Before you begin reading I thought that I'd tell you a bit about my post. In the spirit of Throwback Thursday I thought I would post an oldie but goodie. I wrote this back in 2016, it was the piece that got me my job as a copywriter. I revamped the ending a bit and tweaked a word or two here and there. Give it a read-tell me what you think!
‘What is love’ no longer seems to be a popular song that plays on the radio or VHS channel. Instead it has become our national anthem, it’s become the question that circles around society like a fly you’re unable to swat away.
In order to get an idea of love, one has to look at the continually frustrating ebb and flow of hope and disappointment we call “the dating scene.” We are no longer receiving the flowers and mixed tapes promised to us by old movies and romantic novels. Instead we now live in a generation where a text at midnight asking you to come over is the equivalent of a knight charging through the night on his white steed to save the damsel in distress. Much like the song we are all trying to find love but at the same time we are begging, “baby, don’t hurt me no more”.
A while back I was ghosted. Ghosting is not as fun as it sounds and no it does not involve a sheet with two holes cut out for eyes. Instead it takes place when the person you’ve been talking to, dating and sleeping with, disappears into the sunset without so much as “see you later.” Now I had read about ghosting, I’d shook my head with pity when my friends told me their woes about men who had ghosted them and yet here I was, in the exact same boat! Why was it that I hadn’t seen it coming? Maybe it was because I had personally excused my ghost every single time he did something that should have been a red flag, deluding myself into thinking that when he didn’t respond to my messages he was playing hard to get–how romantic. When he didn’t call, I thought to myself “he’ll make it up to me” and finally when he ceased all communication completely I had to consider the only logical response-he had probably been hit by a bus and now lay in a hospital somewhere desperately yearning for me.
One has to come to terms with the fact that future meet-cute stories will be “well I swiped right”, “and I swiped right and the rest is history.” There is something wrong with the fact that we have the ability to dismiss someone with a swipe of our thumb, this reminds me of another act regarding a thumb and that was when a Roman Emperor decided if a gladiator lived or died with a simple thumbs up or thumbs down. Is romantic love dead or is it merely evolving? Maybe just like our wisdom teeth- romance has become obsolete.
In order to answer what love in the twenty-first century is, I believe one would have to first dissect the very important matter that hinges on cheesy Valentines Day cards and slow dances in the rain- romance. In Sex and the City Carrie Bradshaw finds herself dating the Russian artist Alexander Petrovsky who happens to be an old romantic, when he buys her an expensive dress and whisks her to the opera, her response? She faints. When she awakens, she asks Alexander to tone down the cheesy romance because she isn’t prepared for it. This poses the thought that maybe its not that she wasn’t prepared but rather that she would never be. Old romance, whilst lovely in films, doesn’t have a place in society any more, not in a grand manner anyway. Long gone are the days where a man stands outside your house holding a boom box over his head. Long gone are the days of romantic meet cute stories, which we plan on telling our children about one day. Instead now we consider it romantic when a date actually manages to text you the next day and doesn’t go towards the light like my ghost apparently had.
Romance in modern society is a very conflicting concept. Many feminists argue that women should not submit to romance, that it’s an extension of the patriarchy. Women’s liberation allowed us the chance to not only work, earn money and buy ourselves a meal, but now we also have the ability to buy our significant other a meal too. A lot of romantic tales rely on a man to rescue a woman from a life of squander and spinsterhood, but now women don’t need men in order to build a life for themselves. This freedom and independence led to the evolution of romance within society. Romance in modern society doesn’t live in the pretty, it lives in the nitty gritty. It is far more romantic to care and support your partner than it is to throw pebbles against their window in the dead of night in order to get their attention, thus disturbing their sleep because let’s get real: they probably have a 9 to 5 to get to at the crack of dawn and possible a spinning class-you know, if they’re lucky.
Another major factor in the evolution of romance resides in technology. With Whatsapp, Snapchat, twitter, instagram, tinder, Facebook and many more to come, technology has completely revolutionised the dating scene, whether it’s for the best is still debatable. Technology brought about a whole new level of factors to consider and obsess about. It’s as if a whole new set of rules were created: you cannot be the first person to call him after your first date-that’s desperate. If he takes thirty-three minutes to text you back, you have to take thirty-four before you respond or you look desperate. You can never seem too eager, you must play hard to get, but not too hard because then you don’t have time for him. Between you and me these new rules mostly involve not looking a certain way and calculating a lot of mathematical concepts, both of which do not appeal to me.
With the ghosts, undesirables, creeps, psychos, catfish, and countless other variations of people that would keep you up at night if you considered them long enough, sickly sweet romance that involves large gestures has definitely died out, but like a phoenix rising from it’s ashes romance still walks among us. While romantic comedies still preach it and we cannot help but tear up just a little bit when the man rushes to the woman at the end of the film to declare his undying love for her, we as a society are far more realistic about romance, call it skepticism, call it one too many truly terrible dates, but we are weary. Weary but persistent. In the Victorian era if a young woman was rejected by too many suitors, she would probably end up alone, these days we call it a bad night at the club. Romance is not dead, it is only smaller and more personal, it has changed and will continue to do so to meet the needs of society.
So I’m thinking that I may change my song of choice from ‘What is love’ to ‘Holding out for a hero’ as long as the hero in question knows that I can still save myself at the end of the day.