A "real man's ring": gender and the invention of tradition - American double ring ceremony, 1920s male engagement ring

Journal of Social History, Summer, 2003 by Vicki Howard

Sales techniques and advertising campaigns that reproduced dominant gender ideologies surely played a major role in the success of invented traditions during this period, but the wedding industry was also aided by the fact that marriage had entered youth culture. During the depression, the average age at marriage had risen dramatically. At the end of this decade, the average age was 26.1 for men and 23.3 for women. After the war, couples married on average at a much younger age. By 1951, the average age for men was a youthful 22.6, for women, a mere 20.4. (51) Manufacturers and retailers, who closely watched the dropping age of marriage, were encouraged to "woo the teen-ager," even before she became Mrs. Consumer. (52) Magazines, such as Seventeen, Bride's, and Modem Bride sponsored studies of the bridal market that were used to lure advertising dollars. As a "newly made lady of the house," teen-age girls stood "on a threshold of gigantic household buying, probably never to be repeated in her lifetime." With this market in mind, manufacturers and retailers were to focus on "the girl's formative years." For example, the Hope Chest Study, conducted by market researcher Eugene Gilbert for Seventeen Magazine in 1957, found girls as young as 13 or 14 interested in collecting items for their future households. The vast majority of the study's sample of teen-agers expected to collect hope chest items that the jewelry industry would be interested in supplying, such as flatware, glassware, and china. These hopeful brides-to-be were also expecting to collect other types of goods, such as blankets, bedspreads, draperies, towels, and tablecloths. (53) Such studies reveal large numbers of teen-age girls eager for domesticity.

The wedding industry focused its attention on the teen market, but what it had to offer needed to resonate with young people about to marry. As a cultural producer, the jewelry industry helped draw the boundaries of what was considered appropriate, and yet when consumers decided whether or not to purchase these goods they produced their own meanings. The double ring ceremony may have appealed to the many young couples who sought a ritual that would differentiate them from their parents. Older courtship patterns had eroded as "going steady" became the ideal, as if in preparation for early marriage. Rather than viewing marriage as "the end of youth," as had been the case before the war, the popular media began celebrating American marriage as something specifically for young people. With married students supported by the 0.1. bill and new married student housing, college life felt the effect of the marriage fever. (54) For women, early marriage became almost a requirement. One study of the teen market noted tha t "the fever of getting married young has risen to such a pitch that girls who are not engaged before they finish college feel that they stand a good chance of becoming old maids." (55) An engagement ring was a public announcement that a girl had nothing to fear. For young men, agreeing to marry and wear a wedding ring could be a way to assert a mature male identity and allay cultural anxieties over homosexuality. (56) Unlike the woman's ring, the groom's wedding band expressed his ability to support a wife, to enter the adult world. In keeping with new concepts of masculine domesticity, it also represented equal commitment to marriage and the containment of sexuality. (57)