Wednesday, November 19, 2003

A couple of guys here in the office recently got engaged. (To women, not to each other. Relax.) And we never would have known if they hadn't told us. As a woman, this struck me as odd.

Traditionally, it is obvious when a woman gets engaged. One day, a diamond ring appears on her left hand. This might pass unnoticed, particularly if the gem is of modest size, except that her hand rapidly becomes the center of attention for all other women in the room. She may even have made her entrance waving it and shrieking.

Meanwhile, men can remain secretly engaged indefinitely. It looks to me as if they prefer it that way. Even when they come clean, it isn't so much an engagement "announcement" as a "sheepish admission."

In general, a woman is more than happy to have everyone know she's about to get married. A man seems to prefer to keep it quiet. If I think too hard about it, I can't decide which attitude is more mystifying.

Why don't men get marked for matrimony? OK, maybe a diamond solitaire wouldn't be all that appealing to them. But it seems only fair that there should be some universal signal. An engagement jersey? An engagement hat? An engagement chain? No, that's no good -- a discouraging symbol.

Back when my parents got married, it wasn't at all uncommon for only the wife to wear a wedding ring, too. My dad never had one. He felt it was nobody's business whether he was married. To his credit, he applied the same logic to my mother: She had a ring, but she very rarely wore it, and that was fine by him. Which seems weird but fair.

After all, that's why we had to invent "Ms." Because you can't tell whether a man is married or not from "Mr.," but "Miss" is single and "Mrs." is a wife. If marital status is important for total strangers to know instantly, then men should have two different forms of address, too. Maybe "Mr." for husbands and "Dude" for bachelors. I'd be willing to go back to being Miss Bennett if men had to identify themselves as, say, Dude Bongiolotti.

Frankly, I'm mystified by the whole mechanics of engagement. For example, the ring. Fundamentally, it is a way for a man to mark his territory and warn off rivals, made palatable to the woman by being pretty and expensive (much the way grain alcohol is made palatable by being mixed with fruit punch).

A tattoo on the back of the neck saying "Arthur's girl" would be a much harder sell, not to mention the difficulty of throwing it in his face or off a bridge in the event of a breakup.

The ring accompanies the proposal, in which, traditionally, the man asks the woman to be his wife -- with or without the aid of a skywriter, scoreboard, genuflection or gently falling snow. If he is well-prepared, he presents the ring. I have heard of guys popping the question over a meal and hiding the ring in a dessert item or glass of champagne -- could that be more alarming? I shouldn't have to tell you there is nothing romantic about broken teeth or the extrication of jewelry from the intestinal tract.

The way I always envisioned this scene, most of the details of it come as a pleasant surprise to the lady. And then I grew up and discovered how it is actually done.

Apparently, many women do not have any faith whatsoever in their beloved's ability to pick out a suitable emblem of his everlasting esteem. Granted, there are men who cannot reliably pick out an inoffensive tie. And the ring in question will have to be worn forever. (Well, in theory. There's about a 50-50 chance it may be converted to a pendant at some point.)

So these fiancees-to-be go with the poor tasteless fellow and pick out the ring themselves to ensure they won't open the tiny box and find a ring inlaid with a reproduction of Dogs Playing Poker.

The revelation that really stunned me was that there are women who tell the guy how big the diamond has to be! I mean -- you can DO that? And he'll still want to marry you? Wow!

I had a boyfriend once who used to yell at the TV every time one of those deBeers commercials came on that said how many months' salary a guy should spend on an engagement ring. I did not take that as a particularly good sign.

But now I can see I should merely have declared that sum far too paltry and driven him to the nearest jeweler, tied to the fender and sporting a fetching new engagement hat.

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