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.