Professional engagement photos are everyone’s favorite social-media hate-read. You click through the highly staged images of your high-school nemesis/college roommate’s sister/woman-you-met-at-a-party-once as she canoodles with her betrothed, and your heart fills with disdain: Could these people be any more self-absorbed? Channeling America’s contempt for cheesy, tone-deaf engagement photo shoots, a few artists and tricksters have parodied the practice, most masterfully in this tender set of photos of a college student caressing a pizza box. But now we have a new, consummately executed, more symbolically complex spoof of the genre, thanks to California health care administrator Benita Abraham, who posted a photo album to Facebook on Sunday called #Employed.
“I finally found my soulmate, my perfect match, my boo,” writes Abraham on Facebook. “After 7 long months, I found the perfect job with a company that truly cares about its employees and one I will learn so much from.” What follow are 17 pitch-perfect photographs of Abraham getting cozy with a job offer letter (wisely redacted to protect the identity of her new employer) and asking a friend to “sit beside me in the HOV lane.” She sips from a mug that says “officially off the job market” with curlers in her hair, nibbles a sugar cookie with #employed written on it in frosting, and beams at a sensible pair of pumps as she cradles them in her hands.
Abraham told the Huffington Post that she “really wanted to share my good news with friends and family in a fun, creative and silly way that reflects my personality.” And while her whimsical photo set, shot by Liju Mathew, reads primarily as a critique of the wedding industrial complex, it also captures the deep joy of getting a job after a long period of unemployment.
It’s not a perfect analogy: Employers and employees know a whole lot less about each other than (most) engaged couples do. Few people start new jobs with the intention of staying committed to them for life. And leaving a job is almost always much easier than dissolving a marriage. But women’s jobs determine what we do all day, help shape our sense of identity, and—most crucially—give us the financial resources to live our lives the way we want to. At the end of the day, the independence that employment affords us is a hell of a lot more important than our marriage status. By elevating the pomp and circumstance of a job announcement to match that of wedding announcements, Abraham shows that our culture puts way too much emphasis on the latter—but also not nearly enough on the former.
