriage
I don’t think there’s anything new at all about gossiping about whether the bride is pregnant or what her due date is. That’s pretty old school. (I admit I don’t see the ‘pregnant’ in the first picture; it looks like a blocky dress and a posed shot.)
Just had to pop on over to say that not really since Aristotelian theories of human reproduction have we thought that men “put” babies in women’s bodies to be cultivated. If the fiance in this instance is the biological father of the fetus in question, he and the pregnant woman co-created the embryo.
And echoing mythago, there have been plenty of periods in history where the norm was to marry once pregnant and/or after giving birth to your first child. The suppression of those marriages during the mid-20th century is the exception, not the rule.
annajcook,
Can you tell me when and where? Not a veiled gotcha, promise. This cultural practice makes sense in a number of contexts, but it’s pure speculation on my part. I am sincerely interested in the actual history. Thanks!
I am well aware that a sizable proportion of marriages in history have occurred with a baby on the way. What interests me more is whether it is new to actually celebrate (rarher than conceal) that fact with a photograph that deliberately highlights the fact of the pregnancy.
And believe me, I love nothing more than the sight of a pregnant woman and the whole belly/white dress/handsome couple/fertility combo is both attractive and provocative. And I wonder, is celebrating all this happening *at once*, new?
( What interests me more is whether it is new to actually celebrate (rarher than conceal) that fact with a photograph that deliberately highlights the fact of the pregnancy. )
What’s was new is the idea this is how marriages need to be celebrated and that it’s appropriate for visibly pregnant women to participate. However new is a relative term. Most American wedding traditions are fairly modern and only became widespread post war. If you look at my parents and all their siblings, a total of 15 people, married between 1930 and 1949, none of them had this kind of wedding. Contrast that with my neighbours 5 kids, married between 1965 and 1978, 4 of them did.
Elizabeth, you’re taking a single photograph (the bottom one), and speculating about another photograph (the top one), and from that extrapolating into some kind of new trend. So to answer your question, no, I don’t think this is “the new iconic wedding photograph” at all.
(Re the first photograph, to me it looks like that’s the only place his hands can go in a “hug the bride from behind and to the side” pose. He’s taller, so if he puts his hands any lower he’ll be hunching over, and if they’re any higher he’ll be groping her breasts.)
Mythago you’re right — I do have a third photograph of a dear friend in a similar pose on her wedding day, but I didn’t feel I should put her wedding photo in my blog post! And you’re right, I am speculating about Kwan. But if I’m right about Kwan, that is three, which is a trend, which is all you need for a trend story!
Anybody want to help me out? Got a celebrity photo or your own that features what I’m suggesting is the new iconography?
Annajcook, of course you’re right, it takes at least two to “co-create.” Doncha think tho that as a man it might sometimes feel, and feel kind of cool, to look at your lover’s growing belly and think, I put that there?
Not being a man, I have no idea.
To quote the recently departed Dear Abby, “The baby was on time. It was the wedding that was late.”
Hernan, I have heard that for northern Europeans, there was an old tradition in which couples were married after demonstrating fertility, but trying to get a particular citation was not as easy as I thought. Perhaps someone else has a better link.
I had to limit the time I spent searching, but I found the following selection in Folkways, by William Graham Sumner, on Project Gutenberg. While it doesn’t quite reflect the mores which I describe above, it does point to a time when a church wedding followed the consummation of the marriage.
Link (I think. I am not sure if the link will take you to the correct place in the document.)
Peter:
Me, too, that’s why I asked.
Thank you for the info AND for the link. I skipped around a bit, but the whole work is interesting.
But if I’m right about Kwan, that is three, which is a trend, which is all you need for a trend story!
Shouldn’t the correct order be, recognize an actual trend and then report on it, rather than, make up a trend and cherry-pick some evidence to support it? I realize there’s an argument of “if it’s good enough for the New York Times it’s certainly good enough for you”, but I think standards here should be higher than that…
@ Peter,
Thank you for the time you’ve taken to research betrothal, marriage, etc. Wow, the things one learns when we share our knowledge.
The citation you’ve embedded in your comment adds a whole new dimension about ‘marriage’ in our own times. We all have a tendency to think who we are, the age we live in … we’re unique, our age is unique. It appears history does repeat itself, and, perhaps, we’re not so unique, after all.
I’m wondering when did the Christian Church, whatever denomination, come to regard marriage as a sacrament.
The Holy Roman Empire was centered in Germany, iirc. Particularly, interesting is the mention of “without a priest, amongst the peasants”. Can the vast number of persons, without a college education, be considered the peasant class, today? Is their behavior really so different than the peasants of yesterday concerning marriage?
Is the larger issue actually the emancipation of women?
Or, finally, is it our technology that has made the hearth and home simply a dormitory, of sorts; where no ‘real work’ ever gets done? Actually, the better question might be, what is ‘real work’? I suspect the Amish-Mennonite may have the answer to that.
I think the majority of the population without college degrees already has the answer to that. You know, us peasants. (*smile*) The problem isn’t that we’re not doing ‘real work’; it’s that our labor isn’t valued—just like the labor of our peasant ancestors/relatives isn’t valued.
