Monday, March 9

Tag: thing

Why Hasn’t Malentine’s Day Become A Thing? – Galentine’s Day Has
RELATIONSHIPS

Why Hasn’t Malentine’s Day Become A Thing? – Galentine’s Day Has

On Feb. 13, women will celebrate Galentine’s Day, a holiday trumpeting the joys of female friendships. The holiday can trace its origins to a 2010 episode of “Parks and Rec,” in which the main character, Leslie Knope, decides that the day before Valentine’s Day should be an opportunity to celebrate the platonic love among women, ideally with booze and breakfast food. In the years since the episode aired, the fictional holiday has caught on in the real world. But why hasn’t there been a male equivalent? If anything, it seems that men should crave such a holiday. As a sociologist who studies gender, culture and politics, I know that men are reporting that they feel increasingly isolated as they age, and that this isolation can negatively affect their physical and mental health. But it seems ...
Is It Such A Bad Thing That You Can’t Have A Hollywood Meet Cute On A Dating App
DATING

Is It Such A Bad Thing That You Can’t Have A Hollywood Meet Cute On A Dating App

The “meet cute” is the moment in which two unlikely people encounter each other while going about their ordinary lives, and something extraordinary begins. In the romantic comedy The Holiday (2006), Arthur (Eli Wallach) describes it thus to Iris (Kate Winslet): It’s how two characters meet in a movie. Say a man and a woman both need something to sleep in, and they both go to the same men’s pyjama department. And the man says to the salesman, “I just need bottoms”. The woman says, “I just need a top”. They look at each other, and that’s the meet cute. The meet cute is a magical moment of happenstance. The people involved aren’t looking for love (at least, not right then). In 1991, Roger Ebert rather prosaically described the meet cute as: a comic situation contrived entirely for the...
More Young Adults Are Living With Their Parents – Is That Necessarily A Bad Thing?
PARENTING

More Young Adults Are Living With Their Parents – Is That Necessarily A Bad Thing?

When the Pew Research Center recently reported that the proportion of 18-to-29-year-old Americans who live with their parents has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps you saw some of the breathless headlines hyping how it’s higher than at any time since the Great Depression. From my perspective, the real story here is less alarming than you might think. And it’s actually quite a bit more interesting than the sound bite summary. For 30 years I’ve been studying 18-to-29-year-olds, an age group I call “emerging adults” to describe their in-between status as no longer adolescents, but not fully adult. Even 30 years ago, adulthood – typically marked by a stable job, a long-term partnership and financial independence – was coming later than it had in the past. Yes, a lot of emergi...