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I love Valentine’s Day. I love the pink, I love the hearts, and I love all the mushy-gushy silliness that comes with it. I probably shouldn’t. I have every reason to fall into the category of a bitter hater, but I can’t help it. The aesthetic alone of Valentine’s Day has a chokehold on me – I type while sitting mere feet away from the pink heart carpet I got from the kid’s section of IKEA.
When I see the explosion of pink and hearts appear in shops, I’m disappointed that brands encourage unreasonable seasonal and event-based consumerism, because I’ll buy (and use) a heart-shaped dish any time of year, though ideally secondhand. Mark my words, I will own a heart-shaped Le Creuset one day. There’s definitely valid criticism of the consumerism that Valentine’s Day (and most holidays) are unfortunately inseparable from now, but just because it’s there doesn’t mean we have to buy into it. After all, Valentine’s Day is a day that celebrates love. Isn’t that adorable? Celebrating your loved ones doesn’t have to mean spending money. A handmade craft is all the more meaningful, and sometimes the best gift is just spending quality time together.
I think Valentine’s Day gets a bad rap as a romantic holiday. As eternally single, I decided long ago that it is a day for celebrating all types of love – types of love that are often underappreciated. Celebrate your friends! Celebrate your family! Celebrate your pets! I will 100% be putting my cat in his fancy pink heart collar.
I also have to appreciate it because, weirdly enough, Valentine’s Day helped me unpack my internalized misogyny of yore. I used to not like pink! And I used to despise hearts; I fully could not stand the shape. Now my little pink heart earrings are my absolute favorites and my dorm room looks like pink threw up on it. Thus I have also decided that Valentine’s Day is the day to celebrate all of our inner girly-girliness.
So, although I could spend Valentine’s Day bitter and sad (and genuinely, no judgment if you do), I think it’s lovely that we have a day to celebrate love and femininity and each other. I wish everyone tasty chocolate, a classic rom-com, and lots of pink and hearts <3