As a shape, the world is round, allegedly. And to make it go round, it is money that it needs. This is what I have heard all my life, money makes the world go round they say. A joke, beloved.
I find the world obsessed with something else: love. Hollywood hasn't exactly helped in this mess, with all those romantic comedies and dramas. It has framed the idea of what we know and believe to be romantic love. We've fashioned our expectations and beliefs around what should happen in a relationship and how we should receive love.
Be it flowers delivered at the office, boxes of chocolates or a romantic marriage proposal at the Eiffel Tower, Hollywood has given it all to us and we have lapped up generous servings of it.
I roll my eyes now at cute videos of such displays because I am older and I have been in enough relationships to identify a scam when I see one. But maybe I shouldn't have been dating village boys if Hollywood romance is what I was after. It doesn't matter now because the dream is gone anyway.
And I am happy for anyone who still believes in the idea of love and relationships as one neat idea delivered in uniform packaging.
The thing that has me mad about Hollywood love is in how it has framed women as passive beneficiaries of love and men as empowered benefactors. It's in how women must feel love but be "proper" and wait for men to say it first but also in how the marriage proposal is something women must audition for.
Marriage and romance serve men, they have always done so and continue to do so.
Women across the world continue to not only be servants but emotional labourers as well.
Hollywood love does women mammoth disservice
As a shape, the world is round, allegedly. And to make it go round, it is money that it needs. This is what I have heard all my life, money makes the world go round they say. A joke, beloved.
I find the world obsessed with something else: love. Hollywood hasn't exactly helped in this mess, with all those romantic comedies and dramas. It has framed the idea of what we know and believe to be romantic love. We've fashioned our expectations and beliefs around what should happen in a relationship and how we should receive love.
Be it flowers delivered at the office, boxes of chocolates or a romantic marriage proposal at the Eiffel Tower, Hollywood has given it all to us and we have lapped up generous servings of it.
I roll my eyes now at cute videos of such displays because I am older and I have been in enough relationships to identify a scam when I see one. But maybe I shouldn't have been dating village boys if Hollywood romance is what I was after. It doesn't matter now because the dream is gone anyway.
And I am happy for anyone who still believes in the idea of love and relationships as one neat idea delivered in uniform packaging.
The thing that has me mad about Hollywood love is in how it has framed women as passive beneficiaries of love and men as empowered benefactors. It's in how women must feel love but be "proper" and wait for men to say it first but also in how the marriage proposal is something women must audition for.
Marriage and romance serve men, they have always done so and continue to do so.
Women across the world continue to not only be servants but emotional labourers as well.
Men enjoy the privileges of having homes when they don't know how a home runs, yet ironically they are the heads of said homes. We have nursed such a bad culture where most men wouldn't know where to find a broom in the house if they were to be left alone for a week.
Men put up pictures of their "pride and joys" on social media when they don't even know what food their children are allergic to or what take-aways they prefer.
Men enjoy sex, sometimes on demand, even though they don't know what a clitoris looks like.
They get to boast about their conquests even when they have never seen a woman climax. The world serves men, as does romantic love and marriage.
Isn't it time we flipped the tables though? Why does the weak element in the relationship get to decide how the relationship unfolds? Why have we left such important decisions in the hands of people with questionable emotional intelligence?
Ideally, women should be the leads in love. Women should be the ones that propose. A woman should be able to say to themselves, okay I am ready to nurse an ego on the daily while also feeding its owner.
But mostly women need to be empowered to believe in an alternative kind of love, one that says I am happy to love you on my terms. A love that is negotiated as opposed to bestowed.