Argonaut Valentine’s Day is just a way to celebrate consumerism while making single people feel bad.
V-Day celebrates people for finding someone to date or marry them, but it completely leaves out people who don’t have a significant other. It’s a holiday characterized by all things love-related, which single-handedly makes people who are not in a relationship feel lonely and like they’re doing everything wrong in their lives.
Society already celebrates people for being in a relationship or for getting married, so why is there an entire holiday dedicated to them? A holiday that sweeps through stores, retail outlets and the media and coats it with a thick layer of red, pink, hearts and the little cherub himself, Cupid. The societal standards seem to ostracize those who actively choose to remain single, who are focusing on themselves or their career over a relationship, who don’t get married and start a family right away, or simply anyone who doesn’t follow suit by jumping on the relationship/marriage bandwagon.
The moment that February 1st comes around, we start to see the shades of red and pink smother out any other colors. We hear people getting frantic and saying things like, “I need a date for the 14th,” or “I don’t have a date for the 14th. What should I do?” Single people fall prey to dating apps with people who aren’t looking for what they claim to be looking for. Why? All because of February 14th. A single day, in a whole year comprised of 365 days, makes people question everything. Perhaps they’ll question their worth, their looks and their personalities. Many people will ask themselves, “Why don’t I have a date?”
On the contrary, Valentine’s Day can be bad for people in relationships too. The holiday turns relationships into competitions. It’s always about who got their significant other the best gifts, who planned the most romantic and memorable date, or whose relationship is more Instagram-worthy than everyone else’s. Guys will try to one-up each other on the extravagance of their plans and girls will try to one-up each other on who is better dressed and who produced a cuter, more aesthetic Instagram post about their magical date night. It’s a vicious cycle of who can come out on top of the Valentine’s Day bracket.
Not to mention, arguably, the worst part of V-Day: PDA. If you think PDA is bad on any regular day, then you’re in for a surprise when you see how unparalleled it is on Valentine’s Day. Every corner you turn, there’s a couple kissing, holding hands and being so infatuated with each other.
Now, I love pink. In fact, it’s my favorite color. But I don’t love the chokehold it has on people when February rolls around. Promoting pink and red as the “colors of love” just fuels our consumeristic society. It prompts people to go out and buy something cute for one single day of the year, simply because it’s red, pink, has a heart pattern, or all the above. Something that they may never wear again, I might add. Something that will likely end up in a landfill in a few months after February. Maybe they don’t even like pink, but Valentine’s Day tells them that they need to have something pink, so low and behold, they go buy something pink. Valentine’s Day is just an ever-growing pile of negative things coated in bright colors and hearts to make us think it’s a cute and necessary holiday.
All horrible aspects of Valentine’s Day aside, I think we can all agree that the best aspect of this consumeristic, competitive, love-exploitative, PDA-filled holiday is the incredibly discounted chocolate the day after.
Brooklynn Jolley can be reached at [email protected]