美国国家公共电台 NPR Brides Everywhere Are Saying Yes To The Low-Cut Dress

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

When Meghan Markle marries Prince Harry¹, whatever she wears is guaranteed to cause conversation. But as NPR's Neda Ulaby reports, these days she's not the only one.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE²: When it comes to the bridal bust³ line, the question these days is, how low can you go? Monte Durham works at a fancy wedding dress store in Atlanta called Bridals By Lori.

MONTE DURHAM: How can I say this kind of politely - we have dresses cut to your navel.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SAY YES TO THE DRESS ATLANTA")

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Woo.

ULABY: Durham also co-hosts the show "Say Yes To The Dress Atlanta" on TLC. Turn it on, or the original "Say Yes To The Dress" set in New York, and there's constant drama about plunging⁴ matrimonial cleavage.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SAY YES TO THE DRESS ATLANTA")

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I don't know if this neckline is going to be kosher with our rabbi.

ULABY: Illusion fabric⁵ does not help.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SAY YES TO THE DRESS ATLANTA")

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: You have way too much boob showing.

ULABY: Perhaps unsurprisingly, future mother-in-laws are often the most concerned.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SAY YES TO THE DRESS ATLANTA")

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Are you comfortable with the amount of cleavage that shows? I think it's pretty.

ULABY: Brides comfortable with dramatically dipping decolletage, says Monte Durham, are not all on reality television.

DURHAM: Ninety percent of the brides want to try on a revealing gown.

ULABY: His customers may not end up buying one, but that's also because such a gown can cost more than $10,000. Durham mentioned one...

DURHAM: Cut to here. A Lazaro, stunning⁶ gown.

ULABY: And you're pointing to your belly⁷ button.

DURHAM: I am pointing to my belt buckle⁸.

ULABY: This wedding dress trend was influenced by red carpet fashion, says Patricia Arend. She's a sociologist⁹ who studies the wedding industry. Arend says red carpet fashion itself was transformed by a green Versace gown Jennifer Lopez wore to the Grammys back in the year 2000...

PATRICIA AREND: Which plunged¹⁰ all the way to her navel and has actually been credited with the development of the Google image search because so many people wanted to see what that dress looked like after the event.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SAY YES TO THE DRESS ATLANTA")

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Damn.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Oh.

ULABY: The host of "Say Yes To The Dress Atlanta" says more people get married now on beaches and in barns, not in places of worship.

DURHAM: One of our number-one selling dresses at the store is extremely revealing.

ULABY: So Monte Durham cautions brides who buy it to wear a shrug¹¹ at the ceremony. They can shrug it off before the reception.

AREND: Marriage is no longer an event that transitions a person from being a child into adulthood¹².

ULABY: Sociology professor Patricia Arend says, today, women getting married for the first time are on average 27 years old. In 1960, they were 22. And today, more than half of couples getting married lived together first.

AREND: Something like upwards¹³ of 90 percent of women who marry are sexually experienced. And some of them are sexually experienced with other women, right? So the reference of being this innocent person who's going to lose her virginity on her wedding night or something like that and needs to be seen as pure and chaste¹⁴, that is disappearing also.

ULABY: Our next big princess bride, Meghan Markle, is 36. And this is her second marriage. Maybe what we're seeing with these wedding dresses with super-low cleavage, says Arend, are dresses that dismantle¹⁵ the tired, old virgin-whore dichotomy. They prove the girl that a guy went to sleep with and the girl he wants to marry are exactly the same person. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.