Recently, I had the opportunity to go on a tour of the Tower of London on a chilly winter afternoon. The famously hilarious, informative and entertaining “beefeater” tour guide was really great and funny, telling jokes that ranged from Shakespeare references to ragging on Mel Gibson. Mostly, it was fairly enjoyable, until the end when his closing act caught me a little off guard.

He took about five minutes at the end to tell us where we could go see the crown jewels, joking that all we women in the crowd would leave drooling over the diamonds and warning our boyfriends and husbands that they would be in the doghouse for the jewelry they bought us couldn’t compare. The wind picked up and one woman in the front of the crowd stuck her hands in her pockets. This prompted the tour guide to make jokes about how she was hiding her small ring out of embarrassment and laugh about how the guy she was with would be in big trouble. This was his big punchline. The whole sixty-minute tour has led up to jokes about women's obsession with diamonds.

It was all lighthearted riffing, but it still let a funny taste in my mouth. This feeling returned the next morning when I saw a picture floating around online of a woman wearing a very small, cute engagement ring with a caption asking if the reader would agree to marry a man who gave her that ring.

Via: memegenerator.net

I don’t want to be accused as being “too-sensitive” and “unable to take a joke” or other things that get hurled at feminists when we point out a problem with harmless humor. I also realize that as far as the feminist movement goes, this is a pretty small problem against which to be railing.

Why should I let something as silly as dumb stereotypes get under my skin when there are victims of domestic violence, transgender women being brutalized, women of color being dragged out of their cars and beaten and millions of other much more pressing, life-threatening and urgent matters of life and death plaguing women around the world? Why would I take the time to write about something this superficial?

Well, let’s take a look at what engagement rings actually are. When we think about diamond rings, we think of what? A token of love? A sign of commitment? A tangible way to measure the affection of our potential life partner? A pretty jewel to show the world how much we are adored? That’s what we think of, right?

We probably don’t think of a marketing device, do we?

Well, it turns out, engagement rings weren’t even a custom until the late 1930s when the De Beers diamond corporation’s ad campaign sold the idea that diamond rings were the only way for real men to show their love. The same company even came up with the idea that a man has to spend two-month’s salary on the gem in order to sell more expensive rings to people who couldn’t exactly afford it.

Well, they could afford it if De Beers hadn’t monopolized diamond extraction in order to make it seem as though diamonds are extremely rare, when quite frankly, they’re far from scarce. De Beers just withholds diamonds in order to sell us the jewels for a whole lot more than they’re worth, for as De Beers chairman himself said “Diamonds are intrinsically worthless.”

In addition to being a total consumerism scam, certain types of diamond mining can hurt the environment, too. Harmful to biodiversity, water cleanliness, land and topsoil stability and more, where regulations are neglected, unenforced or nonexistent, the mining of diamonds has a negative impact on the earth.

So here we are, totally sold on a corporation’s scam that isn’t always friendly to the earth and has led to a lot of pretty ugly stereotypes. The idea that women are so shallow as to reject the love of their life because of a rock on a piece of shiny metal is cringe-worthy.

First of all, it plays into the sexist stereotype that women are catty and materialistic because we all want to have bragging rights to the biggest, most expensive diamond. It also subscribes to the belittling notion that women are in it for the wedding, the ring and the ability to say they are married, rather than love, companionship and all the actual results of lifelong commitment. The notion that we, women, spend our lives focused on getting a ring and getting a man, rather than the man himself and our own happiness, is an old trope used to control and subjugate women to feel abnormal if they aspire for more.

This stereotype that all we want to be happy is to lock down a man with a ring is held against women who break up with men when we are made to feel that just having a man is enough; it doesn’t matter if we are unhappy in the relationship, we should be happy just to be wanted. This cliché is used to condemn career-oriented women, shame women who do things that will “scare off men” like wear “masculine” clothes, have limited interest in house work or decide not to shave their legs. Whether or not we realize it, when we accept the premise of women’s top priority being a ring, we help normalize the chain reaction of stereotypes about women and relationships that lead to harmful preconceived notions about what women “should” want and expect.

Second, the idea that the size of the ring is equal to the amount of love for its recipient is just plain classist. Now I can get just excited about weddings as the next gal, but when people start thinking of the wedding as a way to measure the relationship, it starts to put me off. Diamond rings are lovely, and getting one is exciting and meaningful because of the life you’ll lead with the person you love. But that’s all they are! Somehow, we have come to use them as a litmus test of love.

I’m not saying that we shouldn't be excited about diamond rings, but we shouldn’t hold more stock in them than pretty accessories that celebrate a commitment between you and the person you love. We should stop seeing them as a measuring stick for love or that love is the means and a shiny diamond is the end. Someone of lower class shouldn’t feel less loved by her partner due to the size of her ring. And someone whose fiancé went all out shouldn’t feel as if their huge rock means their relationship is superior.

Now, I know that most women are intelligent enough to not truly buy into this idea that they can measure their relationship with what’s on their finger, but when we are bombarded with jokes and memes and sayings that accept this marketing scam as fact, it can be hard not to do the same. I myself have skinny piano-player fingers so big rings have always been more of a hassle than an enhancement. A small ring will be much more agreeable than a heavy stone that gets in my way.

But I have so many peers who tout those same old stereotypes that their diamonds had better be so heavy they hit the floor or that they won’t say yes to a proposal until he can afford a particular gigantic ring from a particular label and that they have their friends giving their boyfriends specific instructions about how big the ring needs to be in order to get accepted. This makes me sad because they are so wrapped up in the societal narrative that women think the relationship is for the wedding rather than the wedding being for the relationship.

I truly believe that this stereotype is harmful to relationships and to the status of women as individuals with dreams, personalities and goals outside of rings and weddings. I know that it is not an inherit part of romantic love because it is such a major part of American consumerism and simply isn’t as big a deal in other part of the world. Mere weeks before the affable tour guide joked that we women should be ashamed of our relationships because our rings would never compare to Queen Elizabeth’s, my Italian professor had been asking me about my next steps in my education and future when the subject of my boyfriend back home came up. He asked me if we were engaged and I answered, “well, we’re planning to get married, but we’re not engaged.”

He was baffled and asked what I meant by that, and I elaborated, “we’ve decided to get married, but he hasn’t ‘officially’ proposed. There’s no ring.” My professor shook his head and said, “we don’t have this here in Italy. Planning to get married is engaged. There isn’t this in between step that makes it ‘official.’” This really made me question our definition of engaged. That little piece of jewelry is the entire definition of the trajectory of a relationship. We place so much importance on a something that boils down to a marketing scam that we let it determine how loved we let ourselves feel.

I would much rather have a little ring and the extra money to use in ways that have an actual effect on our future. I would much rather my boyfriend not blow his savings on a piece of jewelry that’s supposed to validate our commitment, but rather hang on to the bulk of it so we can have a comfortable home and live out our plans for our marriage. Because the marriage is what the ring is about, not the other way around.

The royal jewels were beautiful, but they didn’t make me resentful of the romantic gestures my boyfriend has shown me. The necklace he gave me before I left the country is still special, and the Christmas presents I loved were still sweet and meaningful. Women, love and romance are a lot more complicated than the "diamonds are a girl's best friend" maxim would allow us to contemplate.

Jewelry can't change our minds, can't define our feelings and most certainly can't reduce us to frivolously prioritize getting a ring over the depth and love we deserve from a relationship. We should be able to enjoy our engagement rings without losing our perspective and allowing them to become the be-all-end-all. I don’t need to out-sparkle the Queen of England to feel like my love is valid.