The day after I wrote about Miss Manners’ takedown of a dude who consulted a woman’s father before asking her out, the UK’s Daily Mail ran an article–titled “Why Modern Men Shun The Tradition of Asking for a Woman’s Hand in Marriage”–confirming what most of us already knew: getting “permission” to propose just ain’t done anymore. Based on a recent survey of 1,000 people conducted as market research by H. Samuel jewelers, the Mail concluded:
The days of asking a father for his daughter’s hand in marriage are over – thanks to modern women (ed: You’re welcome)
…eight in ten [English] people said asking a girl’s father for her hand in marriage was no longer necessary these days. Scotland is the only part of Britain where the formal request is still seen as sacred with ten per cent more people north of the border backing it. (ed: Doing the math, that would mean it’s “sacred” in Scotland even though 70% of people are not in favor of it. Statistical analysis FAIL).
And there even seems to be a glimmer of hope regarding the death of traditional gender roles:
With ‘mengagement’ rings rising in popularity and the pay difference between men and women officially getting smaller over last year, it’s not surprising that even the traditionally male role of marriage proposal has changed. Over two thirds of those questioned think women popping the question is a great idea – especially men, who are happy to concede their previous domain.
A spokesman for H Samuel said: ‘It seems that some romantic traditions are being ditched in 21st century Briton because of equality between men and women, but new trends are being created. We’re now more likely to see ladies on bended knee than men. We see that most couples are judging their own perfect style of engagement, without following age-old traditions and managing not to offend their partner or their in-laws to be.’
Works for me. What about the rest of y’all? (And please feel free to include your thoughts on “mengagement rings.”)
Mengagement Rings. Brotox. Manscaping. You know what, I am sick and fucking tired of being told “It’s alright! It’s for men now, so you don’t have to worry your precious little phallus about your gender presentation for one teeny second!” before I do anything that was once or is now considered remotely fucking feminine.
I pluck my eyebrows, I use a moisturising cream, I am a cook, I hate sports, and you know what? I Am Fine With That. Patriarchy, please stop patting my arm and telling me it’s okay because it’s not infected with girl cooties any more.
Do a lot of men in Britain want to marry “girls”? If so, maybe they should stop and think about that.
If, on the other hand, women are involved, everyone should do what they want. The idea of a “mengagement” ring sounds like another consumer op to me, and we all know that’s a good thing! Well, except when it comes to teh gayz.
Is it bad that I never knew men weren’t supposed to get engagement rings until after I’d already bought my partner one? People would always give me funny looks when the subject came up.
Now I just feel kind of silly.
One of my friends did the mengagement ring–he wanted it because he felt it was fair for both of them to have a sign of commitment (trying to decrease the woman-as-his-property bit a little, I guess).
He also cited wanting to be left alone when out at bars and what have you (they were long-distance for a while).
The whole marriage-go-round has become a bit loopy. Look, people need to learn to do what they want. Stop all this trends crap. And forget equality: marriage was never about equality. Marriage was created as a way for men to trade goods and services, a.k.a. the bride and her dowry, in order to forge new business and political relationships. Get married, don’t get married, but do it on your own terms, and be grateful that sheep, goats, and cattle are no longer integral to the ceremony.
Personally, I think engagement rings are silly and unnecessary for women, so I think they’re equally silly and unnecessary for men.
But that’s just me–if people want to spend money on engagement rings, I suppose I prefer that BOTH parties wear them, like DangerMouse’s friend did. That seems preferable to the traditional engagement ring scenario: I am giving you this ring to show that you are MINE! Now other men will respect MY TERRITORY and your friends can squeal over the fact that you have been chosen by a MAN, which is your highest calling in life.
@Newt: I could at least eat/milk the sheep/goats/cattle. A diamond ring…not so practical, unless I plan to hock it to pay for the divorce.
I’d be interested what the numbers are for the U.S. My hometown is very conservative & Christian, and that undoubtedly colors my experience, but I know quite a few people where asking-permission-from-the-father was non-negotiable. I think many of these folks are proponents of the kind of “courtship” where the father gets to decide who the daughter dates, as well.
I don’t know, part of me thinks it’s silly that my dude had to talk to my dad in order to get married to me, but I was the one who insisted that he do it, because, well, I love my dad, and I want him to feel like he has some say in my life even though he knows I’m an adult and am going to pretty much do whatever I want.
