“Maybe the whole love thing is just a grown up version of Santa Claus. It’s the myth we’ve been fed since childhood. So we keep buying magazines, and joining clubs, and doing therapy, and watching movies with hip hop songs played over love montages… all in this pathetic attempt to explain why our Love Santa keeps getting caught in the chimney.” (Kate and Leopold, 2001)

I couldn’t let myself believe that Carrie and Big wouldn’t end up together at the end of the 6th season or even the movie. I can’t tell myself that there wasn’t something going on deep down between Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak, regardless of her profession. And even when I saw Youth in Revolt this weekend I couldn’t let myself get up to pee just because I knew that eventually Sheeni would end up passionately taking Nick’s virginity, allowing him to “tickle her belly button from the inside,” sometime within the last 30 minutes of the film. I could, for lack of a better phrase, be known as a love junkie, a sucker for romance and an old fashioned girl who believes that a fairy tale ending is out there for anyone as long as they embrace it. Although this may be naive, especially considering the amount of times I’ve been burned myself, I guess I’ll just have to live with that old saying: fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me three times… I guess I really just have to blindly believe that true love exists out there somewhere.

I recognize that all over the world there are those who never find love, who fall out of love or who actually despise even the thought of “love” and want to set fire to every department store greeting card aisle between Christmas and February 14th, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what the deal is with films, television shows and advertisements that touch on what “modern romance” involves… and it’s disheartening. I’ve been told, not only by past boyfriends but also just friends in general, that life is not a piece of cake but rather it truly is a box of chocolates. You never know what you’ll get so assuming that you’re going to always come out the other side of a relationship squeaky clean and happy is unrealistic. Not everyone can end up like Hepburn and Bogart in The African Queen, or Ariel and the prince in The Little Mermaid. Unfortunately we’re forced to “grow up” sometime around puberty, leap into the real world and believe that Disney movies are a fairy tale, and a fairy tale alone. But it seems like these days the images of relationships that the media is portraying goes beyond trying to be realistic and focuses on what’s really going to sell with the kids: broken, unhealthy relationships between teenagers and pop stars that involve drugs, promiscuous sex and creepy-stalker-vampire boyfriends that watch you sleep at night and toy with your emotions like no other. This week in class we talked about the lack of political charge there was lighting the fire for activism in popular music. I tend to disagree with this coming from a circle that has always been somewhat out of the loop with preference but up-to-date on what’s going on in the media (mainly lacking any sort of interest in what the mainstream’s got going down.) But tonight I feel like after doing some research on what seems to be the most popular these days in movies, television and music there’s another field that’s disappointing me with regards to it’s amount of coverage: positive, healthy relationships on the big screen and in print.

Granted, I will admit that high school and college relationships involve all of the aforementioned sex, drugs and promiscuity (minus the vampires) and to quite an exaggerated degree depending on what school you attended. We as a generation have gotten our taste of the wild side in the media with homage paid to Sid and Nancy, Kurt and Courtney and Whitney and Bobby but it’s hard for me to let all of that settle in my gut as the only thing that we should be preaching to the kids. It seems to me like our generation has started to feed off of who is going to tap Miley after her and whatever Jonas brother break up… Or which buffed up, blown out, oiled down guido Snookie is going to engage in coitus with when she gets home from the cleeb Saturday night (the more I read and think about this the more I am put off by MTVs choice in shows that they’ve taken on.) It frightens me that what our mothers and fathers grew up with was Casablanca, Romeo and Juliet (although we did get Claire Danes and DiCaprio), My Fair Lady and Dirty Dancing when we’re getting Gigli, The Real World and Britney versus K. Fed. Yeah, they got Midnight Cowboy, Repulsion and Boogie Nights but creations like that have made their way out of the underground for our generation and made it straight into the mainstream as tabloids plaster information irrelevant to all of our lives (I don’t care how you try to put a spin on how Brad and Angelina’s marital problems relate to your life) and we’re forced to walk the streets of big cities with billboards advertising The Bachelor and Tila Tequila’s search for yet another lover. Love ballads in the mainstream these days don’t go far beyond the likes of the Tip Drill video (although I’m sure sliding a credit card between a woman’s buttcheeks is how Nelly tells all of the girls he loves them) and Lil Wayne’s proclamation to fight for his girl “on the battle field of love.” As much as it may pain me to say this, I applaud you Taylor Swift. Embrace the crazy and youthful love that is a boy from the football team smiling at you from across the cafeteria. Yeah there are better things out there than some steroid shooting 17 year old helmet haired dude but you’ve got to experience those pesky butterflies at some point before we start telling ourselves that being jaded about love, fantasy and romance is okay before even leaving the womb.

I understand the appeal. Hair pulling, nail biting break ups and break downs all accompanied more often than not by big boobs, sculpted pecs and the opportunity to feel like you can focus on someone else’s failing relationship instead of your own. I myself cannot deny that I watched my fair share of Sex and the City while wallowing in bed post-breakup. Cynical women, with failed attempts at love and hilarious stories to boot? Yes please mister, and pass the cookie dough while you’re at it. And I could also be seen raising my hand when people inquire, “Who can tell me what this whole ‘Flavor of Love’ show is all about?” This week on People Magazine’s website it’s apparent that the most read story of the week informed us all that we can exhale because Brad and Angelina are NOT splitting up! Is this really it? Is this really the first thing that people want to read when they stop at a newsstand to buy some entertainment, because I understand that “reality” is boring. We live it everyday. Another suburban couple working 9:00 – 5:00 and hustling kids around town to soccer games and bake sales isn’t what you want to sit down to at the end of a long day when you live that life. But there truly is so much more to life. You’d never be able to guess it though after looking at the the prime time slots for weekly television: Where is the love?
ABC: Desperate Housewives, The Bachelor, Modern Family
Bravo: Millionaire Matchmaker
CW: Gossip Girl
MTV: Teen Mom
Oxygen: Bad Girls Club

I just wish that there was a little more hope these days. I never expected for Duckie and Sam to end up together. I simply ask for a bit more optimism in the media. Maybe just movement away from the obsession with failure, heartbreak and twisted romance and the opportunity for my kids to not have to look back and say “No wonder 99% of my friend’s parents got divorced… they learned it from these pill-poppin’, hoochie skirt-wearin’, husband-hatin’ wives of Orange County!”

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