In our current dating climate, Valentine’s Day means finding a romantic partner, or spending the holiday alone. But there’s a third option, commonly known as Galentine’s Day. Galentine’s Day first appeared in 2010 in Parks and Recreation, when Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler, attested ‘uteruses before duderuses’. As Galentine’s has featured more and more in pop culture in recent years, this description remains pretty accurate. Today, Galentine’s is almost equally as popular as Valentine’s Day, and just as profitable.
There’s an argument to be made that Galentine’s is simply a consumerist off-shoot of Valentine’s Day, another opportunity for supermarkets to sell tacky mugs emblazoned with ‘BESTIE’ and absolutely everything heart-shaped (all plastic, of course). But consumerism aside, Galentine’s allows a space for women to decentre men and to feel confident in their singleness. And who says you can’t do Galentine’s sustainably?
Despite the diversity of today’s Galentine’s celebrators, the holiday began as an occasion aimed at single heterosexual women, as Parks and Recreation characters ditched the ‘duderuses’. A way to decentre men, to live without believing that the ultimate goal, the one trophy worth more than anything else, is to find a relationship. For queer women, Galentine’s presents a deviation from heteronormativity. It provides a reprieve from a holiday which remains focused on heterosexual love. In a society in which attaining male approval is everything, any small or seemingly insignificant refusal to conform is a triumph.
The oldest of Gen Z are now twenty-nine and thus about to enter their thirties, a period in which the pressure to get married and procreate becomes an ever-present shackle. This pressure often leads to women settling down with men they shouldn’t: men who lack the bare minimum, who fail to create an equal partnership. Life is long, but it’ll only feel longer if you treat dating as a game of musical chairs.
When I speak to my single friends about Valentine’s Day, they cast a look of horror: the thought of trying to find a Valentine’s date being repulsive, the thought of absorbing all of the holiday’s lovey-dovey ickiness being equally repulsive. For so many (56% of Gen Z in fact) Valentine’s Day does not include them. Even for that coupled 44%, the week before Valentine’s is the period you’re most likely to be dumped. Polls also show that online dating is proving to be more hopeless than ever, with Tinder losing 600,000 users since 2023. Either way, a Valentine’s date is not necessarily the easiest, or most enjoyable, path to walk.
I don’t think I truly understood the sheer popularity of Galentine’s Day until this year, despite celebrating it many times myself. As I worked my last hour of a retail shift on Valentine’s evening, I packed an Uber Eats order consisting of a bouquet of pink roses and a box of Thorntons chocolates. On the order was a small note reading ‘Valentine’s Day gift for my mum. Ring 2/2’. It was at that moment that I considered all of the reasons why Valentine’s Day isn’t always romantic, from aromantic to single people, recently heartbroken individuals, widows and widowers. I found I was just as moved by a woman’s Valentine’s delivery to her mother, if not more, than I was by all of the men buying last minute cards from the very start of my shift to the end.
The world was supposedly built for two, but it was never specified which two that is. Whether it’s your mum, your next door neighbour, your sister, or your best friend, stop ignoring the love right in front of you. I remain an advocate for singleness. An advocate for abstaining from anything short of amazing, to be honest.
This all leaves one question: ditch the dates next year (and probably the plastic balloons too), and be my Galentine?
Sources:
A-little-history-of-galentines-day
Why-gen-z-is-saying-no-to-romance-and-what-it-means-for-us-all
red-tuesday-likely-to-be-dumped
Gen-z-breaking-up-with-dating-apps-ofcom
Author: Grace Hussey (she/her)
qmunicatemagazine.co.uk 