Here’s a piece that really benefits from being well-timed: “Two Months’ Salary” by Lee Gainer. The concept is simple but pretty profound, in that it challenges a genuine sacred cow of our culture—-the engagement ring—-by showing a depressing display of what two months’ salary of various professions can buy when it comes to marking your newly acquired female property. The message of the piece will resonate more now than it would have a year ago, and not because the nation has had a feminist awakening that allows people the intellectual and emotional space to think critically about wedding customs. It’s the “two months’ salary” thing, an invention by DeBeers to expedite the channeling of money from people who work for every penny up the chain into the pockets of the owners of DeBeers. Now we’re in a depression and thrift is already seeing a resurgence in popularity, and folks are more attuned to the obscenity of dropping that kind of money on a diamond ring, instead of saving it, or spending on something that’s more of an investment in your future. (Though I suppose that an extravagant gift like that creates a debt that the giver might consider an investment.) Could the economic realization lead to a more feminist understanding of the problems of the engagement ring? I think it’s possible.
Dana asks the sticking question:
As Conor Friedersdorf once wrote:
In a way, it’s bizarre that women given engagement rings don’t respond by saying something like, “I’d love to marry you.” (Beat.) “And thank you so much for this ring. (Eyes welling up.) I cherish the thought behind it, and I’ll keep it forever if you’d like. (Happy tears.) On the other hand, we could take it back and use the money to spend several months together in coastal Italy.Or couples (of any gender) could mutually decide to mark their engagement with an affordable weekend holiday, or the mutual exchange of meaningful gifts, and then call their friends and family to “make it official.” In a time of recession, the “two months’ salary” tradition just makes less and less sense.