Spring Break
What has become of true love?
By: Cate Morris
Issue date: 2/16/09 Section: Opinion
Love is probably the most recognized and inappropriately exploited emotion in pop culture. Love has become its own lucrative business, from self-help how-to books to "The Bachelor." There has always been Valentine's Day, which recently sold out the candy isle and flower store, but today's culture has taken this most precious of sentiments a step further than a commercial holiday. Now, one can find love at the click of a mouse. Love has never been so in demand, or so cheap.
Love has always been a popular topic of books and songs. Shakespeare is probably most known for his love sonnets, and of course Romeo and Juliet. However, though these mediums of expressing love elevated and idealized love, most of today's mediums simply degrade it. "The Bachelor," for example, thrusts a dozen beautiful women at one rich, handsome, semi-celebrity and tells him to "find his match." What kind of message do we send when this is the way "true love" is found in our country?
Society's complacency in the protection of one of its few precious ideals has reached a disquieting crest; and though it is true that watching "The Bachelor" or subscribing to Match.com is not the end of love, it is a sad trend. Too often people forget love does not come in 11 episodes, but over a lifetime.
Real love, the kind that isn't make for garnering ratings, is not about sticking around for the money at the end of the show or remembering to buy flowers once a year. Real love is about sticking it out until the end, through the good and the bad; and buying flowers just because you want to, not because it's Feb. 14. "Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks," said Shakespeare. "But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved."
Love has always been a popular topic of books and songs. Shakespeare is probably most known for his love sonnets, and of course Romeo and Juliet. However, though these mediums of expressing love elevated and idealized love, most of today's mediums simply degrade it. "The Bachelor," for example, thrusts a dozen beautiful women at one rich, handsome, semi-celebrity and tells him to "find his match." What kind of message do we send when this is the way "true love" is found in our country?
Society's complacency in the protection of one of its few precious ideals has reached a disquieting crest; and though it is true that watching "The Bachelor" or subscribing to Match.com is not the end of love, it is a sad trend. Too often people forget love does not come in 11 episodes, but over a lifetime.
Real love, the kind that isn't make for garnering ratings, is not about sticking around for the money at the end of the show or remembering to buy flowers once a year. Real love is about sticking it out until the end, through the good and the bad; and buying flowers just because you want to, not because it's Feb. 14. "Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks," said Shakespeare. "But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved."
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