posted
08/2/11
“Diamonds are forever.”
Now that Kim Kardashian and her two-million-dollar engagement ring have announced details of her wedding to New Jersey Nets power forward Kris Humphries, we thought we’d examine that phrase a little. And it turns out that it is, in a word, bullshit.
Unless “forever” started in 1947, when that slogan was written by Frances Gerety, a copywriter working for an advertising agency called N.W. Ayer & Son. In an effort to reverse the falling price of diamonds in America and the lack of interest in their purchase, De Beers (the largest diamond cartel in the world), hired the ad agency to force feed the American public the idea that every man had to buy the biggest and most expensive diamond ring he could afford for his fiancé, that the size of the diamond was equivalent to how much the man valued the woman.
De Beers and their ad agency also created the false idea of the scarcity of diamonds to make the public think they were far more rare than they actually are. De Beers stored most of the diamonds they owned in vaults, circulating only a small percentage of their stock to nurture the illusion that diamonds were the most rare of all gemstones. Fun fact: they’re not. Rubies are.
N.W. Ayer & Son also worked tirelessly to influence popular mass media of the time. They convinced movie studios to include scenes of women shopping for diamonds and songs about diamonds, and they arranged countless public appearances for movie stars to show off the diamonds they were wearing. (Of course, they did all of this without alerting the public to the inhumane practices that were going on in virtually all of their diamond mines in and around South Africa.)
They whipped the public into a diamond-buying frenzy, and 60-plus years after the launch of that initial ad campaign, most American women wouldn’t consider a proposal of marriage complete without a big shiny rock in a little box. And most men will oblige.
Why this is silly
If being duped by a massively powerful cartel into shelling out thousands of dollars for something that is completely useless isn’t enough to stop you from buying a diamond engagement ring, then let’s take a look at the inequality of the idea itself.
De Beers suggests that a man looking to give the ultimate gift of eternal love to his sweetheart should carve out three months’ worth of his salary and hand it over to them. (Humphries and his 3.2-million-dollar salary, now in jeopardy thanks to the NBA lockout, must not have gotten the memo.) This is gross, not net. In 2006, the U.S. Census Bureau reported an average mean income for full-time workers, aged 25 to 64 of $39,509. Since that was five years ago, let’s round up to 40k because it makes the math easy. Three months salary is 10 grand.
That’s right, De Beers wants you to spend 10,000 dollars on one of their diamonds, and there’s a good chance that your lady wants the same thing. Let’s assume the brain washing worked. Let’s assume you can’t wait to write off the last three months of working a job you hate to buy a tiny, plentiful rock that some 12-year-old kid in Sierra Leone mined even though the process could easily be simulated in a lab. Fine. But what’s she getting you to celebrate the beauty and love that will no doubt last for the rest of your lives? Oh, right…not a goddamn thing.
COMMENTS
July 30, 2011 2:39 am
DJB
Yeah, like the story. And I know at least one couple that went for ziriconia. Not a first marriage for either of them, maybe that breeds maturity.
My wife or 10 years has a very good, and very good-sized, engagement ring with a main diamond that’s over 1 carat. If we were doing it all again today, she’d probably go zirconia and use the money on a great home theater – she actually values that more than I do. But she was in ther twenties when we met. You know how that is. Me, I’d want to put the money towards a bass boat
Although she does have a fairly large and real diamond, there is one twist to this story: what I could afford in the way of a ring at the time was less than the cost of the ring she really wanted, so she ponied up the rest of the money herself. It wasn’t half, but it was a very substantial amount. Fair enough, in my book.
July 30, 2011 2:43 am
DJB
You know, if you’re going to use recaptcha to make humans prove we’re actually human, you really need to use captchas that actual humans can actually f-ing read. I wrote a great and fairly long story about a diamond and the damn captcha only gave me two chances and then blew away my comment entirely.
No guarantee this one will make it either, but let’s see. If it doesn’t, your site has lost my eyeballs forever.
August 1, 2011 3:23 pm
Lauren
What does the guy go through, in your “tit-for-tat” approach to pregnancy and childbirth? There’s never been a comparable experience of pain, discomfort, and inconvenience for men. So I say, shut it, and give her a ring! Because when you’re complaining about how she’s lost her figure and let herself go, that rock will still be shining on her finger. A reminder, that once upon a time, you cared enough.
August 1, 2011 4:04 pm
Kristoffer
I love you.
August 1, 2011 7:39 pm
fishmankelly
Make a contract that she can only keep the ring as long as she keeps the same weight And to DJB..(you should have bought the bass boat)
August 1, 2011 9:12 pm
VJ
Buy your love tons of gold, because that would please her and help her in bad times and in recession. sell a diamond back you would not even get 50 % of the value.
August 1, 2011 11:29 pm
Matt
Lauren, what would you rather have. A long cruise, a trip around the world, and an extended honeymoon, or a fatassed ring? Wait, both. Then you leave the guy for looking in the direction of another woman, just because YOU are so insecure.
August 2, 2011 12:06 am
daniel
VJ – Gold has less intrinsic value than diamonds. At least diamonds can be used in cutting tools.
August 3, 2011 11:19 am
Don Magic Juan
The market doesn’t care about intrinsic value. Gold is a commodity. Diamonds aren’t.
But hey, your gold investments only would’ve appreciated by about 400% in the last few months. (Thanks, weakening dollar.) How’s that rock looking now?
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