As a South African literature
specialist, discussions of the diamond industry often make their way into my
classes. DeBeers, the diamond company founded by Cecil Rhodes in South Africa
in 1888 is known for an advertising campaign that it started in 1938: “It
dreamed up the notion that a diamond ring should be an essential display of
love and status, its gift a rite of passage. In the ensuing decades De Beers
and its marketers penned slogans—memorably, ‘a diamond is forever’—and invented
social rules, urging men to spend two months’ pay on a gift for their
affianced. That benchmark not only permitted high margins, but suppressed the
second-hand market—to the benefit of both the firm and its customers, who could
be reassured their investment would hold its value.”[1] Basically, DeBeers created a market for
diamonds that hadn’t existed prior, and the company did so by inflating demand
for a limited commodity. By the end of
the 20th century, 80 percent of all brides received a diamond ring
as a symbol of engagement.
Of course, these diamonds were
mined by black South Africans who were effectively enslaved by the colonial
policies of people like Rhodes and then under the auspices of apartheid. And so-called conflict diamonds, the products
of the labor by enslaved adults and children, continue to make their way into
the U.S. Even when the diamonds are certified “conflict free,” the gemstone
industry remains steeped in its legacy of colonial exploitation of indigenous
labor and its simultaneous commodification of women as consumer goods to be
purchased with expensive rocks. And that’s what allows the consistent and
increasingly sexist billboard propaganda of Spicer Greene Jewelers in Asheville
to perpetuate the marketing myth and women must have diamonds, that men are
required to buy them for us, that, most recently, “sometimes it’s ok to throw
rocks at girls.”
Her it is.
In various parts of the world,
women are still stoned to death for marital infractions, most often on
presumption that they have committed adultery. The fear that women might
transgress the mandate that is offered by the “diamonds are forever” slogan
(even if that transgression occurs because the woman is raped) incurs a
sentence where men throw rocks at women and girls until they are dead.[2]
Not in the US, you say. We don’t
stone women to death, here. Well, men kill women all the time, but not
generally with actual stones. In a 2016 report by the Associated Press, FBI and
state cime data showed that 6,875 people
were fatally shot by romantic partners during the period from 2006 to 2014, and
of those, 80 percent were women: “On average, that works out to 554 annual
fatal shootings of an American woman by a current or former romantic partner
during the nine years examined, or one every 16 hours. Of the female victims in
the AP’s study period, 3,100 — or roughly 56 percent of the total women
killed — were shot by husbands, ex-husbands, or common-law husbands. Another
1,953 women were killed by their boyfriends.”[3] A google news search for “man kills wife” on March 23,
2017 pulls up numerous stories with headlines such as these: “Pennsylvania man
Kills Pregnant wife with Sword,” “Man Kills wife with Hatchet” (Florida), “Man
shoots, kills wife, injures sister-in-law in Pasadena Restaurant.” The list
goes on and on. And on.
In other words, many of these
women were sporting a “rock” that had been “thrown” at them by a suitor.
Spicer Greene’s billboard on
I240, of course, is meant to be funny.
But it isn’t, not in a country where women are still conditioned to be
objects purchased with gemstones that carry with them a history of the
enslavement of millions of people, not in a society where men feel entitled to
murder women whose bodies and minds to which, in one way or another, they feel
that have an unquestionable right, and not in a society that has just seen the
most explicitly misogynist election in our nation’s history, one where it was
seemingly ok for people like Trump adviser Al Baldasaroto to say things like “Hillary Clinton should be
put in the firing line and shot.”
Gemstones are pretty.
They sparkle. But the history of
how they made their way from the mine to the hand of the blushing bride, how
they are implicated in a racist and sexist legacy that’s all about
commodification and property is worth knowing. And I hope that Spicer Greene’s
billboard and the marketing strategy behind it is more reprehensible to you for
knowing it.
[1]
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21717369-production-worlds-most-valuable-gem-may-be-about-peak-report-de-beerss
[2]
The most recent coverage of such an instance was last week: http://dunyanews.tv/en/World/378408-Afghan-woman-stoned-to-death-by-Taliban-for-adulte
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