The dreaded 14th February has become a tad less dreaded for us single girls out there with the emergence of the hashtagable, girly ‘Galentine’s’ day: a day to celebrate girlhood and platonic love.
Held on 13th February, Galentine’s Day was coined in a 2010 episode of Parks and Recreation, a day of “ladies celebrating ladies.”
I’m sure many of us have had a tragic Valentine’s Day story or too, whether that was a bad date itself, or merely a night of wallowing in self-pity and singleness — we’ve all been there. Valentine’s Day feels either bitter or sweet, solely depending on your relationship status. It does feel like the most exclusive holiday reserved for those who have already been lucky enough to find a romantic Valentine. It is the very exclusivity of such a holiday which makes it prone to oversaturation on social media — if I had a pound for every bouquet of roses I see on my Instagram feed every Valentine’s, I’d be able to splurge away from Lidl for my weekly shop (clearly the uni budget is going well). The point is, Valentine’s Day does what most holidays come close to doing; either perpetuating misery or celebrating love.
Thus, a holiday like ‘Galentine’s Day’ does sort of soften the inevitable blow of those mid-February single blues. As a girl who has always prioritised female friendships over romantic relationships, Galentine’s day falls like a saving grace on the night before February 14th, allowing us all to wake up on Valentines day too hungover to realise the extent of our singleness.
One of the stigmas of Galentine’s Day as merely a childish, trashy, commercial endeavour stems from the same rhetoric which reduces any feminine joy to something meaningless or juvenile. Yve Blake addresses this idea in her discussion of the ‘fangirl,’ saying “I think there’s a deep issue when we believe if it’s loved by young women then it’s embarrassing because they are inherently embarrassing. And that’s deeply problematic.”
The role of a woman to aspire to romantic love above all else has been historically shoved down our throats, and is one that is incredibly reductive of the female heart I must say. Romcoms, romance novels, love songs, social media; the list goes on. Too often, friendships are reduced to the sidekick of the romantic leads, when in reality, much of the time, platonic love is often a much more stable and unconditional sort of love for many young people.
I spoke to two of my flatmates, both of whom have experienced both Galentine’s and Valentine’s, and each advocated for the importance of both. They noticed that, whilst couples may go on dates regularly as a celebration of their relationship, friendships are rarely celebrated in such a way. One of the girls added that a celebration like Galentine’s “promotes an expression of female friendship when there are not many other opportunities to do so.”
To those who would argue that Galentine’s is just another capitalist ploy to get people to spend money on cheap, single-use decorations, I say: isn’t that the case with any holiday? I’d like to think Valentine’s Day attracts the same amount of consumerism, if not more. I’d say dressing ourselves and the kitchen with red and pink, serving cheeky cocktails, and perhaps even a charcuterie board once a year is the least we could do to celebrate friendship, in a society which prioritises romantic love to such an extreme.
All of this to say that, of course, Galentine’s and Valentine’s are not an either/or celebration, they are on different days for a reason! Galentine’s is far from a pity party for single people, but rather can be a celebration of a different type of love which can be just as fulfilling as the cookie-cutter romantic love. After all, reducing women to merely their relationship status feels incredibly anti-feminist. By 2026, you would hope we’d be passing the Bechdel test.
So, send those invites to your girls because I know you want to celebrate.