They could strike at any time. In a bar. In the gym. At work, when a colleague returns from a holiday with a tan and a new addition on their left hand. It’s the engagement ring Olympics. As soon as someone tells us they have given up on doing any better romantically by agreeing to marry one person to the exclusion of all others, there’s only one question people seem to ask. And it’s not “Oh so does he/she own acres of fertile land, no relatives and a weak heart?” – which is practical, caring and just the right bit insensitive. No, instead people chorus, “Show us the riiing, let me seeee.” Like Tolkien’s Gollum, we demand to see the hunk of metal on someone’s finger. You can almost hear the slip of “my precious…” out of their salivating mouths.
It’s not because it has special powers. People’s reasons for wanting to see the ring are far more depressing and human. They want to silently judge it. They want a good old goo at how big the stone is. To input the cut, clarity and carat into their brain so they can work out how much it cost. Or how much you are loved.
There is no winning in the engagement ring Olympics. “It’s very sparkly… very eye-catching” translates into “you have the taste of a magpie crossed with a 16-year-old girl who’s been given a bedazzler for the first time”. If someone says it’s “very unique… very you”, it means they think it’s an abomination that should be buried at the crossroads at midnight. “Oh a solitaire diamond, very classic” means “you have never had an original thought in your head, have you?” If it’s too simple, people will think you’re marrying someone too cheap. If it’s too big it will inspire whispers of “having something to prove”.
If the engagement ring Olympics ever had an annual opening ceremony, it would have been this month with both Taylor Swift and Georgina Rodríguez accepting marriage proposals. Two of the biggest players in the world of people who are extremely nosy about others’ relationships. Rodriguez was the heavyweight champion of speculation, having been with professional ball chaser Cristiano Ronaldo for eight years, enduring all manner of rumours that he was wasting her time. She debuted a diamond so big that it has its own gravitational field. It pulls other, lesser diamond rings into its orbit, making dinners out as a couple very awkward.
Do I look like a soft target? Do I give off the sad vibes of a person who can be inconvenienced?
There is no winning in the engagement ring Olympics
My grandad’s hobbies are listening to the Dubliners and complaining about still being alive
I’ve promised to give a speech, but am freaking out. You see, I’m a big thick
Critics accused the ring of being “tacky” which is the word people use when they’re insanely jealous of someone having more money than them but don’t want to admit it. Everything is “too tacky” for you when you can’t afford it. If I had a 35-carat diamond, I would wear it everywhere. It would be blinding people at Lidl as I try to keep up with the cashier firing carrots at me faster than I shove them in my bags-for-life.
The ring judges were working overtime when the leader of millennial white women in the free world revealed her boyfriend had popped the question. Swift knows her audience. Not only releasing the pictures on Instagram but posting a cropped photo of the ring in the slide show saved us noseyholes of the world from having to zoom in. It’s also very big and very expensive. But that didn’t stop the Swifties debating over whether this was the perfect antique ring or “something she would never have chosen”. As if we, the general plebs, had intimate access to her secret Pinterest boards. Or phone gallery of ring screenshots she’d sent as subtle hints to her fiance, a man who once spelt squirrel “squirle”.
[ Taylor Swift’s engagement ring marks a return to vintage eleganceOpens in new window ]
In the end, it’s the real-life ring-judgers that hurt more than the online jury. More than once I’ve seen an announcement ruined by an “excited” relative or “friend” insisting that “all engaged girls get a photo of our rings together” to show off that theirs is the largest. The advent of lab-grown stones has put some noses out of joint, with couples able to buy large stones at a fraction of the mined gems with no discernible difference. What should have levelled the field has become another category to judge. People have yet to learn “is it a lab diamond?” is not an appropriate question to ask when someone tells you their big news. It’s gauche and hints at sinister intentions. Unlike asking if your intended’s 98-year-old brother and co-farm inheritor is still single and able to sign legal documents.
