5 reasons women hate February

by
Cait Braeden

It may come as a huge surprise to the men of America, but many women hate the month of February. If you try to discuss this with them, many men will say, "C'mon, you women love that sort of thing." What sort of thing? Therein lies the problem.

Here are 5 very important reasons that we wouldn't mind if February were a leap month and we could skip it altogether.

1. The football season still isn't over
We used to be able to resume our marriages and important conversations with men before the end of January but now that the NFL Season has been stretched into February, we have to wait another week for the trash to go out. While most women actually enjoy the Super Bowl with its parties, commercials, and crazy half-time show... having it in February rather than earlier in the year is a real bummer.

2. Valentine's Day
The patron saint of greeting cards is now remembered by overpriced meals with bad service at crowded restaurants. Men face unbelievable pressure to "step up" for this occasion and buy flowers three times too expensive, and worse yet feel compelled to buy something with a heart on it. They rely on a greeting card conglomerate to personally express their "intimate feelings," which goes about as well as skipping it all together.

3. Couple mania
If we're not single, we care about someone who is, and we can imagine how it feels during the month of February. The whole commercial craze creates "holiday" feelings of loneliness (that many have just spent January in therapy for) in order to capitalize on the ever important "couple's specials." It's painful.

4. Cheap chocolate
Mass quantities of chocolate hearts begin to appear. The Christmas chocolate has been melted and reshaped into the forms of Valentine Love, which explains the taste. This "quality" chocolate appears in the most unlikely places, places you would never see chocolate on any other occasion -- the pumps at gas stations, the lumber isle at home improvement stores, the check out counter at the Jiffy Lube -- trying to catch the attention of the gender that doesn't understand chocolate and persuade them to buy it now, right now, for their true "love."

5. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue
Not only is women's swimming suddenly the most popular sport, the magazine arrives in the dead of winter. Many of us haven't hit the gym in a month or two because our car is frozen solid. We haven't seen the sun in months and our legs are pasty white or coated with dry winter snakeskin. We're carrying the few extra pounds from cheap chocolate we felt compelled to eat over Valentine's Day, and we get sand kicked in our face from a beautiful woman frolicking in pot-holder sized swimwear from some warm beautiful location. It's just too much.

A few hopeful ways to survive one of the worst months of the year:

• When the SI issue arrives, paste the head of your mother on the bodies of all the models.

• Create a fun game around the Super Bowl commercials.

• Host a Valentine Party with couples and lots of single friends. Your friends will appreciate going anywhere other than a restaurant.

• Order or pick up some nice chocolate (like Godiva) for your husband or significant other early in the month (i.e. before they buy any for you) to enjoy "together" for Valentine's Day.