Love Is – Voices

Valentine’s Day has become like many other major holidays, like kind of a corporate advertising scheme. When you go to a card store or wherever you’re going to, to buy your ‘sweetie’ a card, it’s usually directed towards cisgendered-heterosexual couples, which is really frustrating because I think there’s more love that’s out there than just partner-to-partner romantic love. There’s a very stereotyped portrayal of what sexuality and what romance means in a Valentine’s Day advertisement and I believe love is so much more than just coupled lovers. You can send your friend a Valentine’s Day card or whomever, whatever gender they are. There are so many romantic loves and sexual loves to explore than what’s represented in Valentine’s Day advertisements.

Millennials are one of the most gender-diverse generations that exist and we’re also one of the most sexually-variant generations that exist as well. So, I think that in the future I hope to see so much more diversity in terms of racial diversity, gender diversity and sexual diversity represented on Valentine’s Day. Not only are Valentine’s Day ads directed toward cisgender and heterosexual people, but also to white representations of love as well. I hope to see a diversity of love on all fronts. Even with non-able-bodied love. Disabled bodies are just as worthy of love than able-bodied people. So there’s a lot of diversity of love that we should be fighting for because love is intersectional and includes a variety of different bodies and identities.