Rambling Rhodes

Gifted At Romance

So, I was flipping through the cable stations last night, and I came to a startling conclusion. Namely, Hollywood makes it really tough on us guys when it comes to buying gifts for the other gender.

Now, I've gone off, at length, about the problems I have with movies and television when it comes to romance and how they prop up this belief that everyone can fall in love in a few days and then get married within a week and then roll the credits, leaving the audience thinking that everything worked out happily ever after.

What they don't show, of course, is when the girl walks in on the guy in the bathroom, vigorously pounding his pud to the latest issue of Maxim, or when the guy happens to discover that the girl picks her nose and eats her boogers, or the secret horde of human ears she keeps under the bed.

In other words, Hollywood never shows all the stuff you just learn over time that colors your opinion of a significant other and you decide whether their many human idiosyncracies still don't decrease your love for them. This goes a long way, I think, in explaining why celebrity marriages last about as long as a popsicle on a hot day.

Like I've said, it takes a few years, two at least, before you even have an inkling of what the hell is truly going on. So, if you're engaged after a year? Good fucking luck. See you in divorce court, folks.

Anyway.

My gripe today is centered more on how Hollywood sets the bar too high for men when it comes to gift buying. Because, I'm here to tell you, the movies just aren't fair in this regard.

Now, I should point out here that I'm a crappy gift buyer to begin with. I can do the flower thing, and I can do the wine thing, and I can do the dinner thing. Those basically represent my strengths.

Yet, according to the movies, my strengths are pretty minor league stuff. In the course of my channel surfing last night, I saw men buying women expensive necklaces, gaudy bracelets, ornate dresses, cars, exotic pets and on and on and on.

Now, I would normally have no problem with such fictional gift-giving. They're just movies after all, right? Well, the problem is that, gradually, such egregious displays of gift-giving start to work their way into the female subconscious. Such gifts start to be considered rational and a true expression of love and devotion. An expensive necklace means you really love a person.

I imagine it didn't use to be this way. I imagine that, back in the days of our cave-dwelling ancestors, gift giving was probably a far more pragmatic exercise.

Og, the village elder would, perhaps, kill a deer, drag it back to the village, and present it to Oglette in an attempt to win her favor. Oglette, in turn, would skin the deer and make a nice jacket out of the hide and present it to Og in an act of acceptance of Og's affections. I miss the days of Og and Oglette because they knew what really mattered.

If Hollywood movie writers had any common sense, or felt any obligation to make the human dating and mating process just a bit easier, they'd stop setting such impossible romantic expectations. They'd sit back and think, "you know, building a love boat out of trees planted as a child sure is a gigantic romantic gesture, but do I really want to contribute such craziness to an already horribly difficult and unrealistic dating realm?"

Instead, I think writers should step back and start lowering the bar a little. I think it would refreshing if Hollywood started showing the reality that even simple gifts, like wine, flowers and dinner, actually cost a whole shit of a lot, especially over time.

Instead of showing a guy dramatically unveiling an expensive music box that's about as useful as an ingrown toenail, it would be nice to show a guy giving a girl something a bit more pragmatic, like maybe a tee-shirt or possibly a Britta water filter, and then flashing over to the girl, who is beeming with gratitude.

Eventually, if movie writers play their cards right, within a decade women the world over will think that getting a bar of soap and some toothpaste represents a wonderful display of affection and love from their significant other. Hopefully, we'll get back to a time when dinner, wine, a movie and flowers represent the high end of gift-giving and people will really start to recognize how valuable and thoughtful such acts are.

And with a little more time, we'll get back to the deer-killing aspect of dating, which would be sweet.

Posted by Ryan at July 21, 2004 12:41 PM