If you read my post about Christmas, it should come as no surprise to you that I also hate Valentine's Day. The reasons for hating both are essentially the same: forced gift giving on manufactured holidays, but at least Christmas has a somewhat legitimate purpose, or it's supposed to. Valentine's Day serves absolutely no purpose. Valentine's Day is a special kind of evil. Allow me to elaborate....
Pretty much everybody is impacted by V-Day in some way (I'm limiting this to America, since that's where all of my experience is); it's not like you can say that you're a different religion and don't celebrate. However, there are very few "winners" in the scheme known as Valentine's Day. In fact, pretty much everybody loses today. (I'm not calling anybody a "loser" in the pejorative sense, I mean that this day is like a game; a game that very few people can win.)
Let's start with the actual "winners," and I don't mean See's Candies and 1-800-FLOWERS, who are the true winners on this day. I mean the people who are romantics, who are in a happy relationship, perhaps one that hasn't been going on for very long. The woman will have expectations about how this day will be: grand, romantic gestures, flowers, candy, some kind of surprise, perhaps a marriage proposal? And it is the man's responsibility to carry out these grand romantic gestures. If all goes well and both parties perform as expected: they are winners! (This scenario, of course, isn't limited to a heterosexual relationship, but since this day has so much to do with gender stereotypes I'm going to rely on them to prove my various points.) But how often does this scenario actually happen? I could probably make up some statistic here, but what the fuck do I know, really? Probably pretty rarely. So... the winners on this day are rare, although some would argue that any man who ends up with a blow job at the end of the day is an automatic winner, and I'm not sure I can disagree with that, actually. Anyway, let's get to the losers....
Hey, single people! Were you feeling bad about being single? Were you wishing you had somebody to share your life with, not just today, but every other day? Well too fucking bad, single people; nobody cares about how you're feeling about yourself, in fact we've created an entire day which will do nothing but make you feel even worse about yourself. And it's not like you can escape it, since this shit is everywhere. So let's just rub your fucking noses in the fact that you're alone, and look at my scenario above: this is how happy you could be on this day, but no. Not you guys. Awwww. Too bad, single people.
Hey, men in relationships! Did you see my scenario above? The one with the winners? I hope you're fully versed on the expectations of your partner, because the onus is on you guys to make this day special and magical and perfect and crap. She might not have necessarily informed you of your responsibilities here, because much of what makes this day "special" (for the winners, anyway) is supposed to be a surprise, and it's your job to figure it out. Hope it's good enough! Or expensive enough! Or surprising enough! Or just better than last year, whateverthefuck it was that you did last year. Kind of makes those single guys happy to be single, I would think, but yeah, sorry guys. Society has determined that it is your responsibility to perform here, and if you don't come through there's a really good chance that she'll be talking shit about you to her girlfriends tomorrow.
Hey, women in relationships! We're the reason this day exists, it was created for us so that we could feel more secure in our relationships. But... guess what? If you require one particular day where everything is supposed to go perfectly in order to feel secure in your relationship.... you're doing it wrong. So ease up on your men, girls. Maybe you should buy the flowers and the candy this year. Or, better, yet.....
