Introducing our new column on love

Love loves to love love and so do I. Welcome to Modern Love, the Skinny’s new column that will explore what love looks and feels like today. Each month, a new writer will offer their interpretation of what modern love means to them because if love can be defined as anything it’s as an interpretation. 

As The Troggs told the world in 1967, love is all around us. It’s online and offline, digital and analogue, in our politics, pop songs and Facebook likes. It’s experienced in glances, across sticky club floors, through the monotonous endless scrolling of Instagram, in beds and on buses. 

Love in 2018 is a multi-faceted beast. While patriarchal, heteronormative capitalism has perpetuated that the only kind of love that’s valid looks like a wedding card cartoon or a nuclear family, love can mean anything. It is romantic, obsessive and platonic, experienced between parents and children, new friends and old friends, and by yourself. I’ve had love affairs with bowls of ramen on a winter’s night, or an art gallery’s installation, or a film that in that moment has burned brighter than any past romantic relationship. 

Love is a lot of things, but most of all it’s lonely and isolating and pretty fucking weird. It’s hard to talk about or put into words. This column will create snapshots of modern love, from a mother’s love to a fan’s love to an ex’s love. Gird your loins for writing that is personal, inward-facing, outward-looking, subjective, empathetic, sad, sentimental, intimate, and over-bearing just like love. 

As a society, we’re currently experiencing an ironic dissonance with love. Whether it’s the 24-hour news cycle or a disassociation with our politicians or the internet warping our perceptions of ourselves, the last few years have hardened us against vulnerability and empathy. This column will take a sledgehammer to that wall. We can’t wait.