A few years ago, my girlfriend and I had an argument about this article and the book it came from. I flat refused to buy diamonds, and obviously she wanted a beautiful engagement ring. The compromise we came to was that if it wasn't a diamond, then it better be fucking amazing, preferably with a yellow saffire.<p>Long story short, I'm currently on my honeymoon, and her yellow saffire ring blows everyone away.<p>If your girlfriend turns you down for lack of a diamond, you have probably chosen poorly. However, she might (reasonably) turn you down if she's dissappointed, so make your feelings known long in advance, or you might be in trouble.<p>Get your rings at Brilliant Earth in SF (I did my shopping online, and was not dissappointed). They are the only ethical jewelers I've found, and I looked hard. My wife's ring has a large yellow saffire (fair trade from Sri Lanka, mined from shallow mines with a low environmental impact), small diamonds from Canada (sadly lab diamonds are not good enough for jewelry yet), and recycled gold.<p>The ring is pretty unique, and utterly amazing, and I would recommend this route for any ethically minded person.
Fun fact: If you get a diamond nice and hot (blow torches work great) and then drop it into some pure oxygen, it will burn like the hunk of charcoal it is.
Spending insane amounts of money on a clump of carbon molecules to declare your love seems to me extremely wasteful. If your s.o. really needs a display of conspicuous consumption over spending your - now joint - funds carefully and wisely you might want to talk it over. Easy come easy go, if you have money left over to throw it out more power to you but most people are not in a position to throw away money like this.<p>Congratulations to the DeBeers marketing department, they've done an excellent job of making people believe this sort of stuff is needed.
Unfortunately, realizing this is not enough. You need your partner to realize it too, or you're out of luck. Good luck presenting a ring of ruby or sapphire; even though they are far prettier stones IMHO, every girl I've met has diamonds stamped into her heart.
This article appears to be an excerpt from a longer book on the subject: Epstein, Edward Jay (1982). "THE DIAMOND INVENTION"<p>The author has a website, <a href="http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/prologue.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/prologue.htm</a> with what appears to be the complete contents of the book. I don't know if he's updated it since 1982.
I'm amazed in general at the amount of conformity in people surrounding the whole topic of weddings. Not just the ring (btw, diamond rings for engagement is an American cultural thing as far as I know, in Europe the props are different), but the whole dress code and the mandatory steps involved in the event. Wasn't the future supposed to free us from such conventions? I find it funny especially with people who laugh at religious functions as superstition, and then they embrace a totally arbitrary set of made up rules.
Relevant article on the synthetic diamond trade from Wired last year: <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html</a><p>edit: oops I mean 2003; 11.09 was the issue number
My favorite quote from the article ...<p>"Watts found that the diamond had mysteriously shrunk in weight to 1.04 carats. One of the jewelers had apparently switched diamonds during the appraisal"
My fiancee and I had this discussion too. In the end, we decided to forego engagement rings all together and just go with a nice set of tungsten carbide wedding bands.
Its been a fantastic fad while it lasts (lasted?) but in the end its always just been "Vans off the wall" for "big people".<p>I wonder what we'll use next. I've always wanted to give my wife a ring with a bit of a meteorite set in it because, hey, its from <i>outer space</i>. Where does one find such things?
The lesson here is how co-ordinated messaging (propaganda) can continually shape and re-shape broad cultural memes no matter how stupid the memes are.<p>While in the case of diamonds it's a matter of wasting money, encouraging inane consumerism and odious environmental practices for the sake of a few wealthy oligarchs...<p>When the same thing happens in politics...<p>It encourages meaningless consumerism and odious environmental practices for the sake of a few wealthy oligarchs.<p>The Lesson: Distrust messages from oligarchs.
If it were the other way around: if women had to buy something in order to gain a man's affection and commitment, it would be considered a servile and sexist tradition. Yet somehow the tradition of men buying expensive engagement rings for women survives. I say the heck with that. If she gets an expensive ring, then I want an expensive ring too. Equal rights! :)