Rings and Weddings
Jun. 13th, 2007 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jebbypal Via Kung-fu Monkey, The engagement ring tradition
You know, I found this article about the history of engagement rings and the diamond industry's push to revive cells in the 1920s interesting.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that I've never been hung up on rings --- actually, for various reasons, I've never been hung up on jewlry at all. Yet the impracticality of a huge engagement ring followed by a wedding ring has always struck me as...excess. And I can honestly say that I was never one of those girls that imagined/planned a wedding day at any point in time in my life --- and yet, I myself still do fall into the trap of measuring worth in the terms of "am I in a relationship or not".....especially back in college when it always seemed like I never would be in one for the most part. So when the author writes Women still measure their worth in relationship to marriage in ways that men don't., I know exactly what that means and it registers.
I mean, the media saturates us to this day with plot lines and images that say if you aren't married by the time you're 30, you'll be old and alone forever. Career women in shows that we see are invariably single and childless. And marriage is always the goal of the story line of a teenage girl or 20-something in love.
You'd think in this day and age we'd have progressed away from that. I mean, don't get me wrong -- long term commitments and marriage are great -- knowing that there's one person there that will move through the rest of life with you that you don't have to worry about constantly driftng away etc. I think it would be great if we could pick a group of our closest friends and make similar commitments (w/ or w/out the sex, depending on how you role).
Yet at times, I still have to remind myself that "marriage" is not a goal. A happy loving relationship is. I guess that's why that ever since I was at my brother's first wedding, I've been anti-wedding. Weddings, like graduations, aren't for the people that walk through them -- they're for family and friends. And a life-long commitment to someone you love isn't something that I want to use as entertainment fodder for other people. A reception to celebrate after the fact, okay, fine. But give me elopement combined w/ the honey-moon, or even just a trip down to the justice of the peace before we go back to work for the rest of the day if you insist that we have that legal piece of paper.
You know, I found this article about the history of engagement rings and the diamond industry's push to revive cells in the 1920s interesting.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that I've never been hung up on rings --- actually, for various reasons, I've never been hung up on jewlry at all. Yet the impracticality of a huge engagement ring followed by a wedding ring has always struck me as...excess. And I can honestly say that I was never one of those girls that imagined/planned a wedding day at any point in time in my life --- and yet, I myself still do fall into the trap of measuring worth in the terms of "am I in a relationship or not".....especially back in college when it always seemed like I never would be in one for the most part. So when the author writes Women still measure their worth in relationship to marriage in ways that men don't., I know exactly what that means and it registers.
I mean, the media saturates us to this day with plot lines and images that say if you aren't married by the time you're 30, you'll be old and alone forever. Career women in shows that we see are invariably single and childless. And marriage is always the goal of the story line of a teenage girl or 20-something in love.
You'd think in this day and age we'd have progressed away from that. I mean, don't get me wrong -- long term commitments and marriage are great -- knowing that there's one person there that will move through the rest of life with you that you don't have to worry about constantly driftng away etc. I think it would be great if we could pick a group of our closest friends and make similar commitments (w/ or w/out the sex, depending on how you role).
Yet at times, I still have to remind myself that "marriage" is not a goal. A happy loving relationship is. I guess that's why that ever since I was at my brother's first wedding, I've been anti-wedding. Weddings, like graduations, aren't for the people that walk through them -- they're for family and friends. And a life-long commitment to someone you love isn't something that I want to use as entertainment fodder for other people. A reception to celebrate after the fact, okay, fine. But give me elopement combined w/ the honey-moon, or even just a trip down to the justice of the peace before we go back to work for the rest of the day if you insist that we have that legal piece of paper.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-13 02:06 pm (UTC)D and I are anti-wedding as well. Which is not surprising, I suppose. We've been together almost ten years, living together for four, and now we have a joint bank account and we own a house. We've been thinking about the elopement thing... ;)