A billboard of a Muslim woman and an American soldier is turning heads on Sunset Boulevard. She’s in her hijab, and he’s in his uniform. The poster sits on a Californian roadside infamous for the images lining it. Most of them are ads for some movie or another. There are liquor stores and gas stations and stragglers walking the strip. Catching anyone’s attention in this part of California is a feat in itself, but the premise of this particular image is shock — shock at the expense of the paradox before you.
An almost certainly Christian white boy embracing his almost certainly Muslim counterpart. Neither of them is in a death-lock. They’re both smiling.
The phrase beneath the billiard says “keeping you together.”
Our country’s just settling into the idea of diverse relationships. Multi-racial families, once the ire of pulpit, bus-stop and classroom lore, are steadily making waves in the media, which is good, because that’s where our country derives its conception of itself. It’s the faces you see on the television and on the newsstands, the ones that may or may not look like yours, that are a tell-tale for what “in” for the country’s general populace at any given moment. More often than not, they all look the same. But difference is seeping in — regardless of sex, gender or melanin count — and while some are inevitably crying “wolf” at its emergence, it’s all the more indicative of our country’s indigenous makeup.
We’ve all but exited the ’40s. There’s no longer an ideal image of an American relationship, or at least not an accurate one, because there’s just so many of us. Advertisers and media moguls are catching on to this. Film studios are catching on to this. Grocery stores, PTA moms and door-to-door salesmen are steadily catching onto this.
Consequently, this particular example of diversity isn’t anywhere as innovative as media moguls would have you think.
What you have is a man and woman — a man and a woman holding one another. And that’s been happening for a little while now. They just happen to look a different.
What is special about the image is the positive nod towards American-Islamic relations and the fact that it alludes to neither religion nor politics. There’s no death toll in fine print, nor is there a weapon in sight. He’s wearing a uniform, but a lot of people do. She’s got her religion on her sleeve, but she’s not the first person to do that.
Couples like this do exist. They’re out there. And, for all of its merits, this demonstration betters the area for highlighting these patches of diversity.
That said, if there’s a flaw with the advertisement, it’s with the actual advertisement: Nobody really knows what it is they’re actually selling.
