Can’t buy me love

What is love? Scientists explain it in terms of the body’s release of adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin; cynics refute its existence by citing ancient philosophy. The Greeks had six words to describe it, whereas Merriam Webster offers a simple definition. More recently, a Hallmark card asserted that love is when you find “the sprinkled donut in a sea of glazed.”

Whatever it may be, the complexity of “love” opens the arena for many interpretations and ways of expression. It is an intangible feeling that we seek to materialize through tangible exchanges, much like how our desire to consume is expressed via the transaction of paper money. 

Therefore, “punny” cards depicting talking donuts, a cherub with a quiver of arrows and centuries of heart-shaped anything are the expected form of currency when transacting love come Feb. 14 — a currency made of paper, measured in chocolate and scented like a rose.  

♥♥♥

It has been over a millennium since Feb. 14 was formally recognized for a martyred Catholic priest and an estimated 545 years since the earliest surviving valentine was sent to its lovestruck recipient.

Love — whatever it means — has been expressed since the dawn of time, with paper love notes serving as a common source. Love is a feeling, a drive; a motivator, a risk. Love is everything that you can feel yet everything you can’t touch. Hence, there is one designated day each year that gives us the chance to materialize said feeling, where valentines attempt to express their “eros” using Cupid as their guide. Under his direction, the currency of love has maintained its medium of paper, creased with a crisp centerfold, patterned with a red filigree design and sealed with a kiss. 

Valentine’s Day became popular in the U.S. during the 1840s, when increased paper production and the proliferation of the printing press allowed for pre-printed notes featuring iconic love birds, bright red hearts and our favorite “god of love.” Specifically, Esther Howland is accredited with making Valentine’s Day a business after transforming her stationary art into a monopolistic essential for American lovers. Put simply: Love went commercial. 

Howland sold many of her creations for the high price of 75 cents (the equivalent of $100 today), embossing each note with her signature “H.” Howland’s work was an artistic, tangible symbol of love and an early example of the importance of branding in shaping social and cultural trends. 

Early cards often featured short greetings and poems that juxtaposed playful flirtation with biting humor. Luxury cards, like Howland’s, featured wafered paper pressed to mimic lace, overlaid with precious gold foil and colored paper cutouts. They were intricate pieces of art, art that required much creative thought and intention — and all of an average American’s daily salary.

For the superfluous valentine, though, handmade cards highlighted the sentimentality of the sender, saving pennies while creating a spark. To some, a man who can write his own poem was more wooing than one who can simply open his wallet.  

To explore the historic commodification of love and its place in popular culture, I spoke with Dr. Elizabeth White Nelson, University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor and cultural historian of 19th century America. Her research supports that romantic relationships of the 19th century were characterized by a focus on economics — valentines serving as a “broker.” The trading of cards was a testament of wealth and devotion, recording fraught issues of love and marriage on paper. 

And while the circulation of cards may have been born out of pure, heart-beating intentions by entrepreneurs like Howland, they soon became a symbol of status. After all, middle-class women of the 19th and 20th centuries had to consider the relationship between romantic love and the economic reality; the alternative of marriage being work in factories or mills. The holiday was a way to test the viability of said reality, using heart-shaped materialism as a measurement of future stability. The currency of love was a currency for survival, a notion that may have stuck. 

Now, Valentine’s Day marks the main day of the year in which singles and couples alike subject themselves to both cupid’s arrow and the card aisle, using materialism to mimic stability in both a financial and emotional lens. One hundred and forty-five million cards travel from hand to hand every year and a mere $21.8 billion dollars is projected to be spent on gifts this Feb. 14. Red roses are the staple flower in every bouquet order, heart-shaped boxes of chocolate are an ancient aphrodisiac that can’t stay on the shelves — each gift accompanied with a love note. 

Talking avocados, cartoon cats and sexual innuendos make up many card designs nowadays, supplementing long-held romantic motifs with evolving visual fads. Yet to Dr. White Nelson, while the material symbols of love may have lost some sophistication, “we are still struggling with love in the same way.” 

The evolution of card exchange is an ever-changing quest for materializing love, a never-ending haste to commodify a feeling. Hence, shifts in romantic, socio-cultural trends caused by reduced disposable income levels and the deconstruction of heteronormativity reveal that the true underpinnings of Valentine’s Day and the act of giving cards may have never been about love in the first place. Instead, it is about defining comfort within a relationship through an element of tangible risk; a risk of love and a relationship hidden behind the front of a mischievous cupid or talking donut. A risk not needed solely between a man and a woman or under a sizeable budget. 

This risk is partly what inspired Dr. White Nelson’s research: “you’ll find someone who has a charming and lovely valentine story, but most Valentine’s stories are of heartbreak and fear and concern and disdain for the holiday as insincere.” This is likely because “we feel both drawn to the idea that goods can speak for us and uncomfortable with the idea that we don’t control them.” 

Cards can therefore be viewed as an invitation to romantic love, an invitation that has the opportunity to be declined or embraced. While cards may not in essence be an all-encompassing embodiment of love, they are in fact a currency of it. A currency that is difficult to standardize — something that has been grappled with for centuries. 

♥♥♥

Ann Arbor, at one point rated one of the country’s most romantic cities, has hosted countless card exchanges and budding relationships, spreading love throughout campus and within the lecture halls.  

Archived within the Bentley Historical Library are scrapbooks featuring students’ paper love, dating from the early 1900s onward. Many feature rosy-cheeked cupid, others: cartoon silverware.