Why I Have No Love for Valentine's Day

Picture courtesy of NME

It’s that time of year again – Hark! Here the angels weep for their empty mailboxes. Yes that most religious of days, Saint Valentine’s Day is upon us, a day for the women of the world to put enormous pressure on themselves and their partners to fulfil the ridiculous romantic la la land fantasies fabricated by clever advertising gurus. My objection to Valentine’s is not solely based on its roots in consumerism, although it is quite clearly a ploy for business to cynically profiteer from love, an emotion so joyfully simple and pure it needs no adornments nor fanfare.

 I can't stand the fauxmance of Valentine’s Day. It's not that LML has an outright objection to romantic gestures, indeed I can think of nothing more romantic than waking up after a night pounding pina coladas, with a topless model smiling indulgently down at me with a double D cup of tea and half a pig in a roll. It's just romance a la Valentines is so painfully clichéd - lurid red heart balloons, wilting roses and insipid candy abound in a day that pays homage to bad taste. Romance is cancelling a football game to spend the whole day in bed with your partner, or it's cancelling a shopping trip so your partner can spend the whole day at a football game. It's not a love bear, painstakingly stitched together by the bony fingers of an Indonesian orphan who, if they knew said bear cost £14.99 would probably wonder how the hell the West got so rich when it's clearly populated by complete morons.

Secondly, Valentine’s Day is not the celebration of two people's love for one another it is the celebration of a woman's love for expensive gestures of romance. Does anyone know of a (straight) man who genuinely loves Valentine’s Day? In fact, does anyone know a man who doesn't dread Valentine’s Day in much the same way as they might dread a visit to your parents or the dentist? In eight years of dating I have not met a single man who said "OMG, it's V day next week! Let's book a hugely overpriced restaurant and spend the evening silently resenting the stuck up, sneering waiter who frowns at laughing and kissing as it it's horribly working class." To make Valentine’s Day a day truly to be appreciated by men and women you'd need to go out for a romantic candlelit dinner before coming home to watch Terminator in your underwear. Fact.

Mostly though, Valentine’s Day makes us all feel hopelessly inadequate, whether you’re single or in a relationship. If you're single it can feel, not only like the whole world is in love but that they’ve all simultaneously decided to rub it in your face (ha ha!) before cantering home to have sex for the seventeenth time. In reality, half the world is in a couple, and half of those are depressed and wish they were single. (You’ve seen those couples mutedly chewing their way through the ciabatta? – yep, them). If you're in a couple, no matter how loved-up and sexy you are there's always someone more loved-up and sexy than you somewhere else, with bigger gifts, better hair and a boyfriend who doesn't think the epitome of sophisticated dining is make your own fajitas. I know a girl who was dating her boyfriend for 3 months and for Christmas he got her a Mulberry bag and booked the suite of a five star hotel for New Years Eve. God knows what she got for Valentine’s Day, maybe a small European country.  

 LML does appreciate the need to have a holiday in a month as depressing as February so how about these? 'National Give £50 To A Retailer For No Discernable Reason Day' or "National Day for People to Buy Themselves Loads of Crap to Make Themselves Feel Better About Their Empty, Meaningless Lives". Or how about cutting out all the spiel and just having a "Stuff Your Face with Chocolate and Booze Day". Although it may be a struggle, LML suspects she can get on board with a day dedicated to the consumption of cocktails and cakes.

Having said all that, LML has traitorously spent the afternoon in the bath of a boutique hotel drinking pink champagne, eating Green and Blacks and reading fashion magazines. Happily, you don't need a lover for that.

Seven Deadly Sins for the Modern Age

Image courtesy of blackeri on DeviantART

1. Apathy

Over the years the British public have become increasingly apathetic about politics. Occasionally we will rise up in fury in reaction to the odd, unpopular piece of policy or indiscretion by a rogue MP, but eventually the spin doctors smooth out our ruffled feathers and we settle back into our default position of am I bovvered? Voter turnout peaked at 83% in the early 1950’s but has since slumped more than 20% to 61% in the 2005 general election. Do we really care so little for how we are governed, and by whom? Here’s a happy statistic: if you earn £30,000 pa, you will pay an average of £264,000 over your lifetime in income tax alone. You don’t care about that, but you do care what Ashley Cole texted Cheryl last night? EUGH. I DESPAIR.

2. Bitchiness

I have been fortunate enough to observe some genuine bitching pros in their natural habitat: the private girls’ school, a haven of hormones and self-doubt where the accomplished bitch can flourish. An individual truly skilled in the art of bitching can transform almost any trait into something to be mocked and derided by their braying band of slavish devotees. Look at the calves / shoes / nose / face / hair of that fat / anorexic, poor / rich, frigid / slutty, stupid / geeky, upper class / middle class / lower class / working class scumbag. (Delete as appropriate). Where once these charming musings were limited to the common room clique, with the advance of such devices as Facebook and Twitter the internet is the bitch’s oyster, allowing him or her to parade their acerbic observations to malleable young minds across the world.

3. Greed

The more observant among you will note that Greed was, in fact, one of the seven original deadly sins but I felt that I couldn’t possibly leave it off the list given its’ modern day poignancy. With bankers taking home pay packets in the millions and ambulances needing hefty reinforcements to cope with the surge in obesity, it seems we can’t resist stuffing our mouths, and our wallets. We prioritise the short term fix – a sinfully sticky sponge or a new silk blouse – over long term fulfilment and happiness. LML isn’t suggesting we all live off wild berries and wear 100% eco sacks hand-braided from reconstituted goat hairs, that’s crazy hippy talk and everyone needs the occasional perk. But when consuming – cake, cars, clothes, phones - becomes the fallback position in life, as opposed to a well-deserved treat, is when we have to stop and take a long, hard look at our behaviour.   

