Today is February 14th, which means the Dartmouth listserv has been teasing me all week with its annual onslaught of obnoxious catfish. Another subject line is “Are you very lonely?” or “Heart-shaped pizza for Common Ground’s messed up attachment style,” I’d hit reply all. Yes, I’m alone. No, I don’t want to talk about it over pink lemonade. That said, thank you for filling up my inbox.
It’s hard to write for the magazine section of your college newspaper around Valentine’s Day and not think about the dire state of love on campus. Early in my journalism career, I made a conscious decision not to write about love. Last year, I published “A Love Letter to Dartmouth” to address this predicament. I couldn’t bring myself to understand my past relationships intellectually, and I was disgusted by the premise of articulating widespread dissatisfaction with hookup culture. There were several clear reasons for this.
The first is that it’s easy to achieve. To critically analyze hookup culture is to state the obvious. Bonus points if you bring a feminist perspective to your analysis. Who could have predicted that it would benefit men?
The second reason is for self-preservation. “This week, a writer deals with loneliness by reframing unlovability as a universal phenomenon. Her article started appearing when she Googled her name. I’m imagining a deck with the content “.”
Third is my female fatigue. Allocating her 800 words to revealing men’s indifference is a foolish journalistic endeavor when she’s already tired of thinking about men.
Sorry, I don’t mean to seem bitter. Believe it or not, I love Valentine’s Day. I’ll take any excuse to eat dark chocolate, write love poems, wear pink, or watch Before Sunrise. I just get tired of the “Single on Valentine’s Day” rhetoric. Girls complain of being “sad and lonely,” but they neglect to understand the role that platonic, familial love plays in their lives. National “Stick to No Boyfriends and Ignore Female Friendships” Day is a holiday that gets shoved into my inbox, social media feed, and local CVS every year. Can you blame me for refusing to celebrate?
I miss the wholesome elementary school days when every student in my grade would give homemade Valentine’s Day candy to all their classmates. Why did we stop celebrating friendship? When did we forgo good times and privilege amorous forms of love over all other forms of love? ( Maybe it’s when Walmart learns that romance is more commercialized than friendship, but it might be better to leave that word as rhetorical…)
I’m at the age where my friends and I always ruminate about boys. Try to understand what they’re thinking, if they’re thinking that, why they don’t message you back, and the nuances of subtext between “hey” and “what’s up?” It’s exhausting and pathetic, especially when we realize that the attention we’re putting into our plans is getting little reward.
For a while, I thought the solution to my obsession with male validation was to give up on the pursuit of intimacy altogether. However, while it is pathetic to center your life around love, it is equally pathetic to completely eliminate the possibility of love at the young age of 20. For example, who hurt me?
Every time I go out to dinner with my girlfriend, I expect the inevitable moment when she asks who has her eyes on me. At Dartmouth, she is not actively pursuing someone and she feels bored. When so much of girls’ small talk revolves around men, discussing potential plans ends up forming its own social currency. Not having a plan means being uninteresting or a little socially maladjusted.
The problem is, I’m too much of an inquisitive person to make the initials of a future encounter the first (well, realistically, third) topic of breakfast, lunch, and dinner conversation. We are all. Tell me about my Israeli-Palestinian class. So I developed a nuanced view of a) the discouraging plausibility of the two-state solution and b) the arrogance of key figures in government in its place. If you ask me which diner is the most neoliberal, I’ll tell you why it’s Coris. Need movie recommendations? Tarot readings? Redecoration? i got you. Allow me to read my monologue on the power of perfume preparation. It often makes the beat too long, but it holds incredible wisdom. Please, for the love of (Sun) God, don’t diminish my entertainment value to a man’s name.
This Valentine’s Day, I’m looking forward to celebrating the abundance of female friendships in my life, not in a sad Bridget Jones way, but over fruity drinks and al dente pasta. Masu. Usually I’d insert a self-deprecating joke here about how I’m forced to by default. But no, I’m genuinely excited to make vodka rigatoni, listen to Elvis ballads while the water boils, and handwrite love letters to friends overseas. Whether you’re in a committed relationship or not, we encourage you to tell your friend how much they mean to you this Valentine’s Day. There’s really not enough.