Men's Club: Jewelry Edition.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is pleased to announce that he and his ministers have agreed to join the once-weekly "Mens Club/Demystifying Divas" posting clique. We are all men. We all have opinions. And in the end, there is a certain amount of link-whoring that we do not put ourselves above.

Your Maximum Leader has taken it upon himself to write the first of the weekly updates to appear on NakedVillainy.com.

This week's subject: Jewelry.

Allow your Maximum Leader to first define a term. In his mind, jewelry is ornamental. It serves no practical function, beyond that of ornamenting the human form. Jewelry can be precious or cheap. It can be hand-crafted or mass-produced. It can be classy and refined or ostentatious bling-bling.

(Excursus: NakedVillainy is, in case you've forgotten, a bling-bling free zone. Save only for your Maximum Leader's bejeweled floppy hat.)

The only two forms of irregular jewelry enter your Maximum Leader's mind. The first is the watch. Now most watches fall more into the "practical" and not "ornamental" column. However all one has to do to find the irregular case demonstrated would be to visit the website of those superb Swiss Chronometer makers, Rolex. Look at a Cellini Orchid or an Oyster Perpetual Lady DateJust Pearlmaster and you will see how the functional crosses over into the form of jewelry.

The second is jewelry denoting rank or station. Falling into this category would be the Crown Jewels of Britain, medals denoting military service or awards, and - of course - your Maximum Leader's bejeweled floppy hat.

So, excluding watches, allow your Maximum Leader to discourse on jewelry...

First he will pick the low hanging fruit, the list of acceptable jewelry for men. It is a short list indeed. Here it is:

High school class ring. It is acceptable for one year - that being senior year of high school. It is acceptable to wear this ring on the ring finger of either hand. The most acceptable place to wear this ring is not on the man at all; but rather dangling on a cheap chain in the cleavage of your "one-true-love-until-I-get-to-bang-a-chick-in-college" girlfriend. Wearing a high school class ring beyond high school is a sure sign that the ring's only purpose is that of liquid asset. This is to say, it is worn until it is needed to be pawned to put a new muffler on the General Lee or finance a threesome with Mexican whores in Tijuana.

College class ring. It is acceptable to wear for up to 3 years. Those years being your senior year of college and two years thereafter. As you might imagine, this ring is also best worn on an inexpensive chain dangling in a woman's cleavage. But, this ring can also be worn for a time after one's graduation as an outward sign that you are both college degreed and from a family wealthy enough to afford a useless trinket that will eventually gather dust in a tray in the first drawer of your dresser for decades only to be discovered upon your death by one of your grandchildren ** who will bestow upon it the status of family heirloom. Whereupon it will be removed from the tray in the first dresser drawer and either put in a safe deposit box in a bank or in a shadow box in a sitting room next to the pocket watch that Great-great Grandpa Earnest bought in St. Louis before going on to Dodge City to be gunned down by Wyatt Earp in a dispute over a hand at poker.

** - should you be o.s.p. the ring will be found by a social worker and pawned for a muffler job on a dilapidated Toyota Camry or a threesome with Mexican whores in Tijuana.

The small pinky ring. Acceptable only if one is of Italian or Greek heritage.

The simple gold/silver/platinum/white gold bracelet. This is generally only acceptable if the wearer is among the highest socio-economic class; or a tennis player.

And lastly...

The Wedding Band. Acceptable for all.

Generally your Maximum Leader believes that two rings on a man are excessive. He's not actually known any man to be able to pull it off and still look refined. But he does not doubt the possibility that such a man (however mythic) might exist.

Of course, one might wonder what to think of rappers, rock stars, and athletes who sport necklaces, rings, bracelets, and gold teeth. Jewelry in this context is male bling-bling. And it is nothing more than an ostentatious show of newly found wealth. Wealth that will be gone in an instant, like the wearers fame. And then the bling-bling will become another liquid asset. (See: High School rings)

Now... On to women...

