🚇 Subway Ad Rant: Morning Commute Clickbait 💍
Is this the subway advertisement version of rage bait?1 Commuter trolling? A self-aware ad department breaking the fourth wall of conspicuous consumption?2
When I first moved to New York City in 2011, I remember being shocked at my fellow students in downtown yoga classes: Type A yoginis with finance jobs and perfectly chiseled (if underfed) bodies, professional ballet dancers and Broadway actors, and other fitness teachers.
On the one hand, this meant I had stumbled upon incredible classes, teachers, and studios—especially before the pandemic, when so many shut down.
On the other, while sandwiched between so many (mostly) women, I also recall dozens (hundreds?) of classes where I would be blinded by an absurdly large engagement ring. I couldn’t miss it! It would twinkle at me in downward dog, taunting me, the Perpetual Single. Hallelujah for people like who wrote one of my favorite books at the time, It’s Not You: 29 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single.3
I am worthy! the rings shouted. Somebody picked me! And that somebody is RICH! My ring is better/bigger/brighter than yours! Oh wait, you don’t have one at all!
Okay fine, I suppose engagement rings can’t talk, but if they could, this is what I imagined them saying. Do I sound bitter? I suppose I was. Frustrated, more like it. What did these women have that I didn’t?
Can rings be a celebration of everlasting love, and can those of us who wear them simply enjoy looking down at sparkly things, as I do? Yes, and yes. Are most diamonds still deeply problematic for how they are sourced, how much they are marked up, adverts for potential muggers, and the product of ingenious marketing? Yes to all.
When I got married five years ago, I chose a half-eternity band with small Asscher-cut diamonds. I forewent the poke-your-eye-out sparkler begging me to point at things with my left hand so I could marvel as it traveled through space and others’ eye lines. I might also add: I couldn’t afford it. So it’s possible that my own shadow, a lingering unresolved jealousy amidst financial insecurity, is the one writing this post.
Don’t get me wrong; to each their own! Given that one ostensibly wears this ring every day for the rest of their life, why not enjoy the view?
But hopefully the 5 C’s don’t distract from the real win, the beauty of commitment amidst its messy complexity. The beauty of having a ring to wear at all, if that’s what is in your path, and the beauty of an unadorned finger if it’s not.
Eventually, when I overcame the pain of being perpetually single, I could be happy for friends (and celebrities!) and the escalating number of carats alighting their fingers.
Until . . .
Until I saw a subway ad plastered throughout the cars last month that I couldn’t escape. For some reason, their particularly crass marketing tactic enraged me, again: