Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Yes, people, they're calling it the Bridal Voting Bloc

Yes, BridesDecide.com has been covered---notably and well by Tracy at Broadsheet and recently by our own Ariel Meadow Stallings, author of Offbeat Bride, who captured my feelings about the site with a brevity and lucidity I admire:

I think we can also all agree that BridesDecide.com is decidedly dumb.

Though I do normally spend a brief few minutes watching The Today Show most mornings, today I ended up watching three middle-aged men discuss the merits of BridesDecide.com on MSNBC because I couldn't take a single additional second of Matt Lauer kissing Tiger Woods's ass while they discussed the mechanics of their virtual swings. (Note: The segment was supposed to be about fatherhood. It was so not.)

So what's my core issue with BridesDecide.com? Really, it's the idea that newly engaged women or recent brides are a "demographic," and, worse than that, that the website's mission statement says nothing about brides. It talks exclusively about motivating "young women" to make educated decisions, and about covering topics that are important to "young women."

Their mission statement is like a Logical Reasoning question you'd find on your standard S.A.T. The question would go something like this:

Young women need their own bride-oriented political website to inform them about issues they care about. After all, these young women are potential voters.

The argument above depends on which the following assumptions?

(A) All young women want to get married.
(B) Young women only care about election issues that will affect them in their roles as wives.
(C) Potential voters who are also brides specifically need a bride-oriented site in order to make informed choices.

1 comment:

Sarah said...

That is such a lame gimmick for bridal websites to make a buck off the election hoopla. Brought to you by The Knot? Please. What's next? Peoplewhoeatcerealinthemorningdecide.com? Brought to you by Kelloggs. I hear the Raisin Bran people love Hillary.