I will say that I’ve never actually felt more happy and excited than when I was sitting in my childhood bedroom while my two favorite men stood in the garage having that talk thinking, “there’s a man outside who loves me enough to face my terrifying father and to ask him if he can marry me”. Ahh love <3
Regarding “mengagement” rings & the like – I’m somewhat saddened that the perspective has shifted from ‘engagement rings are necessary for women’ to ‘rings are becoming necessary for both genders’, instead of people questioning “Why are engagement rings (waxing, Botox, etc.) necessary at all?”
It’s such a craptastic capitalist response – now, not only must you still spend money on some silly feminine thing, you have to buy the masculine version as well.
@dioxazine: Agreed. It’s just another example of how the Jewelry Industrial Complex is determined to wring every last penny out of us. No surprise that this article’s conclusions are based on market research by a jeweler.
Remember how a few years back DeBeers was plugging “right hand rings?” Women were supposed to show off the unmarried pride by buying themselves a diamond! The message from DeBeers was so transparently just BUY MOAR DIMONDS!!1!
I think my perspective on marriage is already fairly clear, so I will be brief and quite possibly offensive:
Asking Dad (not Mom? I’m shocked.) is a bald display of the woman-as-chattel ideology to be rejected utterly. It should die a horrible painful death.
I was horrified to discover that a male friend of mine had asked his girlfriend’s father for permission/ blessing the week before he asked her to marry him. I was more horrified to discover that at least three more male friends of mine had done the ‘asking permission’ thing.
Relating the story to my dad, he said “if anyone ever asks for permission to marry you, I’ll tell them they ask you as I’m not your keeper”. He also suggested that if anyone did ask him for permission it was a pretty clear sign I shouldn’t marry them, due to fundamental differences/ lack of actually knowing me.
Some couples that I have known buy watches for men at their engagement, sorta like, here’s some fancy jewelry for you too, groom.
@PhDork, I am right there with you.
I would personally be disgusted if any man ever “asked my dads permission” to marry me. However, for whatever reason like probably 75% of my cousins husbands to be did this. Everyone just thought it was, “sweet.”
I had a somewhat unconventional relationship with my ex-husband. At the time we decided to get engaged, he had chosen to be in a submissive lifestyle with me.
For our engagement, I bought a silver ring with a butterfly made out of garnets (my birthstone). I had the garnets replaced with sapphires (his birthstone) and had one of the garnet wings (a teardrop shape) made into a pendant for his collar. It felt like an equal exchange and the whole thing cost about $85 (they were really small).
Because I got to plan it, pick it out, buy it, and pay for it, I felt very in control of the situation and more like I was buying two symbols of our bond — instead of a miniature manacle on my finger.
I’m with most of the commenting people. The idea of “mengagement” rings is just a way to milk more money.
Yeah I really don’t get the engagement ring either. I actually managed to mortally offend my best friend when I didn’t pretend to go into a frenzy over her boulder (that she picked and is paying for along with his two child supports). It disgusted me that she kept saying, “Look what he got me!” when to me clearly she had gotten it for herself.
My mother shocked me when I brought up this post to her via phone by informing me that she and my father have both decided to cast off their wedding bands. Her reason? They are uncomfortable and she thinks it’s just tacky now. (Mom and dad have been happily in the luvz for 25 years.) She told me that she and he didn’t need it as a warning beacon to other people considering that since they are devoted they both have mouths and are able to tell anyone to back off.
This is leaps and bounds for her and I’m very proud of her choice.
I agree that mengagement rings are largely a consumer ploy, and I’d rather see people doing things that are personally meaningful to them to commemorate engagements. But, to the extent that engagement rings for women remain popular, I am glad that there is at least some movement to make things a little more egalitarian.
I admit I got a little got sucked in by the “right hand ring” ads because, damn it, do I have to get married to get some nice stuff? But not so sucked in that I actually went out and bought a diamond.
A couple of days after we decided, one night, to get affianced, my fiance and I went to an antique store and bought each other silver rings ($30 each). It was a sweet, meaningful ritual for us both. We did it because we wanted something physical to play with on our hands that would signify to ourselves that we were going to get hitched without necessarily looking like engagement rings, especially for me.
It is no one’s business but mine that I’m engaged, and I still find it odd when classmates/acquaintances find out several months into our acquaintanceship and rhapsodize: “OH! You’re ENGAGED? WHEN are you getting MARRIED? Tell me EVERYTHING.”
