My prof explained how before the diamond, engagement rings were simple bands with a single pearl, and how DeBeers (a diamond retailer) was not pleased. They wanted to make diamonds the norm (marketing their product for profit) so they made a deal with Hollywood where films would portray women with diamond engagement rings to encourage consumers to change their ideal of what an engagement ring should be. She also explained how it became a norm to spend 2 months worth of salary to really show the person you love how much you love them based on the amount of money you were willing to spend. They started marketing ideas like "diamonds are forever" and it started to catch on, spanning from Western culture and across the globe.
If you know me, you'll know how I feel about love. As cynical as I may be towards relationships sometimes, you'll know I truly believe that everyone deserves to know/feel loved and supported at all times, in all situations. I believe that love is not something from which we should be deprived, and that just by telling someone you love them or showing them how much you care simply by being there for them in good times and in bad goes a long way. Though it's interesting to see how companies use advertising to show us that we can show how much we love each other by acting it out, but great loves and expensive diamonds make that love better, more real, stronger. Companies use advertising to show us a different (more expensive) way to look at the idea of love we all know and share in some way or another. It's strange isn't it? To look at advertising as driving force that doesn't manipulate us to want certain things or others but as discourse that is used to monetize abstractions.
Basically I'm super interested in the fact that by overtly (and covertly) displaying images of diamond engagement rings as opposed to pearl ones created a substantial shift in the way we perceive, and potentially practice, displays of love.
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