"I’ve always wondered how women who share bank accounts with their partners feel about this."

My husband and I share most of our accounts and, for the most part, talk about all other purchases, too. However, we do each have an "allowance" in our "fun money" accounts which we use for gifts and certain personal purchases.

The Youtube video is blocked in the UK. I can view it on the Current TV website though.

Ah, diamonds. Jewlery you'll never use in a style that has nothing in common with your personality. I do wonder how common this kind of gift actually is.

Ok, question. This video has been up for a while. If you're not going to say anything else about it, couldn't you just link to the entire Target Women playlist once and move on?

Not trying to be mean, it just seems like it would be quicker.

I LOVE Target Women! She's hysterical!

I don't know why Sarah Haskins keeps asking me to marry her, but my answer is always "Yes!".

I'm sorry, what were we talking about.....?

I really wanted to find this funny but it feels like I'm watching a feminist version of Tosh.0 (not a good thing).

"I’ve always wondered how women who share bank accounts with their partners feel about this."

That's easy: I laugh and/or roll my eyes. I've been married for 31 years, and we share everything - our $$$ is all in one common pool and has been pretty much from Day 1. But my husband knows that I don't give a rusty rat's a** about bling, or any other traditional "Hallmark Holiday" gifts. Sure, we exchange presents on birthdays and Xmas, but we check in with each other first.

To me, "romance" is about the little things he does for me: bringing me coffee while I'm still in bed; giving me massages; bringing home a pretty wildflower or a single rosebud. I have no interest in useless gifts (and neither does he).

My husband and I make fun of this kind of commercial together, and we've made it clear to each other that at no point would either of us be interested in a gift that's a major purchase. If my husband bought, say, a car (another common example of this trope) as a present for me without talking to me first, I'd be mad. And vice versa.

The shared finances thing has intruded on our smaller-scale gift-giving, too. It just feels silly. Now it's more like, we go shopping together and the person who's birthday it is (for example) gets to pick something out for themselves that they wouldn't normally get.

My mother and father don't share accounts, but when my father talked about buying my mother an engagement ring she freaked out. He loves jewelry and she thinks it's pointless baubles, and won't put up with it. He contemplated the problem for months and when he had plenty of money, he bought her a modest ring with diamonds set into a gold band, smooth so they couldn't catch on anything. She was still irate, but she does wear that and her gold wedding band. I have never seen her wear anything else, and she has tons of beautiful pieces from family trying to coax her into wearing it.

my fiancee has bought me SO MUCH stuff that I don't like - necklaces, earrings... even the engagement ring is so ill-fitting (it can't be re-sized; the stone is too big) that I don't bother wearing it. I really wish he hadn't bothered. He felt incredibly rejected that I don't like and don't wear the peices he carefully picked out for me, and it has taken a long time for him to get the message not to buy stuff like this. It feels like I have had to 'deprogram' him.

I've only gotten jewelry once in my life (for my birthday), and my first reaction was a rather uncharitable "earrings?! wtf am I supposed to do with earrings? and here I was hinting at boots for the last month or so, because my shoes are falling apart. wonder how much I could sell these things for?"

but then, i hate all non-practical gifts

i don't see the point of wearing diamonds or any other type of jewelry.
but then again i'm very critic about consumerism.

There are a lot of people pointing out that it's impractical but surely it's fine to get baubles for people who'll appreciate them? The issue is the "for her" marketing, like it'll be the perfect gift for everyone fitting that particular accusative pronoun. Otherwise, let's face it, half of the pleasures of the world can be dismissed as impractical. Different folks, different strokes, right?

I do give jewelry(/cufflinks) to people sometimes, but I also make the stuff so I guess it's a little more personal. And a lot cheaper.

When I saw this post, I thought for three seconds that Target Women is back.

How can you build up my hopes and crush them like that? :(

Jewelry is what your partner buys as a gift when they have no idea of what you actually enjoy or what gift might actually please you.

One point: Most of the jewelry I own has been given to me. Each one has a story. Today I wear only one ring - the one that my current husband gave to me - but I keep all the other pieces because they represent something. And it is what they represent that is of value, the pieces themselves are only things.

