Why haven’t marriage proposals evolved?

DEAR MISS MANNERS:

A young lady I know happily posted the news that she and a young man have ordered custom-designed wedding rings, and that she is making a wedding guest list and discussing venues with her mother.

Concurrent with all of this, she insists that she is not officially engaged because he “hasn’t asked her yet.”

I am baffled. When and why did a ritual of proposal, always defined as “him asking her,” become the final determinant of an engagement, if planning a wedding does not qualify? And why is it always him asking her, never her asking him?

Another young woman of my acquaintance recently giddily announced “He proposed!” — a year or so after the birth of their child. Aside from the chronological illogic of this (from my perspective), I am bothered by the social implications for the status of women.

Are they really ceding the final decision-making power in their relationship to men? It seems that the vital importance placed on the ritual of a proposal has grown in inverse proportion to women’s status as equals in a partnership.

When my parents got married, it was a mutual decision, but married women were always called Mrs. Husband’s Name (first and last). And if she had a baby, the newspapers would report, “The wife of John Smith was delivered of a baby boy.” Women disappeared into marriage at the same time that we didn’t make a fetish of “his asking.”

Maybe I just answered my own question. Perhaps women are hanging onto a vestige of what they imagine to be a “man’s place” — some sort of quaint custom, similar to the middle-aged bride being “given away.”

If so, they are being awfully silly and inconsistent. Some of these young women may be heads of corporations, but they are still waiting for “him” to propose.

Why can’t they see the nonsense in this? Or do they, and I am taking it too seriously?

GENTLE READER: Yes, you answered the question. The lady is not waiting anxiously to see if he will have her. Rather, he is the anxious one, knowing that he must stage a performance for an audience of more than one.

Fond as Miss Manners is of tradition, even anachronistic tradition, she wishes people would follow the spirit of the gestures they copy — or parody, as with those hokey proposals. As you point out, those forms were designed for a frank patriarchy.

If the bride is to be given away, it should be by one parent, or both.