I Hate Alternative Valentine's Day

I agree, Valentine's Day is the worst. And I'm sure I don't need to explain to you why it's the worst. Know what's even more the worst, though? The idea of some smug asshole with a Bettie Page tattoo attempting to subvert the idea to make a quick buck (or the zany PRs who keep emailing us trying to facilitate that).

If you're a cunt, here are some Valentine's Day ideas which are way, way worse than anything you can buy at Clinton's Cards.

WHY NOT SEND AN ALTERNATIVE VALENTINE'S CARD?

Maybe if you could write an intelligible letter you wouldn't feel so alone

For just £2.70 (+P&P), you can drop a hardcore truth bomb, and let your loved one know just how disgusted you are with the manipulative and superficial celebration of consumerism that is Valentine's Day. (Yes, I know their card says "consumist", but that isn't actually a word. So I'm working under the assumption that they mean "consumerist".) Available from zazzle.co.uk.

WHY NOT LISTEN TO SOME TERRIBLE COVERS OF ALREADY TERRIBLE SONGS?

[All sic and gic]: "Flowers die. Candy makes you fat. This year save some money by saying no the greeting card companies conspiracy. If youre one of the millions of people who dont have a date for the 14th, Vitamin Records has your back! This compilation features fourteen hardcore, string quartet tributes to some of emos most legendary artists. Love blows! This doesnt!"

Says the product description for a baffling compilation CD called Valentine's Day Massacre: The Emo Anti-Valentine's Day Collection. Which is 12 string quartet covers of emo songs. I'm not 100 percent sure what emo music or string quartet covers have to do with Valentine's Day, but neither do I understand how those two things combined somehow represent the opposite of it.

Also: In all the time it took to devise, create, release, and market this thing, did not one person think to say: "wait, this doesn't actually make any fucking sense"?

WHY NOT GO TO A BURLESQUE NIGHT?

I haven't actually googled it to see if there are any Valentine's burlesque nights happening in your area. Because I don't need to. Of course there will be.

They're just like regular Valentine's nights, except the women spend 50 hours longer getting ready, people are way more pleased with themselves, the men have to pretend that they're attracted to women who "like to leave a little bit to the imagination" and the loneliness that hangs in the air is almost overwhelming.

For more information on burlesque nights, visit timeout.com (probably).

WHY NOT TAKE PART IN A FLASH MOB?

Photo via

Hopefully you're reading this before 6.30PM, because if you are, you might still have time to make it to Trafalgar Square to take part in the "acts of kindness" flash mob that's happening there.

On the off-chance the event lives up to its name, I guess we should probably say our goodbyes now.

WHY NOT STICK A MEANINGLESS BUZZWORD IN FRONT OF IT?

Oh man, I can't believe she said it!

It's 2012. Nothing's culturally significant unless somebody, somewhere has stuck an #occupy hashtag in front of it and tried to get it trending on Twitter.

So it's with great pleasure that I introduce you to the Occupy Valentine's Day "movement". I'm not entirely sure what anybody involved with it is talking about, but this is what the "about" section on the Occupy Valentine's Tumblr has to say:

"Celebrating love and romance is a wonderful thing, but it shouldn’t depend on buying certain products for the perfect experience (hello, romantic industrial complex) or on your gender, sexuality, race, class status or marital status. "

Eugh. OK, sure: Valentine's Day is heteronormative and a bunch of other kinds of normative that I don't know the word for. And that needs to change, not because I feel excluded by the pictures of the totally cisgendered and insurrectionary male/ female mouse couple on the card my husband got for me, but because if it doesn't, then art like the piece above ("my latest drawing is about marriage, monogamy, sexual 'purity' and the myth of romantic love") is going to continue to happen. And that is totally unacceptable.