Last year I married my husband. He’s white, I’m black. Both his parents were present, my mother was too. My father died when I was 15, but he wasn’t really in my life until that point. If he were alive, I doubt I would have invited him to our wedding.
Do I think the Heinz ad is racist (When a Heinz advert features racist stereotypes to sell pasta sauce, it’s vital to speak out. So I did, 8 October)? No. Do I understand why people are upset by it? I do, I get it. But an absent father for me, and for many others (not just black people) is a reality. We shouldn’t hide that.
The bottom right of the ad reads “based on a true story”. I know from personal experience that this familial setup is indeed true; I don’t believe it would’ve been right for Heinz to add a black dad in for optics’ sake and I also don’t think the absence of a black dad is reason for Heinz to disregard the story.
Black people are beholden to respectability politics. We must be presented in a way that shows the assumed best versions of our community. In this case, it’s as if we should ignore the reality of absent fathers, but they do exist – why should we lie about it? I am who I am because of my single mother, and if it were me behind the story, I would have rejected the idea of adding a dad to the scene to avoid negative stereotypes, because then the story is simply not true.
I do believe Heinz has a responsibility to be cognisant of how this image is perceived publicly. As someone who has worked in the advertising industry for more than a decade, I would have added more guests; at my wedding my brother and uncles surrounded me on the top table and reflected the strong male presence I have in my life.
Also, as the campaign is a series of ads, they could have reflected different realities of mixed and black families, not just one where a father is absent. But ultimately, as this ad is based on a true story, it has as much right as any to exist.
Hanna Davis
Deptford, London
• The Heinz pasta sauce poster is cringeworthy and Nels Abbey was right to call it out for racial stereotyping. But I think his analysis of the messaging behind the image misses the most obvious factor: the couple reflect Meghan and Harry (he’s even a bit ginger) and the family figures who were present at their wedding (so the absent father would, in fact, be white). The viewer is presumably meant to identify with, and be amused by, the bride’s careless joy and appetite at the cost of social appearances (never mind the implications of the red stain on the virginal white wedding dress).
I’m not defending it (at all), but I think it’s worth considering in any critique how the advertiser and its agency perhaps intended to connect with the public, however ineptly.
Kate White
London
• On a recent trip to London, I saw this ad on the underground several weeks before all the hullabaloo. I am the father of biracial children. The bride in this picture looks like my own daughter, and I am paler than the older man. Who’s to say he isn’t the father of the bride?
Nicholas Morgan
Istanbul, Turkey
• As a father-free child of a single mother, I’m not sure why I shouldn’t be offended at the suggestion that Heinz’s fake wedding photo, in which either the bride or groom (a matter of dispute) is a single mum’s child, is somehow offensive.
Would there be a fuss if Heinz featured a picture of someone with no legs who likes baked beans? I doubt it. To suggest that having a dad is normal, while representing a father-free person is perpetuating a racist stereotype, doesn’t seem very inclusive, and it’s not clear why either is more deserving of representation in mocked-up photos designed to sell pasta sauce. Surely people with dads and without dads of whatever ethnicity can unite in abhorring ready-made bolognese, and teach Heinz a real lesson?
Dr Craig Reeves
Birkbeck, University of London
• Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.