I am certain some will complain that keeping the ring given by a prior relationship shows a lack of respect for the current: we have no secrets. And he knows my feelings for him. And he knows that, should he also die, he will never be gone from my heart.

Things are only things; value is always constructed.

Another point: Most of the posts I've read on here are seeing jewelry from a personal perspective and not from the other side. Someone is trying(!) to meet the socially established requirements of 'good'. Being an intelligent, socially aware person you reject such contrivances. But the other clearly lacks that perspective and you compound their feelings of inadequacy with your rejection.

Sometimes, the most generous thing we can do is receive.

All that being said, he (now) knows better than to be buy me trinkets and crap. If there's enough money after everything else is taken care of, buy US a vacation that WE can enjoy TOGETHER.

And why do we never see any commercials compelling women to buy trinkets for men? Are men too rational, too smart to be taken in by it? Not even cuff-links? Point in fact: I don't recall any commercials telling women to buy anything at all for men. All the commercials aimed at men seem to be telling him to buy it for himself.

Not to derail the discussion but I just wanted to add that the idea that diamonds=love is the direct result of an aggressive marketing campaign in the US (the primary market for diamonds) by DeBeers. They are responsible for the connection between engagement and diamond. I've attached a link to an article if you're interested in further reading..

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/electronic-publications/stay-free/ml/readings/diamonds.pdf

Furthermore, injustice in the diamond mining industry continues. A recent Times article noted that the "Kimberly Process" (portrayed at the end of the film 'Blood Diamond') has not been able to stop the smuggle of illegal diamonds.

I'm not sure that constructing the giving of jewelery as a heterosexual, male, White thing to do is particularly useful or accurate. For example, I thought I was a relatively poor, lesbian woman. But since I feel the pressure to buy jewelery for my partner (both because she likes it and because it's a way to try to demonstrate that I'm no longer white trash), I must be a dude. Gotcha!

"I’ve always wondered how women who share bank accounts with their partners feel about this."

You could ask that about literally any purchase made by one half of the couple that wasn't discussed jointly, especially gifts (and since these are Christmas commercials, we can ask 'how do the men in these commercials feel when their wives buy them obligatory power tools with joint accounts?'). Also, presumably in our modern economy, BOTH of them worked for at least a portion of that money (and if they have any sense at all, will each have at least a small amount of their own money that the other does not have immediate access to). All the other implications of these commercials aside, what a person buys with their own money is their own business, even if what they buy is a presumptuous gift. It's worth pointing out that at least a couple of those commercials implied that the man and woman were DATING, not MARRIED. I know that some people who are not married/definitively life partners do have joint funds, but that is.....a lot more foolish than assuming a woman inherently wants a diamond, to say the least.

We've shared a single bank account since we moved in together, 33 years ago (married for 30). I brought a Visa debt to the relationship and she brought saved money. Over the years, at times she makes more money than I, and at others I make more than she. We each buy gifts for the other for birthday/Christmas, from the common account. It's always a surprise (well, except she sees through me rather too frequently...) - we don't shop together. The gift was small for many years, and now as we're more secure it's sometimes much bigger (though not frequently: she just gave me a book for Valentine's Day =-) The point is, to us the gift is buying something we know (or hope we know) the other will like *and wouldn't buy for themselves because neither of us ever has, or would, buy something of any significant value without discussing with the other*. In other words, the gift is the indulgence of something we'd otherwise pass by. Sometimes that's jewellery: a diamond ring she loved when she saw it, a silver West Coast art bracelet for me, something I've always wanted. Sometimes it's a book.

for the poster above that says jewelry will be a woman's financial parachute if the relationship fails, this is terrible advice as far as diamonds go. if you've ever tried to pawn diamond jewelry you would have found out - its resale value is crap! the diamond industry says 'a diamond is forever' and they mean it. they do not want you to sell them and there is almost no secondary market value.

if you are talking about solid gold jewelry, that's a different story. diamonds, though? forget it!

When selecting a gift for any occasion, it is important to think about what the receiver would want, not what "women" want as portrayed by advertisers. There is no such thing as "what women want."