By Marriya Schwarz
Am I an avid necklace wearer? No. But have I worn a necklace? Yes. Therefore, I am something of an expert on the subject.
I’ll be honest; I don’t wear a lot of jewelry. I think it has to do with my upbringing. After you rock a dried-out bubble Rugrats necklace on a colored cord for the first like 6 years of your life, it sets the bar pretty high. It’s the type of thing that makes gold and sterling silver look pretty lackluster. But I’ve been known to wear a black tourmaline pendant especially when there is ghostly activity, solely for protection.
I’ve clasped my own necklaces and I’ve clasped necklaces for other people, so let’s just say that I know the mechanism well. Therefore, I’m wondering why I’m constantly seeing a trope in movies and television in which characters physically rip a necklace off. It always starts the same way; there’s a mean character who wants an underdog’s necklace that maybe they got from their dead mother or something. Instead of taking the necklace off - you know - the normal way, they just grab the pendant and rip the necklace off.
There is no way in hell that would work. I mean, yes, I have potentially early arthritis and I don’t think I could even break a pencil, but still. You’re literally trying to snap off metal. Also, I can’t imagine ripping a necklace off of someone without either causing blunt force trauma or scratching the back of the neck. But whenever someone has their necklace stolen, they just seem pissed that they lost their jewelry and not like they have a big gaping wound under their hair.
Plus, what on earth would be the point in ripping a necklace off? Unless you only want the pendant or you want to murder someone with pizzaz, I can’t think of any other reason why you would want to break the chain straight off. You know what a necklace is without a chain? Freaking useless. I mean, there is the option of buying another chain, but at some point, that gets expensive. A quality gold chain can be anywhere from $7 on a Black Friday sale to upwards of $40. Why in the hell would you spend that extra money when you could just ask them nicely to undo the clasp? After a while, you’re just going to have a heck ton of pendants with zero necklaces.
But I think the most unrealistic thing is the idea that the necklace is still wearable. We’ve seen it in A Little Princess, Ella Enchanted, Once Upon a Time, and so many other ridiculous forms of media. Ella in Ella Enchanted steals her mother’s necklace back from her evil stepsister, Hattie. In Once Upon a Time, they are almost constantly ripping off necklaces, from Ariel to the Wicked Witch of the West. And in A Little Princess, Miss Minchin rips off Sara’s necklace as collateral after she loses all of her money. I can get down with the idea that Ella was cursed by a fairy godmother to be obedient, I can understand a cursed Maine town where everyone has forgotten that they are a storybook character, and I would rather not think about the British colonialism in India aspect of A Little Princess, but what I cannot let slide is the idea that a character can rip off a necklace and then proceed to just put it back on. Sweetie, that clasp is broken. The actual mechanics of putting on this thin clasp and having to push on this kind of painful lever to keep it open while you loop in a circular piece of metal is hard enough. I cannot entertain the idea that after you somehow summon Captain America strength to rip a necklace off that that clasp is still in perfect condition.
I’m not an idiot (as far as you know, although I have run into a sliding door), I know that fiction is just that: it’s fiction. It’s made-up. It’s not supposed to be real. Our minds are filled with fantasies of fairytale romances (Although Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde literally split after like 9 years), the naive idea that good always triumphs over evil (Although Donald Trump exists), and biased perceptions of what human beings should look like. So, please for the love of God, just make necklaces realistic.
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