How About A 24-Carrot Necklace?
Don’t do it, dude. Girlfriend is going to be pissed as hell if you try to slip a root vegetable ring on her finger after you propose. Things are going to get nasty if you get down on one knee, pop the question, trick her into saying “Yes!” then pull out this rubbish. Trust me, she will be able to tell the difference between a ring made from a “trifaceted chunk of avocado seed, sanded and lacquered, on a circlet of sweet potato” and an actual diamond solitaire engagement ring. Made out of metal and precious stones. That comes in a velvet-lined ring box. Preferably pale blue in color. With “Tiffany & Co.” embossed on it.
This can go two ways: either she'll tell everyone you ever knew or ever hope to meet (after she drops your cheap sorry ass like a hot potato) what a douche you are so that you become the laughing stock of your worst nightmares, or she will actually marry you and you’ll be stuck with a woman whose standards are so low she won’t get up off her lazy ass to take the trash out of the trailer. She will cease giving a toss about her appearance, put on 200lbs, and continue to wear dried vegetable “jewelry” in public, rendering it impossible for you to leave the house. Either way, you will end up a lonely, frustrated recluse with no hope of ever having sex again.
If you doubt this, just look at the model’s expression. That’s not a smile; that’s a grimace. If you look into her eyes you can see her taking mental note to fire her agent, like, yesterday.
Note how the text plays fast and loose with archeological processes that take millions of years to accomplish: “You cut the vegetables, then let them dry into fascinating semiprecious stones.” If it were that easy, the Petrified Forest National Park wouldn’t have to keep posting signs warning visitors not to steal the gravel. That used to be wood, y’all!
What is saddest of all is that in 1972, Women’s Day thought this was a good use of their readership’s time and energy. According to one of the many cigarette ads in its pages is the perfect back-handed response to this drivel: “You’ve come a long way, baby.”
Woman’s Day, September 1972