Women who propose to men are, of course, aware that they’re going against traditional gender roles . For some, that’s part of the appeal. “I really wanted to catch him off guard and kind of flip the script on its head, and do something sort of extreme to play with this gender role reversal,” says Gracie Coates, 28, who lives in Brooklyn with her fiancé. She proposed to her partner by closing the street in front of her parents’ house in Berkeley, CA while they were visiting and riding in on a horse before getting down on one knee in front of her and her boyfriend’s friends and family. “I think we know so many men who propose to women in really dramatic and over-the-top ways, and I wanted to just really play with the concept,” she explains.