Valentine’s Day just around the corner, love is in the air. On February 14, most restaurants are swamped with dinner reservations, jewellers are in high demand, and candy in heart-shaped boxes seem to fly off the shelves so lovers can show that “special someone” how much they care.
But while Valentine’s Day is supposed to be about celebrating love, many of us don’t notice that the holiday’s marketing is targeted towards monogamous, heterosexual couples and therefore excludes all other forms of love.
Dr. Sheila Cavanagh, a York professor and author of the screenplay Queer Bathroom Stories, says Valentine’s Day has a Christian background, being based off the legend of St. Valentine.
St. Valentine was apprehended for performing unauthorized marriages and was eventually executed.
Although this saint presumably went against Christian beliefs of the time, the image of a heterosexual individual who pairs up with another to form a designated “couple” stuck with the holiday.
Marc Stein, a professor at York in the school of gender, sexuality and women’s studies, recalls a Valentine’s Day advertisement from many years ago in the University of Pennsylvania campus newspaper.
The ad was for a local restaurant offering a two-for-one special on Valentine’s Day. Stein says that at the bottom, the ad read, “Opposite sex couples only.”
With the help of other students and faculty members, he got the restaurant to issue an apology and reached an agreement with the student newspaper, which developed an anti-discrimination policy for advertisements and published more articles about gay and lesbian rights.
Stein’s story shows how the media plays a strong role in defining society’s limitations of Valentine’s Day.
Bridget Liang, a critical disability studies graduate student, explains how most Valentine’s Day cards tend to only depict love between a man and a woman, while excluding other forms of love.
She adds even if these cards began to portray images of love between men and men or women and women, a lot of other people would be excluded, including transgender people. But the exclusion does not stop there.
Valentine’s Day, sometimes playfully referred to as “Single’s Awareness Day,” not only excludes people of different sexualities, but also those who do not identify as “couples.”
A lot of Valentine’s advertisements seem to harbour the idea products would be a perfect gift for a “special someone” on Valentine’s Day.
Cavanagh believes Valentine’s Day should not only be targeted towards monogamous couples.
“It should also be a day when we value people who, by choice or circumstance, are not part of a recognizable ‘couple.’
Those who are single have full and exciting lives, and Valentine’s Day should also be a celebration of them, who are cultivating a multiplicity of relationships without committing to one person.”
Stein believes Valentine’s Day could be quite different if it celebrated sex, love, pleasure, and intimacy in all their forms rather than merely focusing on “normative” or opposite sex couples.
Due to one-track marketing, Valentine’s Day seems to be tailored for heterosexual couples while excluding all others.
The LGBT community and singles are left to form a lonely hearts club based on these tactics.
Behind all the roses, cinnamon hearts, and teddy bears, there are people who are not shown love on Valentine’s day… at least from the media.
Ashley Glovasky
Deputy Copy Editor
