Makes no sense at all. Or does it?
It’s 2017, and we observe the ladies continuing to obsess about gold jewellery. And this makes less and less sense with each passing year.
The ladies have their reasons, of course. The justifications usually presented are somewhat weak in this author’s opinion – some of them may have been valid in some bygone era, but are anachronistic in today’s world.
It’s no secret that people usually keep their gold in bank-lockers for fear of it being stolen or snatched away. They only take it out for a wedding or such. Many people believe that wearing artificial jewellery is a much better option under the circumstances, considering both the physical and financial health of the owner. Many ladies, in their weak moments, concur with this assessment. But their weak moments are usually short-lived, and consequently they still insist on gold.
To own gold is to make a great investment, it is often said. A similar rationale is usually presented in an emotional manner. That’s because it is aimed at appealing to emotions rather than the intellect. Namely, gold offers security for hard times when one can get out of trouble by selling it. Well, anybody who has had the misfortune of selling gold knows it only too well how misleading this statement is. Yes, one can sell it, but for what? For a crash course in factors reducing the selling price of gold jewellery, just try to sell some gold item and the jeweller will tell you plenty about wear and tear, the workmanship (labour) cost, alloying of impurities, retail mark-up, etc. Gold bricks may be a good investment (even that is debatable); gold jewellery, definitely not so. Not now that there are available many other forms of investment – those less prone to being stolen, in addition to being more rewarding. But the ladies still hanker after gold.
With any significant quantity of gold jewellery on her hand, a woman can easily find herself in a position where she has to pay zakat on a (frankly useless) ‘asset’ from her hard-earned income. And it’s not just once that she has to do it; instead she must keep repeating the exercise every year. Now consider the situation where the lady possesses gold but doesn’t have a separate income (as many ladies in Pakistan still don’t). That means either the husband picks the tab or she sells some of her gold each year to pay zakat on the remaining quantity – surely extraordinary solutions, both! But the ladies still want gold jewellery.
Many of the feminist girls aren’t immune from this either. Although one would expect them to reject all ornamentation (gold or otherwise) as reeking of objectification and subjugation of women, many still covet gold.
Another emotional argument is sometimes pressed into service: Gold helps immensely in the daughters’ wedding since they can inherit it from the mother at that time. The problem with this argument is that it presupposes that gold is necessary for a wedding, whereas this whole debate is about that very (by no means settled) issue. Why would it make sense for the next generation to own gold any more than it makes sense for this one?
But girls look pretty wearing gold, don’t they – it is finally demanded. Well yes and no. The author is a little old fashioned in this regard. He believes that if a girl is pretty, she doesn’t need crutches – be they of gold or lesser metals; if she is not, crutches aren’t going to help an awful lot anyway. But the ladies still love to own gold.
That leaves us with vanity and snobbery, perhaps the earliest motives for owning gold jewellery. There was a time when owning gold was one of only a handful of measures of how much money one had (other things being number of wives, slaves, and cattle). Even if showing off happens to be one’s thing, there are a lot of better options available today. Of course, very few ladies would own up to such lowly motives.
Science fiction writers in the 1967 were predicting that in fifty years’ time flying machines will have completely replaced road vehicles. It’s 2017, and we observe the ladies continuing to obsess about gold jewellery. It is extremely difficult to explain this state of affairs.
