Still a Girl's Best Friend

by Gwen Cooper — August 17, 2007

Maybe it's because Robert and I have been talking about moving in together, or maybe it's just that a lot of people get engaged during the summer (has anybody ever done a study on that?), but I seem to be noticing engagement rings everywhere I go these days. At every business meeting I attend, every boutique I wander into, every time I share an elevator with some twenty-something girl on her cell phone, I see left hands twinkling and sparkling. It's as if Manhattan has transformed itself into a constellation of diamonds.

I've discovered that I'm less partial to the diamond solitaire. Maybe it's a New York thing, but the single diamond set on a platinum band always seems to be a huge, honking affair that reminds me of nothing so much as mob brides or the "jappy" women in the Miami suburb I grew up in--where the point of the exercise seems to be making a statement like, "See how big this diamond is? Do you know how much money my fianceé makes???"

I read someplace once that the tradition of giving engagement rings started as an insurance policy of sorts for brides-to-be. Back in the days when it was considered socially unacceptable for a woman to lose her virginity before she got married, many women waited until they were engaged to finally allow their fiancés to...um... "go all the way." Quite frequently, however, the blushing bride-to-be who lost her virginity between engagement and wedding night found herself abandoned by her erstwhile groom before ever making it to the altar. It was thought that if the man had to seal the engagement with a large financial investment of some kind--such as an expensive ring--he was far less likely to get engaged to a girl, sleep with her, and then leave her high and dry.

It actually makes a certain amount of sense, if you think about it.

I pride myself on being the kind of person who doesn't allow herself to get caught up in arbitrarily symbolic gestures. I mean, if Robert and I were to get engaged, it's not as if I'd need the security of an expensive ring to protect my virginity. That ship sailed a loooong time ago...

But there's just something about that left-hand sparkler that gets me every time. Having mentally rejected the idea of the diamond solitaire, I find myself cruising jewelry stores to compare cuts and sizes and settings, and mentally playing the game of designing my own ideal diamond ring. Some traditions end up falling by the wayside when their initial usefulness wears off, but I guess there are some things you just can't get away from. Women like diamonds--and I've discovered, much to my chagrin, that in this area I'm as typical a woman as you'll find anywhere.

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.