Of Cats' Eyes and Crystals
A View of Women's Power
Dorothy Nixon 1992

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Some of my friends are into crystals.  These women, intellectuals all,
feel that these rocks have some mystical powers, that they can be used
to access the subconscious and channel positive energy into our lives.

New Age, but not at all new. On a recent PBS special a group of
spelunkers discovered a remote, nearly inaccessible cavern under the
Appalachians only to find the very old skeletal remains of
aboriginals. Thousands of years ago, it seems, native Americans were
also risking their lives fording freezing neck-high subterranean
streams and squeezing through puny apertures in rock, without benefit
of battery-generated light and other techno-aids, for what? Crystals.
And now scientists are saying that life may have emerged from the
crystal. And then there is the computer chip...

Very interesting, but what's this all got to do with women's power.

Plenty, if diamonds really are a girl's best friend! I, myself, am not
into jewellery, although as a young girl I was compelled by a force
beyond my comprehension to periodically explore the depths of my
mother's jewelry drawer.  I am not sure what I was looking for, but
there were treasures hidden there, a silver, diamond and amethyst
butterfly pin handed down from my great-grandmother, my grandmother's
three carat yellow diamond we later learned was "flawed". There was
great meaning in this drawer, I knew, and it couldn't be measured in
dollars and cents. If only I could grasp it!

But soon I came, through advertising,  to associate jewellery with
semi-clad women seductively draped over satin bedcovers and with silky
female necks lifted in orgasmic submission. Jewellery, I thought, must
be some kind of reward for women.

Today, I don't even wear a wedding ring and any jewellery I do
purchase is on impulse to reflect my mood on a specific occasion and
is of the decidedly ephemeral kind.  Here glittering on my neck today,
there exploding all over the ceramic kitchen floor tomorrow. I never
could understand the appeal of diamonds and those unabashedly decadent
"diamonds are forever" ads that have proved as durable as the product
they promote.

Certainly, one such ad remains riveted to my memory.  "What is one
third of your salary compared to a lifetime of love?"

I'm a symbol person, but a man paying out one third of his salary for
a symbol? And diamonds, I am told, are not rare anyway. There are
enough diamonds on this planet for each of us to keep a huge chunk
dangling from a  rope in our bedroom closet. I guess their appeal has
a deeper origin. "Jewelry on a woman," a feminist friend once told
me,"indicates she can be bought."  Silly, you say?  Well, let us
consider the most famous tribute in diamonds of them all, that
legendary bauble purchased for the alabaster neck of Ms. Elizabeth
Taylor by Sir Richard Burton.  What else but one of the biggest
diamonds in the world for the most beautiful (a.k.a. most desirable)
woman in the world.

Never mind that Liz was the bigger star, with probably the bigger bank
account. It would have meant zilch had Liz bought the necklace for
herself.  Not only was this highly-publicized purchase a P.R. coup par
excellence, it was a message to us all.  Diamonds are a girl's best
friend because they are a symbol of a man's love (and approval and
protection) bestowed on someone deserving, indeed, a kind of prize.

Still, could the appeal of diamonds have an even deeper, brighter
origin?

My friends feel that their two dollar crystals also bring them power,
only this power comes from themselves, or from the universe, or from
the Goddess. They don't have to please anyone to own this power. I
will just have to rethink this jewellery business. Let's face it, I've
always loved pearls, in a remote, abstract kind of way. And emeralds,
round like cats' eyes....