There are very few differences between the ways I idealized and envisioned my engagement and marriage before and after they happened. My proposal was perfect and private, and except for an anxious brunch in my parents’ WASP-command-center dining room, I didn’t announce my engagement anywhere outside my email outbox. I didn’t have a bachelorette party, a shower, or a registry, in part because the only people at the wedding were our parents and the way-laid-back minister of a rural church. I posted nothing, but I did, a little weirdly for me, change my Facebook status to “married,” so satellite friends would know.Except when my boyfriend, pre-engagement, put the ring decision in my hands, all "Peace I'm out!!," I spent a couple of days intermittently online, looking at rings and dismissing almost all of them for familiar reasons. I wrote an email to Tiffany, asking if they could produce one of their signature rings “without the excess,” or something, which is just adorable ring psychosis. But, I ended up staring like a mesmerized puppy dog at the many-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars, art-deco-sugar-mountain of a ring that I’d once chosen as “mine” in some fantasy exercise with a friend (even though I would always choose “freedom” or “vacation” over any individual item). As if it was walky-talkied from the base camp of my desires, I found myself wanting exactly what I thought I didn't.When I see Kim Kardashian wearing a monster ring, it’s mostly, like, "get it," because she could have ostensibly bought it for herself, and because she makes her intergalactic money executing masterful performances of femininity. Engagement rings are “about” their own beauty, and emphasizing the beauty of their person — but they are actually about indicating class and taste, sex and beauty, status and security. Kim’s ring is part of her job. When I see a Normal like me wearing something that engulfs her finger (especially when it’s one giant diamond of question-mark quality stacked on top of a ring of more diamonds) I wonder (less judgey-shittily, more curiously, I think) about whether she knows she’s flexing social capital, or not, and why it’s so important to her that I notice it, if it is. I wonder if it’s created an affective experience for her that’s working. I wonder if she likes her husband.So wanting a mega-ring was surprising to me. “ Style is about the choices you make to create the aspects of civilization that you wish to uphold ” (R.I.P. David Bowie Superstar), and I’ve never wanted to uphold the aspect of civilization that is about compulsory symbols of womanhood. At some point in Parks and Rec, Aziz Ansari as Tom Haverford says, “Even the super left-wing chicks that saw Blood Diamond and cried, when they get a diamond, they’re like ‘Yeah bitch, gimme one of them blood diamonds. Make ‘em extra bloody.’” Yeeeah. “Want” is the conclusion of so many inputs, from simple exposure to the complex mechanics of the socioeconomic systems we are nestled inside of, as first-world citizens, for all eternity. I wanted to put the big center rock inside my mouth and bite down, and feel a thick flood of the YESSSSS that a monster ring promises through the kaleidoscopic lens of girl culture. That would be a new feeling. Mega-rings don’t make me jealous the way I’m supposed to be, but they do make me jealous of being the kind of girl who wants one, and other normal things. Even in an era of alt-weddings and, “I’m not like a regular bride, I’m a cool bride,” there is still the dominant thing of easy satisfaction that comes with choosing a big, dumb, blinding ring. Wanting that just looks so nice.