Becoming Girl-Woman-Bride

Becoming-girl-woman-bride refers to the various positions and transformations of the bride. The girl and the bride as related in becoming-bride are the site of intense sociocultural investment and anxiety played out in the central role the bride takes in the wedding ritual. I draw from autoethnographic material, interviews, and bridal magazines, specifically those in circulation in South Africa that include representations of black women as brides. I conclude this article with an argument about the black femme as a so-called girly line of flight that produces our image of common sense, albeit with a different relation to visibility. Moving from the premise that common sense is overwhelmed by the visual sense, I position the black femme in relation to the image of common sense and I offer a reading of how images produce a range of simultaneous identifications and disidentifications, particularly in relation to the image of the ideal bride.