Writing About Brides
I am working on an abstract today about the coverage of brides in the women’s pages for the 2013 Florida Conference of Historians: “Not All Brides Are Wealthy and White: The Integration of the Women’s Pages in 1960s Florida and Across the Country.” This is what it is about:
In her critique of society coverage, New York Times women’s page editor Charlotte Curtis noted sarcastically that not all brides were beautiful. While they may not have been attractive, the brides who were considered newsworthy for decades did typically have two things in common – they were white and wealthy. (The photos showed the race of the women and their place in the city’s society was dictated by the size of the photo.) Yet, change was coming by the 1960s as progressive women’s page editors fought to change traditional practices. At metropolitan newspapers across the country, black brides and those from working class families began to appear in the wedding section. This was also true in Florida – most noticeably at the St. Petersburg Times, the Miami Herald and the Fort Lauderdale News. This paper is the story of the women and their sections and how they opened the door to a previously ignored part of society.
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