SEBASTIAN writes:

The couple featured on the Macy’s Valentine’s Day catalogue, the same one that shows a wedding cake with two grooms on top, is mixed. As expected, she is white and he is … not white, though not black either. I suppose the inference is dark Hispanic. I found a paper version today on a park bench and asked a friend who works in the industry about the couple. She was pretty sure it was a first for Macy’s, which is more middle class/conservative than the edgy, more expensive stores. Not something to boycott over, of course, but since you were on the subject I pass it on.

Laura writes:

Mixed race couples are increasingly common in advertising. For instance, there is a large photo on the front window of a local bank of a couple who have just purchased a new home. He is black and she is white.

If proving one’s diversity credentials is a chief goal for a company and if only two people are in an ad, then perhaps they should be of different races. However, is this the only reason for the ads? One does not seem to find images of black women with white men or Asian men with white women. So it’s a little more complicated than companies trying to prove non-discrimination. Advertisers always try to appeal to the desires and latent fantasies of a potential demographic. That’s why, for instance, my bank has large photos of smiling older women holding hammers and using power saws. They want to appeal to the fantasy in some women that they can be totally independent (and thus take out loans on their own without worry.)

So it seems that advertisers believe that there is a significant segment that views being part of a mixed race couple as desirable.

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