Cash Diamonds

We've all heard about blood diamonds, but over at Slate, there's an article that traces the history of diamond engagement rings. Not surprisingly, the tradition of guys giving gals large hunks of glass-looking material isn't really all that traditional at all:

In 1919, De Beers experienced a drop in diamond sales that lasted for two decades. So in the 1930s it turned to the firm N.W. Ayer to devise a national advertising campaign—still relatively rare at the time—to promote its diamonds. Ayer convinced Hollywood actresses to wear diamond rings in public, and, according to Edward Jay Epstein in The Rise and Fall of the Diamond, encouraged fashion designers to discuss the new "trend" toward diamond rings. Between 1938 and 1941, diamond sales went up 55 percent. By 1945 an average bride, one source reported, wore 'a brilliant diamond engagement ring and a wedding ring to match in design.' The capstone to it all came in 1947, when Frances Gerety—a female copywriter, who, as it happened, never married—wrote the line 'A Diamond Is Forever.' The company blazoned it over the image of happy young newlyweds on their honeymoon. The sale of diamond engagement rings continued to rise in the 1950s, and the marriage between romance and commerce that would characterize the American wedding for the next half-century was cemented. By 1965, 80 percent of American women had diamond engagement rings. The ring had become a requisite element of betrothal—as well as a very visible demonstration of status. Along the way, the diamond industry's guidelines for the 'customary' cost of a ring doubled from one month's salary to two months' salary.

The article then goes on to argue that engagement rings also have nasty patriarchal overtones, even in modern times.

Hey - boundless capitalism and misogyny - it doesn't get more traditional that that, does it?