The Performative Violence of the Wedding Dress: Teaching Queer Theory through Object Orientation

The ubiquity of the image is striking in its absolute sameness. White teeth, white dress, more often than not white woman. Sometimes, it is girls I haven't seen for fifteen or twenty years; girls who are now women, slimmed down and made-up, covered in white satin or lace or silk. Sometimes it is celebrities, or friends of friends, or royals—made as conventionally beautiful as they possibly can be for the consumption of the camera. These days the spouse is not always a man, although often there is a man in the photo somewhere, dressed in a dark suit that is invariably easier to move in than whatever the women are wearing. Not that you would sense discomfort from the image: in the image, the woman is almost always smiling.