something women always do when they see a newly engaged female friend:
"OH MY GOD LET ME SEE THE RING OH MY GOD IT'S GORGEOUS!!"
then the lucky soon-to-be-bride blushes/laughs/smiles gleefully as she (coyly, almost) displays her left hand to the bevy of female friends.
i don't care about diamond rings. getting married freaks me out. maybe it's what the ring represents that turns me off? if i did get engaged, some cool/funky/interesting jewelry with sentimental value would be 100x more appealing than a big ol' rock. but still. once i am around a newly engaged woman, i can't help but join the masses and ooh and ahh over the ring too. it's ingrained in our cultural upbringing. and it's not really the ring i care about. it's just my way of letting the happy engaged girl know how happy i am for her too.
unless i was doing it to heidi montag. then you'd know i was just being fake. cuz we all know spencer bought her like a $99 ring that he picked out in 2 minutes and that's nothing to be impressed about.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
culture.
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3 comments:
so me and my coworkers have a theory on the ridiculousness of engagement rings. and i think it comes down to the primal behaviors of humans. women want to feel committed to (and yes even some men do too). on the other hand, history has shown that men have an obsession with owning "things", whether they be land, empires, gold, women, etc. so to expect a man to spend half of his net income on a silly rock that will only be worn for a few months is SUPPOSED to be ridiculous. it's a test of a man's commitment to a single female. any guy with finite resources better damn well be committed to the female he's devoting most of his resources to. now kings and presidents are in a league of their own because they really do have enough resources to maintain multiple 'commitments', whether they be open or in secret. but back to my point, it's all about expressing commitment...women may want to sugar-coat it to their girlfriends, and men may want to downplay it to their buddies, but that's what it's about at the end of the day. okay i'm done with my wannabe-freakanomics-like analysis :)
so...my ambivalence towards engagement rings...reflects my fear of commitment?
Thank you for not buying into the ridiculous diamond culture. The diamond industry is much like the oil cartel, only since we don't actually need their product they must convince us otherwise, and they are doing a spectacular job.
When my best friend got married in 2004 I did some research on diamond engagement rings and learned some alarming facts. For a bit of history on De Beers, check out The Straight Dope on diamonds. To learn how an advertising firm changed a 1500-year old tradition in Japan and created a market for diamonds out of thin air, read read this article. And for a detailed and technical but fascinating look at industrial (synthetic) diamonds and the diamond cartel's reaction to them, check out this Wired Magazine article.
My friend is now divorced; the several thousand dollars he threw down for the ring his fianceé wanted turned out to be a very poor investment.
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