Comments on: Sarah Haskins on a Heterosexual Gift Giving Imperative

By: Ethnographic Notes – Valentine’s (Feel free to edit and add to this post) | Anthropology of U.S. Society

Sat, 18 May 2013 02:12:54 +0000

[…] http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/02/12/sarah-haskins-on-a-heterosexual-gift-giving-imperative/ […]

By: alweeson

alweeson — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:37:00 +0000

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.”

By: Documenting Halloween in Japan (2) « The Lobster Dance

Documenting Halloween in Japan (2) « The Lobster Dance — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:32:28 +0000

[…] bonus item with some seasonal Western (read: elegant and exotic) flair. Engagement rings are often marketed to women (“this is what you want from your male partner”), and so throwing in some cute […]

By: Resisting heteronormativity (part three) |

Resisting heteronormativity (part three) | — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:29:35 +0000

[…] “then they assume my fiancée is a man. An engagement ring trumps everything!” (See Sarah Haskins’s great take on heteronormative jewellery-giving and the concept of shiny rocks ….) From […]

By: pg

pg — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:51:11 +0000

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!

By: embeetee

embeetee — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 06:28:27 +0000

I guess I’d say it can be, certainly is at times, classist, but isn’t necessarily so. There is income and wealth disparity (painfully obvious I know, but I have to say it to lead into) but accepting that as a given (ie. given we’re not arguing how our society is or should be structured on a financial equity basis), there will be those who have enough to indulge a desire for an object they find pleasurable. Unless your position is that people simply shouldn’t permit themselves anything that might make visible the wealth disparity, it’s harsh to accuse people who wear a piece of jewellery of doing so solely as a status message to those who can’t afford it. There’s lots of nice, helpful, caring, contributing, thoughtful and engaged people who aren’t desperately poor and should be allowed to buy themselves something they like and can afford.

OTOH, clearly there is a limit beyond which it *is* simply crass consumerism or statusism (it that’s an ism) I can understand and illustrate the difference between a $10 watch and a $500 watch. I can’t do the same between a $500 watch and a $100,000 watch. I can’t imagine buying something like that, no matter how much money I might have, without feeling a selfish, ripped-off, *fool*.

By: embeetee

embeetee — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 06:11:15 +0000

Maybe true for you. Not at all true for many.

By: embeetee

embeetee — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 06:09:10 +0000

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.

By: Lila

Lila — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 07:48:18 +0000

Ditto to your first paragraph.

By: TeakLipstickFiend

TeakLipstickFiend — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 06:19:36 +0000

Maybe not, but it’s interesting in the context of a discussion on pressure to buy expensive gifts. It was a shock to me and, frankly, I’m nosy.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:50:30 +0000

I do feel that there’s a distinction to be made here though. As for me, being firmly middle class, the practical use have never been the idea, but on grand occations jewlary, silver and other things that are useless due to being too precious are symbols of maturity, and of passing on the means to carry the status that is required at formal occations, and a way to show that you really are middle class (you can afford it, but it still leaves an impact) You’re being entrusted with something that involves responsiblity, and it sort of marks a new phase of adulthood. But as casual gifts between lovers? That’s far over the top to me.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 23:29:44 +0000

I don’t see how it’s our business.

By: Syd

Syd — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 23:22:19 +0000

“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.

By: Laura

Laura — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 19:00:47 +0000

I think it might have been a comment on the people in the commercials more than the complete target market.

By: TeakLipstickFiend

TeakLipstickFiend — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 18:11:44 +0000

Why did you buy her all that?