Was Barack Obama the Original “Shut Up Ring” Giver?
The “shut up rings” are awful. But was it the former US president who attracted attention to this trend?
You hear these stories all the time. You see them with your own eyes and read about them online, too. The stories of how one partner wants to get married while the other does not, but after years of humiliating requests, convincing, and almost begging, they finally agree and propose. Sadly, it’s usually women who have to almost beg for rings and men who come up with endless excuses, drag the relationships on for years, and then finally, sometimes due to the threats of living, present their women's rings. Those are called “shut-up rings”.
I have heard people talk about shut-up rings a lot lately, probably thanks to social media’s algorithms pushing this topic. But I read about a famous man proposing to his partner with the shut-up ring several years ago before the term became popular and gained traction on social media. I’m talking about Barack Obama, with the entire experience described in Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” book, published in November 2018. I read it in January 2019, when this concept of a shut-up ring originally entered my mind.
While I cannot claim that Barack Obama came up with this concept, the idea of getting someone to…
