The controversial ad featured a Black bride in a wedding dress enjoying a forkful of spaghetti surrounded by her white in-laws on one side and her white husband and Black mother on the other. Heinz is hawking a new line of jarred pasta sauces in England, and the mural-sized posters ran in several London subway stations. Despite the red sauce stain on her pristine white wedding dress, the bride seems oblivious to the disapproving stares from her new family.
While the father of the groom was present at the “head table,” the bride’s father was strangely missing, sparking some confusion. Many felt the image perpetuated the stereotype of the “absent” Black father — in this case, one so disengaged that he did not show up to his own daughter’s wedding.
