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Aaahh Valentine’s Day. Yet another day designed to pressure men and women to empty their wallets (and sometimes their good common sense) in order to impress others. Stores start stocking their shelves with Valentine’s Day goodies as soon as the New Year arrives.
The subliminal message is: prove your love with a box of chocolates.
An unfortunate by-product of this holiday is that it brings out the latent insecurity of hordes of single women. They wait and wait for someone, anyone, even an old asshole of an ex-boyfriend to call them up or text and say:
“Will you be my Valentine?”
Having a Valentine is yet another fantasy that gets built into our psyche from the time we’re young girls. I can distinctly remember the anxiety of Valentine’s Day as early as the 4th grade. Any student in school could buy and send a CandyGram to another student. The CandyGrams were delivered during homeroom, so everyone who was "special" enough to get one would open up their gifts while a few empty-handed students looked on pitifully.
I sent a few, but I can’t remember ever getting one. So I definitely know how it feels to be overlooked on Valentine’s Day, it sucks!
But here’s a question — why put young kids (particularly impressionable young girls) in that position in the first place? Why foster a situation where they will start developing this type of social anxiety at age 10?
Then we grow up and now it’s all a big tradition. If you don’t get a Valentine’s Day box of chocolates, diamond necklace or taken out to dinner, then you’re just not that special. Is it any wonder that many young girls grow up to become so desperate for love and attention from men with messages like this abounding in society?
Re-Frame Valentine’s Day
When you put Valentine’s Day in the proper perspective, it all becomes a bit laughable. So you’re 40 and still waiting around for a boy to be your Valentine?
As a single mature person, why give so much of your power and attention to a DAY? And if you are in a relationship, why does it take Valentine’s Day to do something special for the one you love? Because the media tells you to: it’s all for show and attention.
“Hey everyone look at me! Look at my flowers! Look, I matter to someone else!”
But why does it matter so much to you that you matter to someone else? When you’re truly happy and secure the only person’s opinion that really matters when it comes to YOU is yours.
So if no one calls you this February 14 what will you do? How will you feel? If you end up feeling sad or down, why is that? Maybe some self-reflection is in order.
Let the day come quickly when you won’t feel the need to be validated by Valentine’s Day or any other consumer-driven holiday. Amen.
Jayelle Hughes
Author of Men Don't Matter and the forthcoming novella 5eX
