I never bought into the chick flick craze when I was a kid. While other girls were swooning over "Sleepless in Seattle" I was watching Charles Bronson in "Telefon" or memorizing every line John Wayne said in "The Shootist" and I just didn't have time for flouncy romantic movies. My mom did. She was into the classics, like "Casablanca" and "From Here to Eternity" but I always wanted explosions and action and chase scenes and cars and gore. I remember my first failed attempts to watch flouncy romantic movies. I retched my way through "Message in a Bottle" and asked questions like "Why in the hell is it noteworthy that they had sex? They knew each other for one day, had sex, then he went off and drowned and the music is telling me this should be memorable and moving but I just don't get it. This movie sucks." My friends rolled my eyes at me and told me I didn't understand "the nature of love." Apparently the nature of love is emotional manipulation, because it's all over these chick flicks and I still don't get it.

3.Since our soulmate is the only person for us in this life and the next, our lives will be ruined and worthless and any attempt we have to be happy with anyone else will fail miserably. This excuses any bad behavior we practice in our quest to be with our soulmate.

I might sound unbelievably cynical here, or maybe my friends are right and I just don't get it, but while I find these tacky tawdry romantic flights of fantasy vastly entertaining now, I certainly don't cotton to their vision of love. First of all, I don't necessarily buy that there's only one person in all the world that I am supposed to be with forever. There are too many people in the world, and I think saying "OMG, there's ONE PERSON FOR ME AND ONE ON LY AND I MUST FIND THAT PERSON" is often a cop out for people to escape from relationships when love becomes hard work. "Hey, this must not be my soulmate, NEXT." I think there are potentially people with whom I could have a successful relationship, and I don't intend to use "ZOMG NOT MY SOULMATE" as my excuse to get out of putting any work into a relationship. I know a lot of people who are in happy relationships and I know they say they've found "the one" and I'm not knocking that, I just don't like the way romantic movies in general and romantic comedies in particular posit that our entire lives are wasted if we don't find the RIGHT ONE IN ALL THE WORLD. I'm not totally buying it. Furthermore, even if there is only one really right person in the world for me, I do NOT think that excuses the excesses people in these movies allow in their pursuit of "the one and only." These movies are full of the broken hearts and relationships of people left in the wake of the fevered search for "the one." Hey, if you find "the one" it doesn't matter if you or that person are married, dump your spouses
(after cheating for awhile just to make sure the new person is "the one") and find your happiness. To be quite blunt, it makes me want to vomit sometimes.

That's right, she's a horny nympho slut from hell, and when he won't put out she stalks him on the Internet, learns from his friends that he's going to be celibate for awhile, and blows up at him about that and once again he must grovel and apologize to her for doing nothing. Then, in the best move of the entire film, at the...um...climax, he's so overcome with lust because he can't even masturbate that he handcuffs himself to a bed, and his psycho bitch ex-girlfriend breaks into his house while he's asleep handcuffed to the bed, rapes him while he's asleep, and then his new schizophrenic true love walks in and catches him being raped, stomps off, and AGAIN he must grovel to get her to forgive him, and his begging here is especially stomach-turning. You show me a movie that has the BALLS to show a woman handcuffed to a bed being raped and then having to apologize for it later and I'll eat my words, but that scene just makes me want to cry.

It's bullshit, The entire film is a man-hating piece of shit right from the beginning. It insinuates that everything men do is selfish and they must apologize every time a woman gets mad at them even if they do nothing wrong, it insinuates that men are always asking for sex so even if a man is asleep handcuffed to a bed it's ok for a woman to have sex with him and he must apologize for his bodily reactions later because hey, he wanted it. I am incensed at this movie and what it says about our culture. Yes, it's an extreme example, but almost every romantic comedy you can find portrays men as buffoons with no heart or soul at all who must cater to women hand and foot and no matter how bitchy and screamy women are, women are always right and men are always wrong. Fuck that bullshit, I'm over it. I spend time with women every day of my life, we are just as selfish and manipulative and just as capable of being wrong in relationships, and movies need to show that to ring true to me. They need to be multifaceted and show love for what it really is and people for who they really are.

Fuck that bullshit! I REFUSE to buy into the stereotypes. I have my shallow moments but I care about way more than just material things, and I know damn well that I have just as much opportunity to be wrong as any guy, and I hate hearing women bitch about men like they "don't get us" when we don't take the time to try and get them, either. Who wants to fight to find a soulmate only to be in a relationship where you're always wrong? Guys, don't take the bullshit anymore! You're worth more than that! Women, get out of the salon and out of the boutique and open your eyes! You're more than a catty, shallow bitch, don't live up to that stereotype! Jesus Christ. I admit, movies are getting a little better these days. Movies like "Knocked Up" are doing much better at showing how real relationships work (though the women in that movie are a tad too prissy for my taste and I totally relate more to the guys, I still appreciate it as a truer portrayal than most romantic movies show).

We have come a long way, baby, but we still have a long way to go. There are real portrayals of love on film available out there. Seek them out. During the month of February, turn off the television and buy "Love, Actually" and watch that instead. Don't buy jewelry for valentines day, spend your money on some sex toys and have some real fun, or buy some matches and burn a copy of "40 Days and 40 Nights" in celebration of real love. Strive to be in love and be real and not worry about what our society says or shows in film, because that's not real love. Love is everything wild and passionate and personal, not fake and plastic and presentable, and "real love" isn't like what you find in a lot of movies. Hollywood love smells like sewage, and I don't want it, and neither should you.