Butterflies in your stomach, unable to eat a thing, constantly daydreaming and checking your phone every five minutes to see if you’ve received a new message: falling in love is magical.
Falling for you
Being in love, verliefd, is something you ‘become’ in Dutch. In English, you fall in love. As if it were something you have no control over, something you tumble into. Which brings us to a pressing question: is falling in love a surprise, something that catches you unawares? Or is it something you can make happen by looking for it?
This is the one
Finding a partner used to be something that could be arranged for you, certainly among the social elite. You didn’t decide yourself who to form a relationship with, it was decided on your behalf. Political motivations, religious origins and economic gain often played a part.
Taking the cake
There has always been some freedom of choice, though. In the 17th century, you could use a koekvrijer or ‘suitor-cake’ – a large gingerbread figure decorated with gold paper and icing – to show your love for someone. If the object of your affection accepted the cake from you, that was a great start. And if he or she then broke off the gingerbread suitor’s head to share with you over a coffee, you were sitting pretty. But if your crush broke off the legs, it was time for you to walk.
Ping
You don’t need a gingerbread suitor any more to find love in 2023. You don’t even have to go to the café or the supermarket any more. Tinder can deliver love straight to your sofa via your smartphone. Nowhere is the economic nature of our quest for love more visible than on dating apps. We scroll and swipe as if we were making a purchase, and the search area can extend as far as the other side of the world. While this might increase the chance of true love, it also creates uncertainty, choice overload and the urge to keep looking for something better.
More
Passion – Love play
The appearance of sex toys tells us a lot about how people felt about lust and gratification at a particular time. About the taboos that might still attach to them. And about the future of sex and the ideals of designers.
Passion – The kiss
Your first kiss. You never forget it. No matter how sweet, sloppy or bad it was. After that, there’s no stopping you: on average you’ll spend 20,000 minutes of your life kissing.
Passion – Perfectible body
Not happy with your body? Then do something about it. That seems to be the credo of our age, with its obsession with perfect bodies. But is the body really so perfectible?
Passion – The body
The contents of Bouquet romantic novels might still leave something to the imagination, but not so their covers: this is the image of the ‘ideal man’. What does it say about our perceptions?
Passion – Romantic fiction
Seven Nights with the Sheikh, A Kiss in the Moonlight, An Heir for the King: the titles of romantic fiction in the world-famous Bouquet series have always appealed to the imagination. Guilty pleasures full of desire, temptation and happy endings are still extremely popular.
Bonding – Parenthood
For centuries being a mum or dad was not a choice at all, simply how things were ‘supposed to be’. The way parenthood itself is viewed has also changed over the years.
Bonding – Marriage
Only three things are truly important in a marriage: you, your beloved and your love for each other. All the same, there are a lot more factors at play in the background.
Bonding – Family of choice
In addition to their biological family, many people have one they’ve chosen for themselves: people you’re not related to, people who understand, help and love you.
Bonding – The Couple Look
See them whizzing across the city on their fast bikes: his a men’s model, hers a woman’s. Both wrapped in a puffer jacket and with matching trainers. The dreary ‘ANWB couple’ in trendy jackets.
Love, designed
We’ve all grown up with stories and clichés that have unconsciously influenced our image of love. Love, designed explores these stereotypes and shows how design guides the way we both seek and ‘consume’ love.
