Male Wedding Rings - A Question ?

Q: I recently watched a 1927 movie called Sunrise - a masterpiece, IMHO - about a man who plots to murder his wife for his painted woman and during the attempt finds he can't go through with it and then learns how much he really loves his wife. Anyway, the man is wearing a wedding ring and at several points it looked as though the director F.W. Murnau lit the scene (subtly, mind you) to call attention to that shimmering object on the third finger of his left hand. Why, thematically, he does this should be obvious even from my brief decription of the movie. But to my question, the film had a then-contemporary setting and I remember thinking that a conspicuous wedding ring on a man's finger looked a bit anachronistic in a 1927 setting. Was it? When did male rings go from rare to common to just-about-universal (as they are today)? Why? Was it purely feminism or a more-complicated story?

A:I'm sure the answer varies alot according to whom you ask and what area they're from. But my 85-year-old friend was surprised to hear that my fiance was going to wear one -- she was born in 1910 and got married around 1935. She knew almost no men who wore one at the time (in Pennsylvania) and it still seems to be a pretty novel concept to her. To get a more well-rounded perspective -- ask people who were around then! They're the ones who know, and most older people I know are extremely lonely and would LOVE the opportunity to fill you in on what was happening in the '20s. I am the first male in my family to wear a wedding band. I had always heard that wedding bands for men was actually a European custom that caught on after American GIs were stationed in Europe in World War II. Whether this is the true historical source of it, I don't really know. When my wife and I were purchasing our wedding bands, we looked at matched sets. The jeweler at one store told my wife that the "woman's ring is always wider." My wife to be objected to that rather strongly. We ended up having our wedding rings custom made. Mine was wider. Sixteen years later, I am still happy with it.

Discuss It!

Most Popular Articles

More

Marketplace

Related Articles

More

Related Categories

More

Recently Added

More

You Recently Visited

Other Great Sites