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The media really loves to hate on love, doesn’t it?
On this last day of winter, the forecast for love in the media is looking pretty bleak. Sandra Bullock’s husband cheated on her! Lady Gaga is being sued by her ex-boyfriend! One of Tiger Woods’s porn stars is releasing his dirty sexts online! Kate Winslet is getting divorced! There’s an Oscar Love Curse!
It’s like my grandparents always say when they watch the nightly local news – why don’t they show any of the good stuff?!
Even those of us who don’t get chased by paparazzi are getting a doomsday message from the media’s romantic terrorism campaign. “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough,” a controversial book advising women to marry average guys instead of holding out for true love and passion, has gotten a ton of press and is selling pretty well. And then there’s this article in yesterday’s New York Post, which features a group of 30-something women in New York City who have either moved or are considering moving to new cities because they are so fed up with the city’s dating scene. There were no stories of happy couples who met in NYC (and I know quite a few of them!), no advice for how to maintain a work/life balance in this fast-paced environment, no suggestions for how to make the city’s dating culture work for you. Nope, just a bunch of women complaining about how screwed over they’ve been by men in this town, and the promise that if you move to Los Angeles, Denver or Seattle, you’ll snag a man in no time. Who cares if your career, friends and life are in NYC – follow the men!
(Anyone have a one-way ticket to Alaska? I hear there are 114 unmarried men for every 100 unmarried women there!)
Somewhere along the road from Shakespearian sonnets to The Bachelor, love became something that women were supposed to stress over. We’re supposed to worry that we won’t be able to find the right man, and then we’re supposed to worry that we’ll lose him. But isn’t that perspective a little out of touch for women of our generation, who are more empowered than any generation before us to create the lives that we want?
In spite of everything that the media is screaming at me, and in spite of all the confusion and ambiguity of the post-dating world, I consider myself to be a romantic optimist. As a Millennial, I expect to eventually get everything that I want out of life (naive and entitled, but true!). AndI, for one, want to find true, everlasting, overwhelming, magical love.
Like many women of my generation, I’ve spent countless Saturday mornings tearfully re-watching “The Notebook,” and I grew up on a romantic diet of “Dawson’s Creek” and “The Princess Bride.” There is still a bruise-colored spot on my bedroom wall where I passionately threw my copy of “Gone With the Wind” upon reading Rhett and Scarlett’s final argument, and I expect that when I am old and senile, my only remaining memory will be my word-for-word, reverential memorization of Dirty Dancing. I LOVE love. And I still can’t wrap my head around having to settle for a lackluster relationship or move across the country to find it.
This is one of the many reasons that I find myself so impressed by other women of my generation – because they are able to hold on to this romantic optimism, despite all the negative press coming their way. And I have to imagine that this lack of desperation will only serve us well in the end, guiding us into relationships of love, compatibility and connection, rather than convenience, expectation and fear.
Besides, Alaska is freakin’ cold! No thanks.
| Mar 19, 2010 |
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F-YEAH!
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