I’ve written about this before, but I never cease to be amazed at

a) the gall of jewelers and their heinous, condescending, demeaning advertising and

b) the fact that their heinous, condescending, demeaning advertising must work, because they keep cranking out these ads.

Today I refer to a Certain Asinine Promoter of Ridiculous Ideas  (CAPRI, for short) whose marketing team thought it was a brilliant idea to put up a bunch of billboards featuring a closeup of a lovely, yet annoyed young woman who is, at first glance, giving all the motorists the finger.

Yes, that finger.

But she’s not flipping us off. She’s holding her left hand in the traditional pose, but with a different finger extended: the ring finger, which is unadorned.

And she’s clearly not happy about it. The caption? “YOU PROMISED!”

The message is unmistakable: if the thought of spending the rest of your life with the woman of your dreams isn’t enough to drive you to propose, then let’s shame you into it, you procrastinating jerk. Your only crime to date may have been to not pay enough attention during the Super Bowl last January and you absently murmured ‘uh huh’ when your girlfriend was chattering on about how great it would be to get married, but she has never forgotten and the hammer is about to come down.

The subsets to this Advertising Atrocity are equally mind-numbing.  Clearly, the only way to make this young woman smile again is to put a ring on it. The proposal isn’t the important part of this equation, only the ring. And it’s not just jewelers doing this: I have actually heard an appalling number of real women state that they would reject a proposal that was not only unaccompanied by a ring, but unaccompanied by a sufficiently carat-y ring. Like at least 1 carat.

The glaring problem with all this is that everyone is ignoring this simple fact of life: maneuvering a man into proposing is a terrible idea. It’s the life-altering version of the ‘you never bring me flowers’ meme: If you only bring me flowers after I cry because you don’t, it really devalues it when you finally cave and show up with a bouquet because we all know you’re doing it because I whined you into it, not because you saw flowers and thought of me. If it were really about flowers, I could just buy myself some. Demanding that my guy think of me spontaneously and with affection is…well, you’ve lost before you even started.

Insisting on a proposal is self-defeating.

Accepting a proposal that didn’t bubble up from anything other than his own desire to nevereverever let you go is, too.

Nota Bene: 

Even as I write this, I know that there are at least three women out there either thinking that their guy would not ever have proposed or will never propose without an ultimatum, and wondering what I suggest in these cases. So, just because I believe you’re asking for advice in my mind, here goes: 

If you honestly believe that your man won’t propose without an ultimatum, there’s only one thing to do: break up with him, and tell him why. Don’t threaten to break up, do it. Pack. Remove your toothbrush and emergency tampons from his bathroom, and go. Don’t yell, don’t cry. Lovingly tell him, and really mean it, that it’s obvious that you have different goals in life, and you respect that, and you want to free him up to find someone who shares his values, just as you need to be free to find someone who shares yours.

And then go. And stay gone. If he really misses you and decides that he must come after you and he proposes, he’s doing it not because he’s easily manipulated, but because he’s thought about this and wants to continue. If he doesn’t…well, then he really was never yours to begin with, and that sucks,  but it’s better to know that now and not many years later.

© E. Stocking Evans 2012