By Emina Sabic
Congratulations, you managed to get through the Christmas season and the dreariness that is January without stabbing yourself in the eye! Well done. The days are starting to get slightly longer and now you can draw a sigh of relief and count down the hours ‘til spring. Right? Wrong, my friends. First you need to navigate your way through this one special day in February that fills every sane human being with dread: Valentine’s Day. A day for lovers according to the gushing teenage girls on my bus but everywhere I look I see panicky people with wild, crazy eyes. Remember that scene in Mean Girls where everyone’s just like the animals around the watering hole? Except in this case the watering hole is the M&S flowers section and the animals are middle aged suit wearing men.
Roses are red, violets are blue, insult my music taste and I will cut you (Image: wikipedia.org)
What really gets me is all the hysteria. Come mid-February most normal people are turning into mentalists, nostrils flaring at anything pink, red or fluffy that crosses their path. Why should there only be one day of the year devoted to showing someone how much you love them? It all screams of clichés and a hopelessly childish need for attention and validation. Kind of like those couples we all have as Facebook friends who insist on updating their statuses gushing about their “other half” (don’t even get me started on that term) and writing puke provoking sweet nothings on each other’s walls. Surely you have a mobile phone for that? Private messaging? Or, I dunno, just TALK TO EACH OTHER. More often than not, it seems that those who flaunt it the most are the ones who are most insecure about their relationship, as they inevitably break up two weeks later (and then we have all those passive-aggressive facebook statuses to look forward to). Or perhaps they just like the attention? Don’t get me wrong, a few pictures and sweet words are lovely but it’s called a private life for a reason.
I said pink roses, bitch! (Image: myspace.com)
Also, come February 14th, why is it suddenly all about underwear? Please put on an overpriced, unflattering piece of polyester that will make you feel about as comfortable as the Pope at Pride. Hurrah! Break out the pink champagne to match the £50 you just spent on underwear that will never be worn again! In my experience sexiness as well as romance are things that are quite personal and unique to each person, so why Valentine’s Day marketing is all about underwear and cheap roses is beyond my grasp. Not to mention that all the cards and adverts you see seem to indicate that only heterosexual couples should do the whole romance-and-shag thing – the values that accompany this mother of all non-holidays are quite frankly a bit tedious and alienate a large part of the population. But hey, as long as you get a card with an over the top message all is well, non?
We hear Glen Coco is skilled in the art of lurve. (Image: hellogiggles.com)
The amount of women I saw this morning on my commute wearing Valentine’s Day inspired outfits such as tights with love hearts and variations of red garments would astonish you, no jokes. These V-day fanatics smugly trying to catch the eye of anyone deeply immersed in their book, Metro or morning game of Wordfeud, do their notions of romance really culminate once a year on a gloomy day in February? Or is it the opposite, as a friend believes, that the 14th of February is actually a day for the otherwise non-romantics to exhibit their romance bone? I am inclined to believe the latter.
My eyes! My eyes! (Image: flickr.com)
So I suppose what I’m really trying to convey here is that we should all stay away from the pink fluffy madness this day represents. There should not only be one day of the year where we show our appreciation towards that very special someone in our life. Bring them a coffee and some tulips on a Sunday morning, make a playlist with songs you think they would appreciate or take them out to dinner in the middle of the week. Spontaneity is the most romantic gesture of all, and let’s face it, there is nothing spontaneous about Valentine’s Day at all.
Bad Salad 