Public declaration of love — cute or an entrapment?

For all this talk of gender equality and feminism, it turns out most women continue to want the Cinderella fantasy, man on one knee, huge solitaire diamond in velvet box, and a proposal full of drama. Or at the very least, that’s what men think women want. We can safely blame this trend on the endless stream of lovelorn films out of Hollywood, those ghastly purveyors of insufferable romance. This pressure to be creative and make an outrageous marriage proposal has spread like a viral to men all over the world. There have been five marriage proposals at the Olympics itself. It’s possibly the most gender neutral environment on earth where nothing counts besides single-minded excellence. In one of the five, a Chinese diver, Qin Kai, proposed to fellow diver He Zi moments after she had been awarded a silver medal. What else could she say with a billion people watching? Yes, of course.

Imagine, since the age of 6 till 25 you have been chasing one dream to the exclusion of everything else — friends, family and fun. You have practiced your swimming dives for six hours a day, watched your diet, battled injury, fatigue and lack of motivation. That’s normal for Olympians. They have hellish lives of dogged perseverance because it’s the only way to make it. Finally, you triumph. Right when you’re savouring the incredible high of a hard-won victory, your upstart boyfriend wrecks the moment and steals your glory by going down on one knee with a stupid ring. Oh, the agony. At least He Zi got a proposal. The other two winners still on the podium? Nobody even knows who they are, the boyfriend grabbed the limelight so completely. The irony of winning an Olympic gold and then being upstaged by somebody else’s romance. Life can be so unfair.

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It’s a bit naive to see a public declaration of undying love as just a hopelessly romantic gesture. Human beings are wily creatures with superb survival instincts. Undoubtedly, it takes a lot of confidence to risk this spectacle among strangers: there is, after all, always a chance of a no. However, when somebody goes all out and risks his self-esteem in front of a crowd, the person receiving the offer would have to be a complete heel to refuse. In a sense, it’s outright entrapment. Real courage is to ask someone on a level playing field without the safety net of an audience. Or, there’s also the very old-fashioned idea that’s fast losing steam, of a proposal being an intimate and quiet exchange between two people. For some of us that beats a flashy display of uniqueness, hands down.