Spring Break
Guys: Picking the 'right' card for your Valentine
Ian Grogan
Issue date: 2/13/09 Section: Diversions
So it's Friday afternoon, and you just realized Valentine's Day is tomorrow. Better rush out and get your significant other a gift. Wait, you don't know what to get? It's too late to get some roses and all the good chocolates are taken. What about a stuffed gorilla with a giant red heart on it? No, the dog will get to it and leave stuffing everywhere. The only thing left is a card. It says, "I love you," but it is also so delightfully tacky that you might get a smile, if you're lucky. Really lucky.
I decided to do a little research on my own, just to see what the stores had to offer the unoriginal person who actually thinks a card is a good way to say, "I love you, (but not enough to spend more than $1.95 … )."
I didn't dare to look at the romantic cards, because those are too sappy for me; Valentine's Day is already too lame of a holiday for me to sift through red felted cards with "touching" poems on them. If you want to say something meaningful, you need to say it and not use some card that 20 other people in the area received.
That leaves me to the humor section, which honestly made me just feel worse. Lame pictures of a naked cupid, couples hugging and sexist themes ensued. I've never noticed how sexist a Valentine's Day card could be until I took a close look at a few of them. More often than not, the cards featured (on the front) a guy sleeping on the couch in nothing but his underwear while his wife cleaned on the front, and on the inside said something like, "I love my woman who cleans the house." These cards give us men a bad name, making us look like we're lazy slobs who can only get cards that remind our significant others about how much we are taking them for granted.
Another card that caught my eye showed a stick figure stripping. I thought this was kind of odd - I mean how distasteful is a card with a stripper on it? So the card featured a female stick figure taking off several pieces of herself and throwing them at the male figure watching. On the inside it said, "Every part of Valentine's Day is fun." Could you really see giving that to your girlfriend? You'd be spending the rest of the night by yourself, for sure. I guarantee it.
I decided to do a little research on my own, just to see what the stores had to offer the unoriginal person who actually thinks a card is a good way to say, "I love you, (but not enough to spend more than $1.95 … )."
I didn't dare to look at the romantic cards, because those are too sappy for me; Valentine's Day is already too lame of a holiday for me to sift through red felted cards with "touching" poems on them. If you want to say something meaningful, you need to say it and not use some card that 20 other people in the area received.
That leaves me to the humor section, which honestly made me just feel worse. Lame pictures of a naked cupid, couples hugging and sexist themes ensued. I've never noticed how sexist a Valentine's Day card could be until I took a close look at a few of them. More often than not, the cards featured (on the front) a guy sleeping on the couch in nothing but his underwear while his wife cleaned on the front, and on the inside said something like, "I love my woman who cleans the house." These cards give us men a bad name, making us look like we're lazy slobs who can only get cards that remind our significant others about how much we are taking them for granted.
Another card that caught my eye showed a stick figure stripping. I thought this was kind of odd - I mean how distasteful is a card with a stripper on it? So the card featured a female stick figure taking off several pieces of herself and throwing them at the male figure watching. On the inside it said, "Every part of Valentine's Day is fun." Could you really see giving that to your girlfriend? You'd be spending the rest of the night by yourself, for sure. I guarantee it.
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