zoekrupka.com

Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ll know today is Valentine’s Day.

In my Canadian childhood family, being shameful consumerists, we celebrated Valentine’s Day as if it were an all-inclusive cultural ritual. We didn’t reserve the holiday for lovers. My mother would bake a cake, sometimes in the shape of a heart. There would be small presents and cards. For years my ex-husband and I got valentines sent over, just in case we were missing out down under.

I grew up in a time when not everyone got a prize in pass the parcel and not every kid got a valentine on their desk at school on the big day. This was long before we worried about emotional trauma and back when we still believed that hard times built character.

In grade 9, I was an awkward accelerated 13-year-old and my best friend was fifteen, brilliant and looked like the Bionic Woman. She wasn’t interested in boys or girls, and she found my concern about valentine cards and tiny hearts imprinted with slogans like “bee mine” endearing but also kind of pathetic.

That year I had blindly stumbled across some unexpected misogyny, and reeling from the brutality of some newly discovered rules for boys and girls, I became deeply preoccupied about those tiny candy hearts and what they meant.

you can read the rest of this article at newmatilda