"I knew if I proposed, he would have a ring, and I wouldn’t be like a kept woman. I was like, 'I’m taking it by the balls and doing it,'" Rebecca Reed, who proposed to her boyfriend Steve Jauch on their anniversary, told the New York Post, emphasizing that being in the midst of the spark of the modern women's movement made it that much more special.
Not only does this about-face of tradition echo feminist sentiments, but the dudes are all about it! When asked about how he felt about the surprise engagement, Jauch told the Post that ego was not a problem -- if anything, he simply wanted to propose himself as well at some point.
“It doesn’t change anything,” he said. “It took me a moment to process what was happening, because it was like a total reversal of what my mind thought would happen.”
Likewise, Elise Taylor from Vogue ran a poll just before Christmas last year and found that men weren't blown away by the idea. "My one friend summed it up: 'I don’t think I’d be taken aback by it. We talk pretty openly about most things, so it would just be more that she beat me to it.'"