I should note that I’m not so curmudgeonly that I’m not excited to marry this man I love, but no one asks HIM so excitedly. It’s supposed to be my thing. Extra annoying since I’m really not so much with the details and he is the one who didn’t just want to go to the courthouse in a nice suit.
I am shocked that an actual real newspaper felt the need to even ask why people shun this tradition. I mean, whenever I mention that I’m opposed to marriage because it’s ultimately a patriarchal tradition about men owning women (see Gayle Rubin, “Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex”), people don’t believe me. But what could be more proof than this tradition? Thing is, if I even bring it up, people say that nobody even does this anymore. Which, I thought was true. In mainstream culture, anyway, I thought this wasn’t common at all.
I can’t even imagine dating someone who would consider doing some shit like this to me. I mean, outside of how I wouldn’t ever date someone who wanted to get actually married, if someone did this I would take it to mean that he or she believed that my father owned me, and that my affections were to be negotiated between my father and my spouse. But, come ON. Gross.
@Cimorene: Weeeeellll, it’s the Daily Mail, which can only barely be described as an “actual real newspaper”. And really, they’re just recycling the results of a survey done by a jewelry company–a survey with a very small sample, I might add. So consider the sources…
@Xenu01 I was in the same boat. The wedding was the husband’s idea (to begin with). I personally would have been happy to skip the whole thing and just live together, but that not being possible where we lived, we had to get married first. Enter family obligations and who needed to return-invite whom and it all went kablooey from there. Barring some obligatory involvement, I showed up, smiled at ppl I didn’t give a shit about, and left with a socially sanctioned relationship. Joy.
But, on topic, while part of the massive production was the engagement, one of my small victories was insisting that I would only wear an engagement ring if he did. I don’t like rings anyway so when we got married we swapped the engagement rings for titanium bands that are really light and that we don’t wear half the time anyway.
I’m with PhDork in principle though. It’s all completely unnecessary.
No, no, it’s not that your father owns you! It’s just that it’s the respectful thing to do, because… it’s your father. And you’re… his daughter. It’s just sweet is all and I refuse to explain why!
When I got engaged/married, I was a baby feminist, so didn’t bat my eyes at the idea of an engagement ring for me, but not for R. The one I picked was inexpensive, had a blue topaz instead of a diamond, and was, technically, a “birthstone ring.” I liked it so much I decided to keep it as my wedding ring.
This has, however, resulted in some disbelief on the part of outsiders. Usually, that meant “oh, it’s nontraditional*…cool,” but once, at a party with friends (R didn’t go), the host’s cousin kept trying to hit on me. When I showed him my ring, he refused to believe that I was married because I didn’t have a diamond. Because I didn’t have his idea of a wedding ring, I was automatically lying about my relationship status (mansplainer, much?)
*No, it isn’t non-traditional. It’s a white gold band. With a shiny, blue rock. Not an asymmetric steampunk-inspired gear-laden ring (which would be sweet, come to think).
On topic, I’m glad this stupid expectation of men asking older men permission to access their daughter’s vagina is falling by the wayside.
So, I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, mainly because I am in a relationship that has shifted from a lot of hanging out to OMG! When I’m free you’re busy, when you’re free I’m busy, does that mean we still have a relationship (in hiatus) or that you secretly hate my guts? All evidence points to the first, while all of my patriarchal training makes me “feel” like it’s the second.
But on topic …
I think that it is important to build our relationships consciously and not to get swept along with the cultural script. So, whatever couples decide to do, whether asking her father for her hand, buying his and hers engagement rings, or holding hands and jumping into an active volcano, is a-ok with me.
That being said,
Diamonds are a pretty evil commodity whose sale supports terrorism and slavery and a lot of other nasty things. That this is the shiny rock associated with romantic love and marriage is, on one hand, devastatingly accurate and, on the other hand, unthinkable to me.
Mangagement rings are ridiculous.
Right hand rings are even WORSE because when you buy them for yourself because you’re an independent woman, hear you roar, you’re still leaving your left finger open because someday a MAN will come and CLAIM YOU AS HIS OWN. Just by putting that stupid ring on.
That being said… I have a right hand ring. BUT I don’t wear it on my right hand (that’s where the ring my bf bought me is…not a promise ring, just a pretty piece of jewellery), so I wear it on my left ring finger as a kind of fuck you to the patriarchy. And as a kind of reminder that when it comes absolutely down to it, I rely on myself and myself alone. Plus, it’s pretty.
