I don’t know why–out of all holidays, Valentine’s Day annoys me the most. Every holiday is commercialized to some degree, with Christmas sitting at the apex. I guess that’s how we celebrate things these days. We consume meaning and expression by consuming commercial products. By the second week of December, I was getting sick of all the promotional e-mails that persisted in bludgeoning me from virtually every shop I had set foot in, which made me regret my frequently careless surrendering of e-mails to these vendors.
Whatever, man. It’s like we are wired to shop during holidays. When the Christmas carols drone on, something happens at a cellular level. The intricately designed songs of summoning, musically woven with tingling bells, cheesy declarations of love, and cerebral chords of jazz, trigger something in our biological imperative: the accumulation of resources or goods. The need to have shiny new things. It’s absolutely instinctual and primal.
And that is why I am unabashedly excused from spending hundreds of bucks on a brand new e-reader, a Merle Dixon (from the Walking Dead) vinyl figurine, two new decks of beautifully illustrated tarot cards, eight new crazily discounted games on Steam, and other useless pieces of shit that I have bought with the excuse: it’s Christmas. Blah!
Yes, Blah! I hate everything consumerist, but I love shopping (bwa, haha). Valentine’s Day is essentially a day that consists of ritualized declarations of romantic love, physically, verbally, or spiritually expressed in pink. Why is pink the color of love?
Valentine Day’s is annoying not because I am single and a cynic. It’s because it’s fake, and faker than Christmas (to be clear, I am not referring to the birth of Christ and all its religious brethren). Like everything else, the idea of “romance” is a construct—it’s a superficial collection of ideals and guidelines towards courtship systemized by literary ballads and Hollywood. On Valentine’s Day, somehow it is a necessity to quantify feelings with flowers, glittering jewels, and expensive dates. Not to mention the massive perpetuation of gender stereotypes on this very holiday! Fellas, I feel bad for you because this is the day where you must offer your masculinity (a.k.a. your wallet) and your eternal devotion to your beloved. Unless your partner is liberal and understanding enough to see past the norms of February 14th, it’s honestly unfair that the male gender has to shoulder the responsibly for all-around-perfection. That, is conventional romance in a nutshell. I wonder why on earth our hormones fail to remain properly civilized (or, excuse my language, calm the fuck down) over a box of chocolates?
Don’t get me wrong, though. If I had a boyfriend I would most certainly appreciate the gesture, but decidedly, I maintain that love is never, ever, ever, meant to be measured in carats. Never.
Affirmative nod.
