Bloody Glitter
Starting this new blog today after blogging on myspace for the past two years. Thought it was finally time to take my writing out into the "real world" and expose my guts to those other than my friends and anonymous myspace reader fanbase who have been chalking up the numbers on my "viewed" score board (who ARE those people???).
Taylor and I watched the movie BLOOD DIAMOND last night and it made us want to go return our wedding rings and join the Peace Corps.
It's sad that it takes a big Leonardo DiCaprio major motion picture to make reality sink in for some people~ like US in this situation. Granted, cinematic art is of course embellished for entertainment purposes, but only a fool can deny that the death and destruction in Africa is out of control...and the diamond aspect is all but unknown and untalked about here because someone, somewhere high up doesn't want us to know about it.
Although I have no idea where my diamonds in my engagement/wedding rings came from, I am horrified to think that they could be the products of the nightmare that goes on in Africa or anywhere else in the world. It horrifies me to think that anyone died in the process of getting these rings on my finger.
We women look at jewels and think "Yay! Pretty!" when really there is so much corruption and politics behind them...we are trained not to think about those things and instead are brainwashed into wanting them...
America wants to save the world one country at a time~ but one has to wonder why for so long the shit going down in Africa has continued and why we have yet to stick our noses in their business to the ends and extremes that we have done/are doing to other parts of the world (I guess because maybe we haven't found oil there...yet).
Someone in America must be profiting off of it somehow...PROFIT PROFIT PROFIT PROFIT. I wonder how many old cronies out there are profiting from this? Which politicians and big business white collars are banking from it? I'm sure that the money trail can be followed all the way up the ladder somewhere.
Kind of like how we've had the technology to send people to the fucking moon and send information collecting machinery out into space for decades but for some reason we can't find seem to find a cure for cancer and progress in the alternative energy/electric car department is moving at snail's a pace...not even a snail's pace...more like watching fungus grow on a rock.
This diamond thing- it really makes you wonder. Our country profits so heavily on convincing people that diamonds are forever, and diamonds are a girls best friend and a man needs to spend at least 3 months salary on his bride-to-be's engagement ring.
It's all a load of crap really. Diamonds didn't even get to be what they are in our culture until some marketing mastermind back in the 50's decorated Marylin Monroe in them and decided they are a girl's best friend.
Back when I got the "ring fever" I originally sought out vintage wedding rings, only to find that the old school rings did not house diamonds, but instead other precious stones like emeralds and rubies and sapphires. I remember being a little confused~ where were all the diamonds?
Now I know that I have been duped all of these years~ as all the other girls in the country have been and are being duped by marketing geniuses who are getting their pockets stuffed by our lack of information.
Watch diamond commercials. They are truly the most mind fucking kind of marketing out there. Not only have they worked on targeting people, they have brainwashed the entire country. And diamonds aren't even rare!
I'm not even the dreamy, romantic type, but man- if those Diamonds are Forever commercials (with the beautiful orchestra music and silhouettes of couples in LOOOOVVVEEEE) didn't make my heart drop down into my stomach and make me wonder if a man would ever love me enough to give me one of those beautiful stones.
Damn you marketing masterminds!
Now that I am older, I feel ignorant not having considered where my diamonds came from when I got them, but who actually thinks about that kind of stuff when a man gives you a ring and asks you to marry him?
What man thinks of that when he goes to purchase a diamond ring? No one does.
Because the realities of diamond sources are not on the news. The news is too busy obsessing over the newest missing Caucasian kid in a foreign land (even though kids of all color go missing every day in our own country), or feeding the attention needs of media whores like Britney Spears, or corporate "news" figures reporting their opinions instead of the facts...
I think that the world is so accustomed to the chaos in Africa that our "news" doesn't even consider it news unless one of our celebrities are over there checking out the damage and touring the camps like the people in them are the new zoo babies- holding up big checks and taking pictures with the kids before hopping back on private jets to go home to their mansions.
Death and destruction over there is going on and has been going and probably will always continue to go on...it's such the norm that we don't even really think about it. I am glad movies like Blood Diamond are being made because even though the movie is just a movie, it's based on reality~ and watching movies based on real things seems to be a better way of hitting home because we Americans loved to be entertained. We are all so numb to the constant 24/7 flow of "news" that it takes so much to move us and influence us and make us THINK.
It's difficult not to feel guilty when I want to look down and admire my jewels~ but I have to remind myself that I am not a bad person for wearing these rings. I didn't know any better. I am a product of where I live, no matter how much I try to keep myself aware and resist the mind control of the media (THANK YOU college education). I am just happy to be more aware of how diamonds contribute to the deaths of other people so that I can change what Taylor and I spend our money on now.
I can't go to Africa and save anyone, but I can control my own personal diamond consumption by stopping it now before wedding anniversaries start coming (just married in June). I won't be that wife who expects jewels every anniversary (I really don't want or wear JEWELS besides my rings anyways)~ I think it's a waste of money and completely overindulgent and unnecessary. I can no longer float around blissfully unaware, knowing that there is so much more behind the origins of so much glitter sleeping in jewelry cases at Tiffany's or Zales or Helzberg or Gordon's or wherever...
I'm sure that Taylor won't object to stopping diamond purchases in the future:)
