| American Weddings: Gender, Consumption, and the Business of Brides is a cultural history of the wedding industry during the period 1900--1960. Adapting Eric Hobsbawm's notion of invented tradition, the dissertation argues that businesses used their authority as experts on etiquette and "tradition" to shape wedding practice and set a standard for wedding consumption. American Weddings examines cultural producers, cultural production, and consumers together, breaking with earlier studies that treat each in isolation. The first three chapters trace the expansion of commercial and professional wedding services from 1900--1960. Increasingly during this period, jewelers, department store bridal salons, and women's magazines promoted the formal "white" wedding as a cultural ideal. Commercial and professional wedding services expanded in the 1930s, partly as a survival tactic in the Depression, partly the result of professionalization movements changing the nature of business. Focusing on the image of the wedding in popular culture, the second section argues that the bridal ideal invented by the wedding industry embodied deeply rooted notions about gender and the division of labor in the first half of the twentieth century. This next chapter looks at the tropes of Queen for a Day and the Absent Groom in popular culture, arguing that these figures supported the growing link between women and consumption. The last two chapters look at changing wedding practices from 1900 to 1960. Gender rituals, such as bridal showers, shopping for wedding clothes, giving and getting gifts, and the practice of workplace desk decorating before a wedding, helped define men and women's roles at home and at work. Brides embraced the "traditions" invented by the wedding industry, even though they ultimately naturalized an unequal division of labor. As women entered the wage force, weddings became a part of work culture, and thus an important part of work place sociability and ethnic identity. |
