ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the construction of bridal identities in US popular culture. It argues that contemporary bridal identities have to be analyzed as part of a wider postfeminist media culture. The chapter traces important ideological shifts from second wave to postfeminism. It investigates how representational strategies reposition the meaning of feminism in relation to femininity, romance, and the institution of marriage. The chapter demonstrates how contemporary bridal fictions continue to construct the bridal subject as a young, able-bodied, heterosexual, white ideal of femininity. It highlights relations between postfeminism and consumer culture to offer a critical perspective on the commodification of femininity/ies and feminism itself. The chapter discusses how postfeminist frames produce a particular type of bridal subjectivity that is entangled with notions of individualism, neoliberalism, and consumerism. It demonstrates how postfeminist frames inform the construction of gendered identity; and, third, how the figure of the 'modern' bride is inextricably bound up with postfeminist identity politics.
