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If you think about it, "romance" is only related to commodification of love. We grow up thinking that romance is the precursor to love, and that it's an emotional attachment to our lovers. But if you think about it more, I think you'll agree that the things we do in order to perform romantic roles are very much tied to our wallets.
We examine how one dresses, what one drives, where one drives to, what one does on a date, that we even need to date to find love (whereas other cultures and history demonstrate love to be a growth that occurs more often than not after marriage, if at all), and pretty much summed up by the larger the expense, the greater the romance and best chances at obtaining one's affections.
There are different levels of what women find in men to be suitable expenditures; most are going to grow up believing that eating at nice restaurants and watching movies and afterward moonlight strolls on the beach are romantic and suitable dates. They definitely don't need to be whisked away in a limo and flown to Paris for that same moonlight stroll...but I'd be surprised to hear people argue that scenario doesn't top the list of romantic dates when we rifle through our catalog of thing that make us feel swoony.
It's fun to talk about life without those expectations and social interactions in theory on an internet forum, but in reality the diamond is but an extension of romantic love that is fairly unique to US culture and increasingly more relevant in the context of exporting our ideals along with global capitalism.
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"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
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