As the Foreign Minister has always said, "Diamonds and Distance are a girl's best friends." (NB: Think about it... Very true is it not?) Why is this pithy statement a truism? Well frankly it is a statement about our modern western consumerist/objectifying society.

Let us briefly retrace the history of jewelry and women. Thru the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras ornamental jewelry for women didn't exist. Women were too busy surviving to worry about how they looked. Moving through the mists of time we get the first women's jewelry to really mean something. That is the jewelry of ancient Egypt.

In ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh - for political reasons - had to have many wives. Now, as most of his wives wouldn't resemble in the least Anck Su Namun (played by Patricia Velasquez in The Mummy), Pharaoh had to bedeck these women with gems set in precious metals to bedazzle onlookers. If the reflected light from the necklaces, bracelets, rings, head-dresses, anklets, and belts could blind an onlooker in the bright Egyptian sun it was unlikely that any peasant/priest/passerby would say to himself, "You know the Pharaoh's wife is ugly." Instead the peasant/priest/passerby would say to himself, "Daymn! Pharaoh's wife has a lotta bling goin' on. She must really be somethin', if you know what I mean. (Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge.)"

So for centuries jewelry was the province of the nobility. By the beginning of the middle ages in Europe, jewelry passed from being a way to "dress up" the Queen/Princess/Duchess/Countess/Lady to a symbol of her station - and an outward show of how much she was worth in the eyes of the King/Prince/Duke/Count/Lord. This is because jewelry was part of a dowry. The more important the woman the more jewelry in the dowry.

Over time peasants/merchants/non-noble types started to take notice of jewelry. They noted that the giving of jewelry by a man to a woman could warm an icy relationship, fan the flames of passion, and get a woman to think twice about a cad she would otherwise dismiss out of hand.

With the coming of the early industrial period, and the creation of disposable capital, came the mass distribution of jewelry. Men (and children) forced off the land by the enclosure movement moved to the cities. Some were forced out of the cities by a lack of jobs to various colonies. There, in the colonies, they forced the indigenous populations to stop their primitive ways and participate in the economy. Under the keen eye of budding capitalists, they dug precious metals and stones out of the earth. With powerful machines they extracted more stones and metals than ever before. The increasing supply of precious metal and stones dropped the price of said materials to a point where women suddenly realized that if a man would forego food, water, and shelter for six months; he could buy a diamond.

And thus the diamond's glitter caught the eye of middle and lower class women alike. They gave up the promise before God of eternal submission as the outward sign of a man's affection and started to demand bling-bling.

Men, as you can imagine, were conditioned by women (and marketing directors at DeBeers) to believe that diamonds were an essential step towards proving their love and commitment to a woman before marrying her. Some men even likened the gift of a diamond ring to their betrothed as a down payment for a lifetime of hot sex.

Well, if the diamond ring was a down payment for a lifetime of hot sex; then the follow-on bracelets, earrings, necklaces, anklets, chains, rings, broaches, pins, and loose precious stones are the installment payments.

Installment payments normally come due at certain milestone events, like wedding anniversaries divisible by 5. The birth of children is another installment event. But sometimes just when an installment is due may be unpredictable. A payment may be demanded (or more likely insinuated) after a rough patch, or the purchase of a large screen TV on which to watch football. And sometimes the installment is needed for no particular reason.

So, jewelry for women has played many roles in history. The role of bedazzler, the role of status signifier, and the role of shiny gift exchanged for sex.

Of course, men know that any woman who would put up with them is worth every piece of jewelry she might want/need/ask for. And men also know that any woman who would pledge to spend their lives with us is beautiful without any jewelry on at all.

For other manly views check out Phin and Puffy. Your Maximum Leader is informed that The Wizard will discourse on this topic later this week.

And to read about jewelry from the girl's side of topic check out Sadie, Silk, Kathy, and Feisty, and Phoenix, they have penned their thoughts for all to read.

Carry on.