4. Self-Obsession

Vanity, ‘an excessive pride in, or admiration of, one's own appearance or achievements’ was on the original list and although I initially considered it for the modern version I didn’t feel it adequately reflected the modern tendency for people to be so completely and utterly fascinated by their own lives. The people tweeting their every thought, or updating their Facebook status 1,487 times a day do not appear to have an excessive pride in their appearance or achievements, they are simply violently obsessed with....themselves. 

‘Jst had beans4brekfast, LOL!’ 

I wish someone would tell me what exactly is LOL about beans for breakfast. Is it the heightened capacity to dispel bodily vapours? Perhaps it’s a private in-joke between the bean lover and another? In which case, why put an in-joke on facebook? Or maybe it’s the fact that Mr. Bean will cackle like a hyena at absolutely anything: “Going for a drink of water LOL!!”, “Can’t find the washing power, LOL!LOL!LOL!” Groan, groan, groan.

5. Intolerance

Everywhere LML looks there is intolerance of difference, as certain groups and individuals try and promote their way of life as the only way of life. Islamic extremists are intolerant of the West. Western extremists are intolerant of Islam. Atheists are intolerant of religions. Religions are intolerant of reasoned debate. Well, LML is intolerant of intolerance. Why can’t people just accept that we all have different value-systems, beliefs, cultures and traditions and that these differences, warts and all, enrich a world that would otherwise be, let’s face it, pretty dull. 

6. Impatience

Iwantthisarticletobefinished,whyisittakingsobloodylong?

7. Superficiality

LML admits to having a minor obsession with the new dating game show ‘Take Me Out’ in which thirty single women decide over a series of tests whether or not they would date a man. If more than one woman wants to date him by the end of the testing then the man may choose who he takes out. It’s fantastically entertaining and a perfect illustration of our next vice in all its brilliant Technicolor glory. The reasons the women can find not to date someone are truly amazing: “The shirt he’s wearing clashes with my lipstick.” Or “he said he looks after his disabled mother, but I want a man who will look after me!” Seriously, you just said that on national television? Good lord. Mind you, the men are just as bad. When given a choice between two women, one slightly less conventionally attractive than the other, this is the result every single time: The short, curvy brunette will implore “I’m really intelligent, I volunteer with disabled puppies and I work as a comedian in my spare time” and the guy will smile encouragingly before picking the big boobed giraffe who can’t spell her own name. 

Daddy Dearest: Why Clegg’s Paternity Reforms are a Triumph for Modern Families

Deputy PM Nick Clegg will be delighted to finally have some good publicity under his belt after announcing plans to reform the parental leave system by 2015. Under the current system, which harks back to the dark ages before equality legislation existed, fathers are entitled to two weeks of paid paternity leave whilst female employees can expect up to a year of paid maternity leave. Clegg intends to implement a new, more flexible system of shared parental leave where parents can decide between them who returns to work and who takes the additional leave.   

At last! Recognition by the state that not all women want to spend the year after childbirth making play dough figurines and self-medicating in the loo whilst their burly husbands swagger home with the pay check. What’s the point of having equality laws in the workplace when we reinforce gender stereotypes with archaic and imbalanced legislation on parental leave? Once a baby no longer needs to be breast-fed parents should be able to decide who takes the additional leave with no further input from the government. It is not emasculating for fathers to relish the opportunity to bond with their newborns, nor is it shameful for mothers to feel grateful and relieved when they re-enter the workplace after a demanding spell at home with a new baby.

It is a crying shame that men have been virtually banished from baby care, sent trundling off into the wilderness to haul back great hunks of bleeding meat to their needy brood whilst the mother furnishes the young with the emotional nourishment that apparently only a mother can provide. It is an, albeit rare, example of reverse discrimination, the assumption that only women, with their engrained qualities of compassion, empathy, warmth and the much lauded ‘mothering instinct’ can adequately care for our young. Is there no such thing as a fathering instinct then? Are men intrinsically less capable of rearing children than women?

Just as women have suffered years of discrimination in the workplace, so men have suffered years of discrimination in the home, portrayed by the media bumbling round the kitchen all fingers and thumbs whilst their irate wives whip the back of their legs with a dishcloth and moan about the unequal share of housework. Not that I am excusing the certain proportion of men for whom wild horses couldn’t drag them to the washing machine, and who need a good kick up the behind (metaphorical of course, LML does not condone domestic violence) but newsflash! Men can load dishwashers and change nappies too if given the opportunity.

The reforms outlined by Clegg are a success for many reasons. They are a success because, at long last, they recognise the implicit discrimination against men and women when it comes to childcare and attempt to redress the balance. They are a success because they potentially give thousands of children the opportunity to spend time with their fathers during their formative years, forming close-knit bonds that will last a lifetime. They are a success because employers won’t know in advance whether a mother or father will take parental leave, and therefore won’t be able to discriminate against women of a child-bearing age when recruiting for jobs.

Finally, they are a success because they don’t subtly promote one way of living over another as the existing parental leave structure does. Instead they give parents the choice to find a system that works best for them. Some parents will stick with the status quo, others will go for a complete role reversal whilst I suspect the majority of us will find somewhere in between the two.

In a society that has become increasingly proscriptive – drink plenty of water, but not too much! Breast-feed your children, but not for too long! Eat fish, it’s good for the heart! Stop eating fish, our oceans are empty! – it is a pleasure to be given a choice in something for once.

Three cheers for choice – and for Clegg.