been thinking..., The diamond invention—the creation of the idea...

been thinking..., The diamond invention—the creation of the idea...:

My arguments against diamonds and the diamond industry probably could be fairly launched against hundreds of other retail markets. But this one is my peeve to pet.

We were in a string of jewelry stores this winter. As I told each sales person that I did not wear diamonds and was in the market for only a modest gem stone, their response was uniformly consistent and always accompanied by a physical move toward the locked aquariums that held these favored bobbles: No worries! Their diamonds were conflict free!

Problem solved! As if that platitude 1.) Was unquestionbly fail-safe and 2.) Addressed the only possible objection a human woman could have to the concept of diamond as reflection of self worth and worth of partner. Of societal rank. Of romantic achievement. Of global superiority. Of security.

Let me humbly admit that I love the sparkle and glimmer, rocking your hand and catching the whole world's light.

But not as much as I hate the idea of personally buying into one of the biggest, cruelest schemes the world has ever known.

I am not a diamond girl. I am not much of a jewelry girl at all, to tell you the truth. I have a lot of old-fashioned ideas about courtship and engagement (i.e., I don't want to go with you to pick out my ring. I don't even want to know you're doing it. I want it all to come from you, because I'll love it more if I know that that's the ring that you picked out for me...not the ring that I picked out for myself for you to buy for me, which I think is so totally lame) but also some nontraditional ones. I won't be taking your name. I might hyphenate it, but I look at changing my name as akin to losing every single thing that I've done as Amber Carter, both good and bad, and I don't want that. And you shouldn't want that for me, either.

And I've barely cared for rings enough to even know what the difference is between a princess cut and those other cuts (though, thinking about it now, I really couldn't tell you what shape a princess cut is. Pear-shaped...I got that. All the other ones, nope). So once I started learning more about the diamond trade, it was an easy decision for me. There is this weak psychological impulse that still goes with it - but an antique diamond could be romantic! How will people know that he loves and cherishes me if he doesn't get me diamonds for my birthday? - but it's like coming out of a recent brainwashing...your mind still has that automatic impulse, that reflexive drive, even though you know where those thoughts are coming from (i.e., absolutely brilliant marketing and advertising). But this is exactly the sort of thing that makes me so sad about our society: We will willfully ignore human suffering and strife if it directly conflicts with our ideas of entitlement and luxury. With tradition. And worse, we'll actually get angry about it, like how dare these people get captured and killed and maimed and tortured, because now we have to think about it, and now we might have to change our minds about something we want.

And it doesn't make me a better person than them, the fact that I don't want a diamond ring or a diamond anything. I already have one, locked away in my grandma's old hope chest, that I'll probably have for the rest of my life because I just can't think of anything else to do with it. So you win on that one, DeBeers. But I won't be adding to that collection. Give me a nice little braided ring of twine string instead, or maybe an agate smoothed into the shape of a mystical triangle. I really don't care. Rings aren't going to fuck you in the middle of the night.

You didn't think I was going to go there with that, did you? Well. I did.