This Valentine’s Day, Don’t ‘Dump Him’

There is a whole genre of media and marketing dedicated to hating on Valentine’s Day.

To some, the holiday is too corporate, too cliché, too pastel pink. To others, it’s way too focused on love, a subject that has simply become passé. Forget the dozen red roses, the cheap chocolates, and the polyester teddy bears. The primary object of today’s Valentine’s Day angst is no longer how the celebration of love has been consumed by corporations. It’s that a day to commemorate romance exists at all. 

Take Target’s viral man-hating sweater. For $30, you can go out today to purchase a crewneck in the cutesy pink and red hues of Valentine’s Day with a message sure to pour cold water on any romantic overtures: “Dump Him.” If that isn’t your style, you can always snag “Emotionally Unavailable.”

When paparazzi caught Britney Spears wearing a “Dump Him” t-shirt in 2002, she and Justin Timberlake had just broken up. Considering that she later claimed his disinterest in being a father led to her choice to have an abortion, she may have had good reason to be bitter. But today, the directive to “dump him” feels less like a tongue-in-cheek callback to the era of “girl power” feminism and more like a gender wars-inspired imperative. It was just a few months ago, after all, that “Vogue” ran an article with the headline, “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?”

Imagine the pandemonium if the genders were swapped. If the Target men’s section were marketing a “Dump Her” sweater, yet another boycott would be taking place. Women’s magazines would throw a fit. And Andrew Tate would buy up the whole stock. 

It may seem like Target is engaging in a nefarious plot to thwart women’s dating chances and keep them single. But Target, like other organizations, is just responding to the market. As the “Vogue” contributor says, “Even partnered women will lament men and heterosexuality — partly in solidarity with other women, but also because it is now fundamentally uncool to be a boyfriend-girl.”

Skepticism about men and relationships is everywhere. Zoos and animal shelters have lately made it a habit of soliciting donations around Valentine’s Day by offering to name cockroaches or neutered cats after ex-lovers. The internet seems to take it as a truism that “men are trash.” Disney princesses now find themselves, not romantic partners. One of pop star Sabrina Carpenter’s top songs is “Manchild,” a song about, well, you can guess. “If I’m not there it won’t get done,” she sings in one line. “I choose to blame your mom.”

The message is: as a woman, being happy with a man is something for which you probably ought to apologize. “This sweater is cute, idk why you guys are hating on it,” says one online review of the “Dump Him” jumper. “I’m in a happy relationship with my boyfriend of 3+ years & find it adorable!! If it resonates, it resonates, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t, so be it.”

For perspective, I texted a photo of the sweater to my grandmother, who has been married for over 70 years. “Don’t like it!” she said. “I wouldn’t wear it! Or buy it!”

Fans of the sweater say they see it as a reference to men who are toxic or abusive, but there are no such caveats in the cotton. It reads as public, performative disdain, the kind that other women are meant to giggle at and men are meant to applaud in order to prove themselves. 

St. Valentine, who is said to have sacrificed his life in the third century to marry couples when the emperor wanted men to stay single to focus on war, might not be too pleased to hear about this.

All this anti-love messaging is coming at a time when Gen Z seems to have little interest in dating, anyway. Pew Research Center reported in 2023 that “roughly six-in-ten young men report being single.” So there likely isn’t even a “him” to dump.

With marriage and romance losing their cultural clout, gender relations were already unraveling when Target decided to profit off the chaos. What we need is a return to mutual respect — and maybe a little Valentine’s Day cheesiness — to stitch them back together.