Marriage Quote by Rita Rudner

Rita Rudner turns a domestic cliché - the husband, the necklace, the supposed romance - into a tiny thriller about value, safety, and the absurd economics of modern life. The joke is engineered around a bait-and-switch: we expect disappointment ("It’s fake") to signal marital neglect, then she snaps it into agency ("I requested fake"). That pivot isn’t just punchline mechanics; it’s a character move. Rudner’s persona is the politely anxious pragmatist, the woman who has already done the math.

The line "in this day and age" is doing heavy lifting. It’s a comedian’s shorthand for a culture where crime, inequality, and spectacle sit right on the surface of ordinary consumer choices. She’s not literally afraid of decapitation, but the exaggeration lands because the premise is emotionally familiar: the sense that status objects aren’t only symbols of love or success, they’re liabilities. A diamond becomes less "forever" than "target."

The subtext is slyly feminist without announcing itself. By preferring fake, she rejects the idea that a woman’s worth should be displayed on her body, purchased and worn like proof. The final twist - "worth more than my head" - is brutal and elegant: it frames a luxury purchase as a perverse market valuation of a woman’s physical safety and personhood. It’s also marriage humor with teeth: affection is fine, Rudner suggests, but not if it comes with an insurance policy and a mugger’s incentive.