‘Can’t buy me love’
Too many people buy into Valentine’s Day.
Last year, the UK spent close to a billion pounds on Valentine’s Day. What a waste! Spending nearly a billion pounds on obligatory, insubstantial, generic, short-lived, largely sexist and exclusive representations of love, when that money could have gone on something useful, charitable, or beneficial to the environment.
Too many people let a giant corporate hand reach through their hearts and into their pockets like a smug sexist soul-sucking leech every February 14th. It’s not about love; it’s about money, and we all know it. We also know that money can’t buy love- and yet, year after year, Valentine’s Day spending comes in the hundreds of millions. Year after year, images of self-satisfied heterosexual cartoon couples sneering down at me are hurled into my eye line everywhere I go. It makes me feel like a husk of a human- not because I’m not buying these despicable affronts to humanity and love for anyone, but because other people are.
By saying these things, I am aware that I am inevitably opening myself up to the rude and tiresome ‘you’re just saying that because you’re single’ response, and of course, the equally charming and insulting notion that I will ‘change my mind about it when I meet someone’, which, it is assumed, is something I want to do. My protests to this day are largely dismissed as the bitter ramblings of a desperately lonely spinster, or, they are designed as a trap, and I secretly want a man to surprise me. When it comes to rejecting Valentine’s Day, I am no longer seen simply as what I am- a woman with an opinion.
Everywhere, the world tells me that I must want a man. I must want a man to want me. Too many songs tell me not to worry about being skinny because ‘boys like a little more booty to hold at night’; their ‘anacondas’ don’t want me if I don’t have ‘buns’. Hun. Too many happy ever afters end in marriage and finding a man, so too many people feel like failures if they haven’t found one. Too many Disney princesses aspire to catch the eye of Prince Charming, or nowadays, Prince Honest and Prince Believable and Prince Realistic. Which is great, in a sense- but he is still a he, and he is still the key to a complete and successful life.
And now, at this ‘most loving’ time of the year, I am told that I, like all women, must want a man to buy me flowers and jewellery and chocolate and lingerie- because that’s what true love is. Love is sex, and sex is a currency. Men buy it from women by buying her things on Valentine’s day. Women repay their generosity, on Valentine’s Day and a month later on ‘steak and blowjob’ day, because women are kind like that, and enjoying sex is for men.
Well, what if I don’t want a man to do that? What if I don’t want a man at all? What if I don’t want flowers or jewellery- what if I just want sex? Or what about women who will never want a man? Gay women, who apparently aren’t worth selling Valentine’s Day to - what are they supposed to do with all this sex they have to sell? Are they not allowed to celebrate love? Are they not invited to the love party?
I don’t know to what extent the people behind the media curtain believe in the myths they perpetuate. I know their vested interest is in profit; that they largely just pander to popular mainstream ideas in order to appeal to the widest audience and gain the greatest return. I know that really, they must know that it’s not okay to just pretend the entire LGBT community don’t exist because they think people are more comfortable seeing straight couples in red hearts, so that’s what will make them buy in. They must know, surely, that women do enjoy sex- with men and with other women, and it is not something that can be bought with any number of roses or jewels, or even knobs of butter.
A fairly large margarine for error is allowed, it seems.
Do people really think this works? Are all women the same? Do their eyes glaze over and legs spring open if you unlock them with a jewel? If that’s true, then I never want anybody to buy me jewellery! Who knows what could happen!?
And then, there is the awkward issue of all the people in the world who aren’t invited to the romance party- us ‘singletons’. I can barely write the word without shuddering. ‘Women’s’ magazines are bursting with patronising ‘advice’ about how to not get depressed if you are single on The Big Day, as if they know you better than you do and they are better at living your life than you are. On these days, you should sit around and eat your feelings- even though a man didn’t buy you any chocolate- and binge watch chick flicks that all end in white dresses and bouquets being hurled aggressively at the last single lady standing, while sighing maybe ‘someday my prince will come’ with all your other tragic depressed ‘single-and-ready-to-mingle-tons’.
Pity Parties are also exclusive. If you’re a boy, YOU CAN’T COME. (presumably, because the world doesn't assume you have a pathological need for romantic validation, not like us poor emotionally vulnerable dependent women).
Unfortunately, this is a pressure that although spearheaded on February 14th, is in no way limited to just one day. It is a consistent expectation throughout life, one that I have completely failed to achieve. I am 24 years old, and I have never been in a committed relationship. This does not depress me, or make me want to throw a Pity Party of my own. My longest relationship is either with my microwave, my bank, or my pair of running shorts that I bought when I was 11 that somehow still fit me. I am not embarrassed or ashamed of this, I know that this does not make me a failure, and I know it doesn’t mean there is something wrong with me. Despite what the industry tells me, I know the love in my life that isn’t romantic is not irrelevant or redundant on this ‘wonderful’ day. I know that we single people, straight, gay or bi, are not invisible.
So this year, I am not buying, and I hope people will put their money back in their pockets where their mouths are (or maybe give it to a charity or a worthy cause instead) and join me.
I am not limiting my love to just one day, and I won’t be told when, who and how to love. I will express love only when it is real and natural- and when it is shared between two people, instead of being bought specifically from a woman by a man bearing bouquets, bears and boxes of chocolates.
I will celebrate all the real love I have in my life- the plutonic, the romantic, the straight, the gay, the love I have for my books and paints and the love I have for my pets. I will not pity anyone for being single, least of all myself.
I won’t let that leech reach through my heart and into my pocket, because I know better. I might not know who St Valentine was or what his problem was with single people, but I know to not let a multi-million pound industry throw dust in my eyes and use my love to make money.
I do not need to let a man buy his way into my bed in order to be worth something, and neither does any woman.