Teresa:
Can the vast number of persons, without a college education, be considered the peasant class, today? …
Actually, the better question might be, what is ‘real work’?
La Lubu:
I think the majority of the population without college degrees already has the answer to that. You know, us peasants. (*smile*) The problem isn’t that we’re not doing ‘real work’; it’s that our labor isn’t valued—just like the labor of our peasant ancestors/relatives isn’t valued.
I’m smiling as I write this, thinking what a delicious way you have, La Lubu, in pointing out the bad ingredients of one’s argument. Thank you for setting aright my arrogant thinking … and, in such a pleasant way.
@ Elizabeth,
You know, maybe I’m just waaay behind the times, but my first thought in seeing the pictures and your comment was “what’s with wearing white”, and what’s with Elizabeth not commenting on that.
I needn’t go into the whole white bridal gown bit, and how it acted in some small way to modify one’s pre-marital behavior. And, yep, I know, many folks simply were hypocritical regarding this cultural norm.
You know, small religious and cultural norms actually have more social meaning and adherence than maybe we know. I’m going to bring up one small Catholic practice (and, yes, I know, maybe you guys are sick of hearing the Catholic stuff … ) that small Catholic practice was for the United States, not eating meat on Fridays. I can attest to the fact, that Catholics who did not attend Church for decades, people who blatantly disregarded other Catholic norms … not eating meat on Fridays was, by and large, kept by most Catholics, of any stripe … good, bad and indifferent. It was such an easy way to say to oneself and others, without being intimidating, this is “who I am, and this is what I do”. And, it really had nothing to do with “you’re going to hell if you don’t follow this practice”.
That small practice of Catholics permeated wide swaths of society of any religious belief or simply secular: restaurants, cafeterias, school lunches, etc. made accommodation in their menus for that one small religious practice. No one made a beef about it (sorry for the pun) … it fit seamlessly into our culture.
When the Church threw out that norm in ’65, it shattered the hearts and minds of many Catholics … it shattered trust in what has been commonly known as Holy Mother Church. That decades old custom was rendered meaningless … and, it was in fact worlds apart from meaningless. In an imperfect world, where following the rules is tough for all of us, some small discipline, such as not eating meat on Fridays was huge.
So, Elizabeth, what happened with the white means purity custom?
Spotting a possible trend and thinking about it: That’s what Elizabeth is doing here.
Possibly it’s not a real trend, but if it is what do we think about it?
I think A: great these women decided to marry.
B. What is b?
I don’t think Kwan is pregnant and who knows what the trend is.
I do think there is a huge social difference from when I was growing up. Drew Barrymore is happy and pointing to her pregnant belly as she gets married. That would not have happened in the past. It probably wouldn’t happen in many cultures around the world, today – outside the WEIRD world (western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic).
Well there are tribal African cultures where this could and would be happening–where marriage is conditional on proof of fertility. Its more contrary to our former tradition than an affront to quasi-universal tradition.
Re: It probably wouldn’t happen in many cultures around the world, today – outside the WEIRD world (western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic).
Not really.
As I mentioned before, out-of-wedlock childbearing is generally common across Latin America and the Caribbean (higher than the United States, though I don’t know about Europe). None of the countries with the highest rates are western/rich countries.
@Maggie: Shouldn’t “thinking about it” include deciding whether it’s really a trend, or whether it’s a couple of data points one can spin out into a “trend” piece to fill column inches? (Also, I’m curious as to which ‘tribal” cultures make pregnancy a condition of marriage. Certainly in our own culture, until recently, it was the reverse; proof of infertility was reason to void or dissolve a marriage.)
Maggie said:
“Possibly it’s not a real trend, but if it is what do we think about it?
I think A: great these women decided to marry.
B. What is b?”
Here’s my B:
Does somehow what we are thinking about it actually matter? Does affirming, tsk-tsk’ng or all points in-between change a thing?
mythago said:
mythago, I don’t want to step on Maggie’s response to you (if any) but I’d like to challenge you, and all of us here (especially FS’ers and all think-tanks) to state exactly how do studies, of whatever sociological stripe, change anything? Seriously, how do these studies help anything?
So, we spot a trend, mythago. We spin a paper about it with all the statistics we can marshall, publish it … and, then what? Social studies has few opportunities to diagnose and actually offer a ‘treatment’ for what ails society. That discipline, unlike hard sciences, has few pills to offer that will suddenly allow people to be well-educated, get great jobs, marry and then have 2.1 kids, and live happily ever after.
The one data point we know for sure, mythago, is that the availability to work, get a job, make a career for every educational level is a game-changer, everywhere and at every time, for everyone. If we can’t find adequate employment, if the avenues for change that come from jobs are closed, if life is dog-eat-dog scraping a living by whatever means … morals, right living, whatever terms we use are simply of no value … they can’t feed you and keep you warm. And, believe me, when put in that position, you’ll look for whatever means and ways that nurture and comfort you.
Give me a job that keeps my body and soul together … the rest comes along, naturally.
@Teresa – I have to disagree with you here. Studies are often limited in what they can show us. People often misuse them. Nevertheless, they are better than just talking about our impressions. They can help us figure out what is going on.