About Diamonds

Couldn’t pick a better day to talk about diamonds than this fine holiday dedicated to the expression of love in every conceivable form and imaginable fashion. Today is the day you are supposed to express your love to that special someone like it’s going out of style. If you don’t do it today, the world is simply going to run out of roses, candy, teddy bears, and all those other chocolate covered special nothings without which you cannot possibly express your love.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a hater of all things St. Valentine’s, in fact, my lovely husband and I went out to dinner last night to celebrate just such an occasion (we did it a day early because we now live in a huge city and there is traffic and two-hour waits in restaurants). It’s not that I hate the tradition. It’s just that I didn’t grow up with it and, as an outsider, I find it a bit…puzzling.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with telling your loved one you love them. I will take cards, flowers and chocolate any day. It’s not that. I think what bothers me most is that there is so much pressure surrounding this “feast of love.” Someone somewhere is making a lot of money on this and I can’t help but see it as another clever marketing trick we all came to take too seriously. Call me cynical and unromantic, but I don’t like to be told when and how to celebrate and honor my love.

And, speaking of clever marketing tricks, I recently came across this article (with a little help from husband). It basically says the belief that diamonds are rare and, as such, should be regarded as a sign of high status, is a relatively recent development in the history of diamond trade.

According to the author, it all started with a discovery of huge diamond mines in South Africa. Until that time diamonds were mined in the jungles of Brazil and riverbeds of India. However, it all changed in 1870:

“The British financiers who had organized the South African mines quickly realized that their investment was endangered; diamonds had little intrinsic value—and their price depended almost entirely on their scarcity. The financiers feared that when new mines were developed in South Africa, diamonds would become at best only semiprecious gems. The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of scarcity of diamonds.”

Thus, the De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd. or, quite simply, a diamond cartel was established in 1888. De Beers, taking on many forms, basically took control of all diamond trade around the world. One of the tools they used in order to further their causes was a US marketing and advertisement firm, N. W. Ayer. This firm is largely responsible for romanticizing diamonds in the United States after WWI. Not surprisingly, the firm enlisted the help of major Hollywood stars who, subsequently, played an important role in glamorizing diamonds on and off screen.

So here you have it, the quite unglamorous tale of the birth of a diamond myth. I personally don’t own one. I guess the rebel cynic in me always wondered why a diamond was absolutely necessary. “It’s a tradition,” some said. “It’s just what people do,” said others. And their reasons didn’t carry quite enough weight to put an end to my rebellion.

It might just be that I am European. Some myths you have to grow up with, I suppose. And, unfortunately, neither Valentine’s Day nor the statuesque nature of diamonds were mine.