Bucking tradition on one knee
TRADITION’S a funny thing. It’s afforded special privileges rarely bestowed on customs of recent standing, mainly that we follow it with unwavering loyalty without pausing to deconstruct its relevance, meaning or good sense.
Take a man asking a woman to marry him. We’ve done it that way for centuries and, aside from the odd exception, wouldn’t have it any other way.
But this well-entrenched ritual is challenged at intervals by a more renegade tradition where – shock, horror – a woman gets to do the proposing once every four years. On February 29 of a leap year (a surplus date for surplus females), it’s a girl’s right to take the reins.
Of course, there’s nothing to stop her proposing on any other day of any given year, but that’d be bucking tradition.
It’s said to hail from fifth-century Ireland where St Patrick named a day when women could propose to men to appease St Bridget who complained that the sisters in her convent were sick of waiting for men to pop the question. (Nuns were allowed to marry in those days.)
So outlandish was the prospect that he deemed it could happen only once every four years.
In 1288, Queen Margaret of Scotland decreed that a woman could propose to any man she desired and he could only refuse if already spoken for. The penalty for rejection ranged from a kiss to a one-pound fine.
The deal was women had to indicate their intention by donning a scarlet petticoat, a heads up for bachelors who might like to make a run for it. But given that Queen Margaret was only five at the time and that there’s no evidence of this supposed Act of the Scottish Parliament, it’s highly likely we’ve made the whole thing up to justify the asking.
Either way, it’s a tradition we’re not yet ready to embrace. The one man I know who was proposed to said he accepted because he was so shocked he didn’t know how to say no. He ended up calling off the wedding at the eleventh hour.
“Would it have been different if you had asked?” I asked. “Well,” he replied. “I wouldn’t have asked.”
Men feel it’s their rite of passage to propose marriage and they should get to decide when and how it’s done. As one bloke said, “It’s the last male bastion of influence, the only real input we get into a wedding. At least let us hang onto that.”
Most women aren’t up for it, either. Of all the ones I asked, not one said she would do it. “No way in hell!” they cry. “It’s just not right.”
Role models are thin on the ground. Pink proposed to Carey Hart by holding up a sign at a motocross race. He nearly drove off the road. Zsa Zsa Gabor proposed nine times, to her nine husbands.
Turning the tables not only upsets the natural order but poses a other quandaries such as should a female proposer drop to one knee and present him with a diamond, or present herself with one? And will she forever wonder if it’s what he really wanted?
It’s not like proposals are a big surprise these days coming as they so often do after screaming hints or blatant ultimatums.
Women have become adept at asking without actually asking. “The trick is to make him think it’s his idea so he doesn’t feel emasculated,” says a married friend. “But make it obvious you’ll say ‘yes’.”
By all means take the leap on Friday if you’re game, but perhaps it’s best to stick with tradition.