h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

me too...

Thanks to marketing, it's gotten quite common for men to wear wedding rings. I don't know if that counts as fashion. Otherwise in the 80s, a number of rockstars seemed to adopt women's fashion. Some photos of Mötley Crue make them look like drag queens at Mardi Gras.

"Some photos of Mötley Crue make them look like drag queens at Mardi Gras."

Allegedly The Crue were the inspiration behind Aerosmith's 'Dude Looks Like a Lady'.

I'm mistaken for a woman often enough that I hesitate to tempt fate. Even though I have a mustache, people don't always pick up on my gender at first.

The older you get, the less important gender seems to be. I wander through my mother's nursing home and wonder how the elderly men and women get along. There are far fewer men than women there. My mother says that the men get treated worse than the women by the staff. I wonder if this is really true. Do any of the women fight over the men, or is everyone just worried about day-to-day issues?

I didn't realise that men's wedding rings were a new thing. Mr Vip was adamant that he wanted one, so he could proudly wear it. He did make sure to get a big chunky 'manly' one though.

all the European married men I've known* have worn wedding rings. I think the lack of wedding ring could be an Anglo-Saxon thing?

*not in the biblical sense.

The norm here was that you exchanged engagement rings, but only the wife got a wedding ring. No clue if that is still the case.

Aah, there's no engagement ring for the chaps over here. It's a girl-only, stupidly expensive thing with large rocks on it. Unless you get in there first and prevent the outlandish expense.

Never seen the point of diamond rings - they're a lot more useful in an industrial setting. Anyway, if it's a ring you're going to be wearing all the time, not just for special occasions, it needs to be something hard-wearing without bits that catch on things!

they are supposed to be valuable, and something to belong to the woman in case she got left on her own (widowed etc) from the days when women couldn't own property etc.

I bought my own.

Oh I see. That does make some sense, actually.

I chose my own, although Mr Vip paid for it, and I bought him a watch. He then went one better and bought me a sword. Had I waited for him to propose rather than getting in there first, he would have proposed with the sword, not the ring.

so cool!

Is a sword weddng better than a shotgun wedding?

Wedding rings are probably a textbook example of succesful marketing. It's all thanks to De Beer that diamond rings are now used for weddings.

why do you think they're a result of marketing? I was under the impression that they were an outward symbol of being married, another (with the engagement ring) form of security for the woman (and man if he has one) and wasn't there also something to do with the circle and unending love (God's love??)

Nobody forces anyone to have one, but at least in all the christian weddings I've been to they have been an integral item in the significant part.

I wasn't talking about wearing a wedding ring as such. Rather about men wearing them. Also about the idea that diamonds rings are the standard for engagements and weddings, rather than something optional.

Married men in the U.S. usually wear wedding rings. I thought this was the custom in other countries as well. No?

We are talking about how things have changed over the centuries, remember? When I say recent I mean within the last 100 years.

Yes, I get annoyed at men wearing wedding rings in medieaval films. But I could be wrong, history was never my strong suit!

I wear 3 rings - a commitment ring, and enagagement ring (with the tiniest diamonds I could find, I can't stand the clusters and sticky out bits catching on clothes etc) and a wedding ring. Rog wears - very unusually - 2 rings - the matching commitment ring and wedding band. They're in titanium, just for added oddness!

What's a commitment ring, Beatrice?

A month after we met, we wanted to buy something to demonstrate our commitment to each other. So we chose rings. At that stage, we chose very simple, plain matching bands of titanium. We never planned to marry, but when we did decide to do that, about 6 years later, I chose an engagement ring in titanium with a simple twist in it, and little diamonds on either side of the twist. Our wedding rings are titanium with a stripe of silver running round the middle.