Carmen Owens of Atlanta, GA has made quite a stir with her personal campaign to stop calling the ring finger a “ring finger.” Owens, who is single, claims she is happy for those in her life who are married and engaged. She just refuses to “go along with this ridiculous convention to act like that finger is only a finger in relation to a ring. I mean, it’s just absurd, right?! Right?!”
For the last decade, she has been trying out new terms for “ring finger” to see what sticks. “I just cracked the knuckle on my ‘second finger from the left,’” she proclaimed at a recent gathering. Owens is just as strong a proponent of alternatives such as, “fourth finger from the right.” At wedding receptions, she likes to refer to it as “The digit that isn’t here to discriminate against single people and act like marriage is what we all need in order to be considered whole.”
After meeting with a marketing firm, Owens is now considering shortening the name, even if she feels some of the social resonance might be lost. “I’m open to ‘zing finger’ but definitely NOT ‘bling finger’. As you can imagine, there is a lot of thought that has to go into something like this.”
Owens is considering her next move in the campaign to rename the finger, though she admittedly has been sidetracked by a new relationship. “But don’t worry. I won’t forget how it’s felt to be single and still feel like your fourth finger from the right is worth something more than the man who put a ring on it.”
