What a great marketing concept -- and peer pressure: making people feel like dopes if they don't "celebrate" that one day in the calendar. "Sure, there are some gooey guys out there," writes Amy Alkon, "but I think most guys or a whole lot of guys celebrate Valentine's Day simply because they know they'll get their asses kicked if they don't."
TJ Sullivan chips in, complaining about "The fakery of a day that pretends to be about all that's good, yet leaves so many people feeling bad." Buying into the Valentine circus is meaningless; caring for our special ones should be an everyday habit. The Dude doesn't need an official date or even a reason to bring flowers, and to be a loving John Wayne day after day, caring gesture after caring gesture. As Nancy Gibbs writes in TIME, "Valentine's Day only pretends to celebrate what we like about love while actually undermining it. True romance comes unscheduled, unruly." photos LA Frog
