W
hen
I
think
of
Valentine’s
Day, I think of a
hard-shelled, cherry-red, Sa-
ran-wrapped version of love
that bores cavities in your teeth
and sits on your tongue like the
aftermath of a bad French kiss.
I think of the time in middle
school when I made a list of
my “future boyfriends” using a
pink piece of construction pa-
per and red crayola marker, and
I think about the freckle-faced
love interest who picked it up
and then forced me to confess
my feelings for him the next
period. I think of the hundreds
of elementary worksheets van-
dalized by my semi-psycho rep-
etitions of “Mrs. Grace Smith,”
adopting the surname of which-
ever dimpled specimen I decid-
ed I was in love with on that
given weekday. I think of entire
lunch periods spent with other
pony-tailed fourth graders pas-
sionately debating which Drew
was the more “attractive Drew”
in our class (I oscillated teams
constantly).
There was always a certain
level of embarrassment that
came with that hallowed day
in mid-February, when teach-
ers and real, grown adults fash-
ioned love into platonic paper
crafts, like you hadn’t spent ev-
ery second of your adolescence
thinking about just that: boys
and crushes and this Drew or
that one.
Much like the blaring beat of
silence that comes when teach-
ers announce they’re expecting
a baby — each student realizing
what step was taken to get to
that bit of news — the launch
of private, romantic affairs into
public consciousness is awk-
ward. And in middle school,
Valentine’s Day was a whole
day of just that.
I first experienced the sick-
ening embarrassment of being
crushed on publicly in fifth
grade, when a pale and freck-
le-faced boy named Liam con-
fessed his love for me via a
stack of valentines. The mess
of red paper slips, overflow-
ing like confetti from my glit-
tered Valentine’s Day box, was
an adorable stream of boyish
consciousness. His endearingly
scribbled handwriting read:
“I like you so much, Grace.”
“I like your eyes, Grace.”
“Do
you
like
me
back?
Choose: Yes or No.”
“Will you be my valentine?”
It should have been my dream
come true: A boy was pouring
his heart out for me — he was
maxing out my Valentine’s Day
box in just the perfect way, my
desk showered with enough
notes of affection to make a sin-
gle girl cry.
But I could not have been
more appalled. All I wanted to
do was tear each valentine one
by one, ridding myself of any
speck of Liam’s affection that
remained on that desk.
Maybe it was a mixture of
embarrassment, confused feel-
ings and being confronted with
a tsunami of real-life boy atten-
tion I had yet to receive as an
adolescent. But either way, the
essential truth is this: The in-
troduction of the private, Liam
and my enduring flame of love,
into the public, Mrs. Parker’s
fifth-grade classroom, was a
wildly uncomfortable affair.
And thus, we arrive at the
dreaded Valentine’s Day par-
adox: the idea of a collective
day when private celebration is
thrusted into public conscious-
ness and punctuated by obtru-
sive spells of commodification
all the while. It’s brutal.
Originally founded in Chris-
tian and ancient Roman tradi-
tions, the romantic sentiment
associated
with
Valentine’s
Day was made tangible begin-
ning in the 15th century, when
written notes were traded to
convey affection. Then, in the
1840s, a woman named Esther
Howland, now revered as the
“Mother of the Valentine,” be-
gan to mass-produce those cov-
eted greeting cards, finally lib-
erating us from the burden of
having to put our thoughts to
pen and paper.
Around this same time, Val-
entine’s Day was in the process
of being rebranded. An 1849
edition of Graham’s American
Monthly harnessed the day’s
full capitalist potential: “St.
Valentine’s day...is becoming,
nay, it has become a national
holyday.”
And thus, Feb. 14 had turned
into a whole new woman: Sud-
denly, drugstores were stocked
with pastel-colored valentines,
a Bostoner invented the be-
loved Necco candy hearts and
holiday merchandise in an ar-
ray of blushed tones littered
store windows.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
COVID, stupid, love
BY GRACE TUCKER, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY
Wednesday, February 10th, 2021 — 3A
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com