Yes, you. And when I use the term “need” I of course use it hyperbolically. No you don’t need it like you need water or air or a copy of Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, but you need one nonetheless.
If you’re all “love is all you need” that’s great, but why are you reading an engagement ring blog? Anyway, I recognize your opinion & respect your right to have it and espouse it in the comments using your actual Facebook profile (no cowardly trolls plz only Gryffindor trolls.)
Moving on. I recently read and loved this response to The Economist’s tone deaf and exquisitely ignorant article about why Millennials aren’t buying diamonds. My favorite tweet, and new go-to response to 80% of questions I’m asked is now thus:
@TheEconomist Cuz we broke, bitch.
— Black. Queer. God. (@Adamant_Yves) July 1, 2016
And I think this article hits the nail on the head way better than The Economist article did. For most Millennials, rare gem ownership is not a priority. For Olivia Pope’s sake we don’t even care about buying cars, why would we want an engagement ring? But I think there’s some slight of hand going on here.
And yesterday, on the RLJ blog I enumerated why Millennials ARE buying diamonds with less profanity and Hogwarts references. But you’re here today because you want your diamond ranting with a side of geekery and I am here to give the people what they want.
So, please allow me a few other thoughts I have but didn’t find pertinent to yesterday’s post on the RLJ blog.
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Millennials aren’t buying engagement rings at the same rate as the previous generation because they aren’t getting engaged at the same rate. Blame hookup culture, blame student loan debt, blame the abysmal job market if you must, but the heart of the matter is that no sh*t Millennials aren’t buying engagement rings. They’re spraining their thumbs scrolling through Bumble like it’s Instagram.
Millennials are barely dating, let along getting FBO (do we still say that? IDK.) And even if you do somehow manage to find someone you enjoy “hanging out” with and you agree to enjoy mutually exclusive brunches for the foreseeable future, it’s like pulling teeth to put a label on it. So if you can’t even agree that you’re boyfriend and girlfriend, how can you expect to take it to the next level in a reasonable 7-8 years?
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Millennials are wary. We’ve lived through our parents’ divorces. We’ve been raised in a society that tells us marriage doesn’t matter. If marriage doesn’t matter, then why does an engagement ring/diamond matter?
If absolutely all of this makes you bristle and you are the exception to these stereotypes you’re buying an engagement ring, dammit.
There are exceptions to every rule, and I think those exceptions are more numerous than we believe. Because for every Elite Daily post about Why I’m Single/Why Marriage is Stupid/Why I Spent My Financial Aid on a Trip to Thailand To Take Instagram Pics of My Girlfriend’s Butt there are hundreds – thousands! – of less idiotic Millennials silently working.
Well, as silent as we can be, anyway, Snapchat is like a form of oxygen for us. But anyway, just because we aren’t writing whiny posts on pay-per-click content farms, doesn’t mean we don’t have a voice. We’re just using it in a quieter tone, working our asses off to build a future, and generally not writing open letters to our bosses online.
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We – you – are the exception. You recognize the value in making a commitment. To your education (yes, loans and all – but you’re going to actually have them paid off, and you used them for tuition and books not massages in Phuket.) To your career. To your goals. And to your relationship, your future, and a family you’d like to have. You put your money where your mouth is. You know that ring is going to be on her finger for the rest of your life.
I don’t care what kind of engagement ring you buy. I don’t care how you pay for it (as long as you can afford it.) I don’t care if there’s an actual diamond as the center stone. I don’t care if it costs $1,500 or $15,000 (clearly I am not commission-based.)
What I do care about is proving The Economist wrong, ensuring that the whiny, non-committal, familial-basement-dwelling Millennial stereotype is smashed like Harry’s Prophesy Record in the Hall of Mysteries (see guys, I’ve got you.) Help me fight the good fight. You’re buying an engagement ring, dammit. Even if we are broke, bitch.
