Why the diamond ring?

One of the things that never cease to amaze me is the meaning given to diamond rings. I understand the appeal of gemtones and gold. Gemstones glitter and we like glitter. Gold is jewelry that is also a financial tool. But no other gemstone, no gold is endowed with the same meaning that a diamond ring carries.

A diamond ring isn't about glitter or its financial value. Well, it is, but you don't find women buying them as financial security. No woman plans to sell a diamond ring. As for its glitter, we are living in the age of glitter. In the ages when we were living in a world of supressed tones, of mud houses, of drab clothes, of drab lifestyle, glitter was eye catching and therefore glitter was valuable. Since then, the humankind has been able to make so many materials glitter. It doesn't have to be expensive to be shiny today. Everybody can have shiny. But the appeal of diamond rings continue, in a way to supercede wealth and class division. Almost every woman seems to want one. The less-than-wealthy, with tiny stones. The wealthy, with the-bigger-the-better stones.

But why?

As in most subjects, I was left outside the ebb and flow of the trendy about diamond rings. Diamond rings didn't have a presence in our cultural consciousness when I was growing up. It was as alien as Indians and the Cowboys on tv. For us, everything a diamond ring is made to represent between a woman and a man, it was represented by a simple gold band.

Then came an age when it entered the "markets", heavily advertised as the gift to give to your girlfriend, fiancé, wife or mother. No other gift could measure up to the diamond ring, we were told. You had to give it or you didn't love that woman enough. You had to receive it or you weren't loved enough.

That is, beyond the glitter and the finance, a diamond ring loses me.

I listen as my friends describe how they acquired their diamond rings... through their significant ones, of course. Rings are flashed and their stories are told. One confesses to buying her own ring and telling her family that it was her fiancé's gift, because otherwise the family wouldn't think well of him. Another one wonders why he won't buy her a big one, because, you know, he has enough money and it IS a diamond ring, so why doesn't he? And I listen to them in fascination, no doubt under their pitying glances because I don't have a diamond ring to flash.

The simple truth is, I don't, because I have never wanted one. Beyond the sentimental worthlessness of such an expense, I simply dislike the appearance of a glittery stone mounted on top of a circular thing. I don't find it aesthetically pleasing. Can't there be found many designs, with or without the diamond, that would be more pleasing to the eye than the required basic design of the basic diamond ring?

And I have ever, even for one moment, thought myself more aesthetically gifted than my friends. What makes them worthy, I wonder, if it isn't the design. It can't be the financial worth, I think, because they won't be selling it.

Or can it?

Isn't it also pumped up that the more expensive your ring is, the more you are loved?

And I start to think. I remember the moments when I felt utterly, completely loved and completely without a diamond ring. I find that the people in my life, be them family, friend or significant other, are finding so many ways to show me that I'm cared for. A simple phone call from my mother because she knows I'm having a difficult period. An offer to take me out from my sister, when she knows I'm feeling lonely. The sheer pleasure on a friend's face upon seeing me. Deep and meaningful words, little items of interest from my loved one that tells me I am in his heart and mind.

Do I need a diamond ring? Is this why I don't?

And my curiosity mounts: what is it that makes a woman need a diamond ring in her life? Doesn't she receive other tokens of attention and she wants a ring to symbolize the love she wants to receive? Something to show her she is more valuable than so much money? The need to show others that she is loved?

I guess it is easy for some men to not spare much thought and action to make her feel loved and get a diamond ring as an easy solution. As long as it works both ways, who am I to comment, really.

But my curiosity won't go away. Beyond my own private conjectures, why the diamond ring?