I keep mis-reading mengagement rings as management rings, and thinking, Wow, I’ve never had a boss I like that much.
Chiming in more agreement on no engagement/mengagement rings, for either. A) I am not property, B) I don’t want to support the diamond industry, C) the marriage industry gives me the heebiejeebies. People who want a big wedding, I am happy for you and hope you have a good time. Having been in a common-law situation for 7 years (together for 9), and having no interest in getting married. Squeeing over a ring because you just got bought makes me grit my teeth.
Easy for me to avoid marriage (the wedding/western image of the whole thing, including the engagement ring) as I live somewhere where common-law has many of the benefits of marriage, including spousal status on health insurance, getting to file taxes jointly, etc. And I don’t live in a community where people look down on you for not being married and living “IN SIN”. When I’m at my company’s head office (small town USA), I am more circumspect and refer to him as “my husband”.
@bellacoker: LOL! Me too!
I love the idea of both members of a couple sporting whatever talisman they wish to express their love and affection for each other and towards each other. Xenu01′s story, for example, is incredibly sweet.
What I DO object to is the term “mangagement ring.” SRSLY, Jewelry companies and journalists who write about trends? Sincerity and love: UR Doing it WRONG.
I’m with BeckySharper on this one, that it smacks of Jewelry Industrial Complex. Sorta reminds me of the discussion about the Wedding Industrial Complex in the post on bouquet-throwing.
Wow, I think that all of us are on the same page on this issue! This is perfect timing, because I was thinking about proposing to my boyfriend. I don’t like the idea of marriage as an institution so much, but it looks like it may be the thing we have to do for me to legally stay in the country. The problem is that I’m against the diamond trade, he’s against the gold trade, and we’re both against treating me like property that needs to be marked. At the same time, I am all for a physical reminder that I can wear as a sentimental souvenir of the engagement. It would probably double as a wedding ring. What I am considering is antique rings (at least the gold or silver is being reused instead of using new sources of mining) for both of us.
Along the same lines, my brother is about to propose to his girlfriend. And he’s going to ask her parent’s permission first. Ugh. I am so disappointed in my brother but he is a full-on conservative and very old-fashioned. I wish I could convince him to just ask the woman- she’s not property to be exchanged!
I think I told my boyfriend that my dad would appreciate the whole asking him thing, because I think he would. I assume he would also understand that his response would have zero actual bearing on the outcome. I guess there really isn’t a way to involve parents at a pre-decision point, since by the time you mention marriage, everyone tends to go all SQUEEE!. It’s a shame, as I do value my parents’ input on major decisions. They’ve had annoyingly accurate insights on past relationships, and I’d always consult them on buying a house or any other decision of similar scale.
Well, back when I asked my boyfriend’s mother for her permission to marry her son … (just kidding!!)
I think two adults should be aware of the history of entrenched patriarchy behind all these customs. I don’t understand why adults need to follow some set of traditions rather than thinking for themselves. I know that we’re all influenced by our respective cultures, and we don’t make any decision completely independently from our environment, but at least we could try to think a bit about what we’re doing and why, right?
Before we got married my husband and I talked about the pros/cons of marriage and then made a decision. No one “popped the question” or asked for permission (gag!) from either set of parents. No one bought an engagement ring but each of us chose to wear a wedding ring (plain gold band, simple as well as cheap). We tried to figure out what would work for us and that’s what we did. We felt no pressure to do “what everyone does” (no white dress, no going into debt over a huge ceremony, etc.).
And I agree with the earlier comment that it’s weird to talk about men wanting to marry “girls.” That’s a serious language fail in my book.
Maybe because I was 38 and secure in my profession when I first married, but the whole ring thing didn’t seem like such a big deal. We had our rings make by a friend of ours, a local jeweler. My fiancee paid for the gold and labor involved in my engagement and wedding rings, and I supplied the diamonds from my late mother’s wedding set. I also commissioned and paid for his wedding ring.
Looking back, I suppose it’s sort of unequal that I wore a visible mark of engagement and he didn’t, but really, I just can’t bring myself to see it as a big deal. Everyone we knew was aware that we had set a date to get married and I don’t think that they all thought that I had suddenly became his chattel because I was wearing an engagement ring.