Engagement Rings and Why We All Should've Paid More Attention to Boy Meets World

*spoiler alert* If you watch The Office and aren't caught up on recent episodes, skip the first paragraph 

           In a recent episode of The Office, Michael pulls out an engagement ring: a huge, huge diamond. Pam sees it and cries “Holy s***! Is that real?” “Yeah,” Michael replies, “Three years’ salary right?” Haha, joke’s on Michael, I thought, it’s three months’ salary. Then I stopped to think about it. Why do I know that? And why is there a standard for money spent on engagement rings? What’s the deal with engagement rings anyway?

            Really, shouldn’t they be outdated now? After all, men and women are always saying they want equality in their marriages. If we really wanted equality, we wouldn’t have women wearing a visible sign of their off-limits status, or we would have men wearing them too.

            I decided to look up a little about the history of the engagement ring. Christians were using rings in their wedding ceremonies in the 8^th century. The diamond wedding ring didn’t appear until 1477, when Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave one to Mary of Burgundy. Engagement rings didn’t become standard in the West until the end of the 19^th century, and the diamond engagement ring didn’t become common until the 1930s. Today, 80% of American women are offered diamond rings for engagement. And the standard for amount spent? That appeared with a De Beers ad campaign intended to drive up sales of diamonds.

            Sometimes it’s amazing to be reminded how the media can influence our lives. An ad campaign for one company has set the standards for 80% of engagements in America; that’s insane!

            I’ve never really understood all of the rules surrounding engagements and weddings. I remember being confused watching Father of the Bride as a kid. If Steve Martin can’t afford the wedding, and the groom’s family is offering to help pay, why doesn’t he accept? My mother tried to explain the payment rules surrounding weddings, but I just didn’t get it. If one family had all the money, why weren’t they helping out with the cost? These unspoken rules are helping no one, and may be hurting people. If a dowry were offered with an American bride today, wouldn’t people be disgusted? Yet, what is the tradition of the bride’s family bearing the cost of the wedding if not a modernized dowry?

            This is how I feel about engagement rings. People are supposed to get excited about marriages, not the accessories that come with them. Women shouldn’t have to worry about a financial commitment on the part of the man to ensure that he’s going to stick around. And we certainly shouldn’t expect a specific amount to be spent on the ring. There’s an episode of Sex and the City in which Aidan’s going to propose and Carrie finds the ring that he’s bought and hidden. And she is disgusted by it; it’s not the right cut, color or style. What about the man that she loves? (To be fair, it turns out that she doesn’t really want to marry him anyway, but the fact that the ‘bad’ ring gives her so much pause is still a problem.)

            Why do so many women participate in this culture? It’s a tradition that marks women as property and men as owners; it marks the importance of a man’s financial security (because he’ll be providing the financial support, of course). Engagement rings perpetuate gendered beliefs about power dynamics within relationships.

            There’s an episode of Boy Meets World in which Topanga and Corey are engaged, and we see that Corey is wearing an engagement ring also. They turn it into a light joke (that Corey saw Topanga’s ring, and said “Ooh, pretty, I want one”) but it still reveals the equality in their relationship. If only more couples followed the lead of Boy Meets World, maybe we’d have a more equitable society. 

Where I got some good engagement ring info:

http://www.slate.com/id/2167870/

http://1engagement-rings.com/