We were outside playing with the dog when the subject of Valentine’s Day came
up. Given what happened next, I am pretty sure the Australian was responsible for introducing the topic; and if not, well, it’s my column, so I’ll blame him if I want to.
“I don’t do Valentine’s Day,” I informed him, thinking that this would be welcome news. After all, he is Australian – not exactly a nation known for heartfelt emoting, unless it involves sport.
“Really?” he replied. “I always do.”
There comes a point in every relationship when you realise that perhaps you don’t know one another as well as you’d thought. This was such a moment. We both looked at each other incredulously – me, concerned that he was some sort of romance-crazed Valentine’s zealot; he wondering if I had deep black coal where my heart should have been. An eerie silence descended, and in the distance, storm clouds gathered... Was love about to look upon a tempest and be shaken?
As it turns out – no. We agreed not to exchange cards and that dining out on the day of enforced romance is not much fun. Instead, he suggested cooking me a slap-up meal. Now, being a terribly unselfish woman, I decided that was a compromise I was prepared to live with. After all, he likes to cook; I like to eat. It’s a balanced relationship.
The Australian thought I’d care about Valentine’s Day, and I’d assumed he wouldn’t, which got me thinking about gender expectations and 14 February. Although nominally a day that celebrates love, romance and passion, most of the advertising leading up to Valentine’s Day views it as the day that men are supposed to declare their feelings by means of a card and a gift, but not just any old gift – a romantic, and preferably expensive, one. These gendered expectations are underscored by the creation of 14 March, aka “Steak and Blowjob Day” when the ladies are supposed to reward the previous month’s romantic generosity with a meat feast.
The sociologist Ian Morrison notes that advertising around Valentine’s Day rarely deviates from the idea that it is important to “sensitive, or emotionally needy” women; but regarded as a chore or expectation by “aloof and less emotionally aware” men.
“Ads generally show that women care a lot about Valentine’s Day, while men are prone to forgetting this holiday, inevitably angering their partner, which requires them to make a grand and expensive gesture. Thus, the commercialization of the holiday reinforces and relies on a traditional, heteronormative understanding of gender roles and characteristics,” he argues.
This supposed universal male struggle was captured by Lidl’s 2104 Valentine’s Day advert. A variety of Irish men were shown desperately searching for the right words and gestures to express their feelings (“Shall I compare thee to Shamrock Rovers? Should I say that you’re a... ride? Should I buy you a pink thong?”) only to have Lidl save the day with beautiful – but well-priced – flowers.
The Lidl advert may play with two entrenched stereotypes – that Valentine’s Day is really a woman’s day, and that men are expected to step things up romantically in a way that is unnatural to them – but it is funny.
A more egregious example of this kind of advertising was online florists Teleflora’s 2012 advert featuring model Adriana Lima. In the ad, Lima gets dressed for a night out, the camera lingering on her exquisite thigh as she pulls up her stockings. Primped and preened, Lima turns to face the audience and sultrily explains: “Guys, Valentine’s Day is not that complicated. Give, and you shall receive.” The message here is that romantic relationships are transactional. If men don’t pay – at least in the form of flowers – they will be denied sex.
You could argue that ads are ads and that sex sells, but many Valentine’s Day adverts don’t just sell flowers, jewellery, chocolate or lingerie – they sell the idea that women’s bodies and affections can and should be bought; and that a man’s love, no matter how sincere, is not enough by itself – at least not on Valentine’s Day. It doesn’t do anybody any favours to treat women as commodities, and men as unworthy of obtaining them without stumping up money for a showy or expensive gift.
What’s more, Morrison argues that the commercialisation of Valentine’s Day means it is no longer about romance itself, but about expectations and public displays. “Taking part in Valentine’s Day is not a choice,” he adds, “but a demand, which detracts from its image as a day when people do things out of love. There is a lot of pressure associated with this holiday, because it has become an obligation or a show.”
Morrison means that for many people Valentine’s Day is about creating the perfect image of romance, and he’s probably right – it’s not just about lavish gifts, but showing the world that you are the kind of man who can afford them, or the kind of woman who deserves them.
Valentine’s Day bragging rights used to be confined to the schoolyard or office, but social media allows us to publicly display our relationships on a much larger stage, which in turns increases both the romantic and financial pressures associated with it.
Social scientists have argued that social media encourages us to think of ourselves as brands; we no longer just have lives, we have lifestyles, preferably ones that are enviable or aspirational. Although researchers have found that levels of narcissism have been rising for decades, and that this upsurge in self-love predates social media, there is a positive correlation between the two — the more frequently you post updates, airbrushed selfies and check-ins, the more likely you are to be narcissistic.
Valentine’s Day is the perfect opportunity for the narcissists among us – if you can post an image of an incredible bouquet to Instagram, check in at a fancy restaurant, and upload a bunch of selfies showing the two of you acting loved up and happy, then you win at romance, even if you had an argument on the way to dinner or haven’t had sex for weeks. You can’t just be happy – you have to self-display as happy. It’s a sort of “pics or it didn’t happen” attitude to romance – or as Marshall McLuhan noted, the medium is the message.
Valentine’s Day, or at least the advertising around it, perpetuates old-fashioned, but persistent ideas about men, women, love and sex – particularly that women want love and men want sex. You’d think that more than fifty years after the sexual revolution we would have gotten onboard with the idea that sex is something two – or more – people share, and that women, being sexual creatures, like sex for sex’s sake too. Besides, who wants flowers – or a fuck – because of a sense of obligation, anyway? You could argue that it’s still better than no flowers and no fucking, and maybe it is – but it’s not romance.
It is possible I am making a mountain out of a heart-shaped molehill, but I think that showing men as either uncaring cads or witless simpletons and women as sexually alluring but difficult harridans demanding tributes is not only sexist, it’s dull. It’s a tired and trite creatively bankrupt snoozefest that trucks in harmful stereotypes in the service of shifting tat.
We deserve better, because if there is one thing love or sex should never be, it’s bloody boring.