Kathleen K. was recently looking at the Credit Education Week Canada website, where they have a number of quizzes for couples to take. At the end of each quiz there is a picture of a couple along with your results. She was pleasantly surprised that this image accompanied the results of one quiz:
It’s a rare example of the normalization of gay/lesbian couples in media not specifically targeted at the GLBT community. The couple is presented as a legitimate image of love for both straight and gay couples, and there is no ambiguity about whether or not they’re a couple. Given the general invisibility of gay and lesbian couples in media outlets, and the use of only heterosexual couples as “neutral,” unmarked examples, it’s quite striking to see this.
Also see our post on a commercial by an Argentinian bank that depicted transgendered individuals positively.
Comments 14
Scapino — November 5, 2009
Glad to see an example of a group doing things right. Good for them.
Beth — November 5, 2009
Yay! This is great, and also brings to mind Ikea commercials that also depict same sex, mixed race and other kinds of families other than traditional. Progress!
Thaddeus — November 5, 2009
It reminds me of "Sugar Time" the controversial episode of the kid's show "Postcards from Buster" that caused a stir a few years ago.
The show just treated the lesbian couple and their kids as a normal family.
Unfortunately, too many people are incapable of seeing homosexuals as normal and raise a fuss anytime they're presented as such.
Anyone see the Colbert Report's "Nailed Em" segment from earlier this week about two homosexual men who got charged with trespassing after having kissed in front of the LDS temple in Salt Lake City?
Edie — November 5, 2009
I can't help but notice that one has long, feminine hair while the other has a short cut (and that the one with the longer hair is in white and the other in black, which I think might be just a little loaded)- but they both look more or less feminine overall.
angie — November 5, 2009
Well, to me is seems that in this picture the lesbian couple is kind of stereotypised as in the other one is more masculine short-haired "butch" and the other is the feminine "femme" type of character. Seems more like trivialisation to me, honestly. But is it new that all kinds of organisations and companies try to fish out for gay community? Hate to be so negative about it but this picture is like representing homosexual relationship in terms of 50s american heterosexual family ideal. No matter what they do homosexuality will be understood always in the context of heterosexual relationships by the majority of people and that is just sad.
Grace — November 5, 2009
It's always interesting to see "the other" in a way that is normalized. I went to Sweden and picked up a free guide to Stockholm - the official production of the tourism bureau - and the front cover was of the Stockholm pride festival. I had to double check to make sure that it wasn't the "gay and lesbian guide" - which would be the only way that a cover like that would make it here in the US.
Jenn — November 5, 2009
I highly appreciate that they pictured lesbians in a non-sexualized fashion. Finding depictions of lesbians not being used as sexual objects for a heterosexual male gaze is downright rare.
I would have appreciated it more if they had included a picture of younger lesbians (while non-sexualized older lesbians are rare, non-sexualized younger lesbians are unheard of) or even an interracial or non-white couple.
I just can't help but notice that ads like these typically pick one "risky" variable and show it, and never show intersecting demographics like a gay couple in which at least one is non-white. Kind of like how you go to some sort of political summit and having the only two prominent speakers be a rich white man and a poor white man is supposed to be "diverse".
Well, I'm still more pleased than disappointed. But would still like to see the multivariable intersecting world we experience actually reflected in power and in images.
Normalising Lesbian Couples « BitchKitten — November 21, 2010
[...] Via Sociological Images [...]
Lunad — January 13, 2012
This reminded me of the move a few years ago to accept same-sex couples in the NY Times wedding announcement section. Now there is usually one or two per week, probably because newspapers are out of fashion.