In her recent New York Times column “Modern Love,” New York-based social worker Jenna Klorfein shares her romantic frustrations following the lockdown measures in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic. To the untrained eye, her story might sound like self-absorbed griping about trivialities at a time of life-and-death. However, a Geertzian thick description that interrogates the symbolic meaning of these events reveals that Klorfein’s experience epitomizes the romantic struggle of a modern woman in that her search for love is a search for “ontological security,” couched in the performative, digital marketplace of a dating app (Illouz 2012, 110). In this pursuit of love, there are “myths” and “strategies of action” available in her social circle that hint at ways for her to decode the signals sent and not sent between her and her romantic interest (Swidler 2001, 7). Further in line with Swidler’s theory, Klorfein identifies the pandemic as an unsettling factor that merely accelerates the dating process rather than provide new ways of action. Drawing from theories of Illouz and Swidler, I will perform a Geertzian thick description on Klorfein’s column, viewed as an in-depth case study, to illustrate that her failed romance is complex, gendered, and entrenched in the intersection between culture and capitalism, and is thus uniquely modern.

 

One goal of this paper is to apply a Geertzian thick description of Klorfein’s account to contextualize it within a semiotic system of meaningful interactions. In an essay of the same title, Geertz defines “thick description” as the critical process of deciphering cultural meaning from a given social interaction (Geertz 1973, 5). To illustrate, Geertz offers the example of winking, as opposed to twitching (Ibid, 6). Describing the act of winking as a series of facial contortions or as happening in social isolation in front of a mirror would not be a thick description, but to describe it as a sign of jest would be, as the former approach ignores the social environment that necessarily assigns cultural significance to the physical act (Ibid, 7). In other words, a thick description studies culture in action, grounded in specific contexts.

 

Notably, this approach is not the sole domain of anthropologists. We perform a thick description in everyday life whenever we make interpretive claims about an action, which in turn informs our emotions and future strategies of action. In the column, Klorfein does just that when she knows to feel distraught over a text that does not arrive, as she is able to interpret it as a sign of deliberate rejection from her romantic interest in the context of an ongoing pandemic: his silence cannot simply be explained away with excuses of being busy at work or out with friends, but only as intentional ghosting (Klorfein 2020, 2).
 

Now, to thicken our own description of Klorfein’s emotional response, how is Klorfein able to settle (more-or-less precisely) on this reading of the text message? In an immediate sense, myths, archetypes, and strategies of action about love exist in the culture at Klorfein’s disposal. In Talk of Love, Swidler conceptualizes culture as a toolkit/repertoire of approaches to make sense of the world, rather than a consistent set of ideological beliefs instilled into the agent that remain unchanged throughout time (Swidler 2001, 40). In the case of love culture, two seemingly contradictory frames emerged to meet the interpretative challenges set by the culturally predominant institution of marriage, one “mythic” to accommodate the unsettling (yet monogamy-oriented) dating phase of love, one “prosaic-realistic” to pacify the agents once they settle into an exclusive long-term relationship (114). The mythic love is conceived of as transcendent and all-conquering, thus making it well suited to the passion of partner seeking, whereas the prosaic-realistic love governs the less exciting, steady rhythms of married life. While apparently incongruent, these two cultural frames of love form two sides of the same coin, creating an unspoken yet powerful monogamous system of behavioral codes that inform and guide Klorfein’s strategies of action in two delineated phases. During the dating period, Klorfein knows to deploy the former version of love and its associated toolkit (while steering clear of the other) when she professes feeling compelled to play the idealized role of a self-described “chill girl” with no emotional needs, to set the week-by-week rhythm of the romantic conversation, and to control which one of her social circles that the guy gets to meet to portray herself as fun, light-hearted, and positive (Klorfein 2020, 1). It is being in this love culture that also equips Klorfein with the tacit understanding that her text left unread signifies her romantic partner’s disinterest in further engagement.
 

Another possible structural reason for Klorfein’s pain, which she appears less self-aware about, is that she interprets being ghosted as denial of her need for self-validation. The type of romantic pain that Klorfein experiences is a uniquely modern phenomenon, not just because it takes place in a column titled “Modern Love” and involves the technology of dating app (although that is certainly part of it), but because it stems from a structural shift in love culture to an emphasis on the self. In Why Love Hurts, Illouz traces the increasingly individualistic and uncertain nature of love as it developed from the pre-modern into the modern, using popular advice literature on love and romance (Illouz 2012, 122). While Mrs. Humphry’s Manners for Men and Manners for Women among other prominent titles in Victorian England focus on setting standards for gender- and class-appropriate behavior for the “well-bred middle-class,” such stratified distinctions are ostensibly (yet only ostensibly) gone from more current advice books like Dating for Dummies and Date ... or Soul Mate? and replaced by “interiority and emotions” (Illouz 2012, 112–113). Rather than social rank, building a romantic relationship now depends more on whether the couple have chemistry, or, to use the terms by Klorfein, “reciprocity, emotional matching, assurance” (Klorfein 2020, 3). The move away from class to more subjective and indeterminate metrics like emotional compatibility has thrown the pursuit of love into a realm of uncertainty, increasing the risk of “ontological insecurity” (Illouz 2012, 14). In late modernity, an agent’s self-worth is not a constant but needs (re)generation via performance in social interactions with others, particularly the romantic kind (115). In other words, the need for romantic love is a problem for two (or more) people to solve. When considering love in the modern context of social performance, Klorfein’s exacerbated feelings of being unlovable as a result of not getting a romantic partner during social isolation are more easily comprehensible as a structural design, rather than a personal failing.
 

Furthermore, Illouz states that women like Klorfein are disproportionately subject to these feelings of insecurity due to the “commodification of romance” (Illouz 1997, 26). Despite much progress, heterosexual women’s sense of self-worth is still largely tied to having a boyfriend (Illouz 2012, 126). As mentioned, this in part has to do with the narrative shift from pre-modern views of romantic suffering as an ennobling endeavor to a modern view of it as a psychological flaw. Another major contributing factor is the commodification of women’s self-images in a highly personalized capitalist marketplace—the dating app—which places the agent in a gendered hierarchy of desirability and attaches commercial value to maintaining a social interaction. In order to attract potential mates, Klorfein feels obliged to dress a certain way and, more importantly, put on the persona of a “chill girl” with little to no emotional need, despite the need for recognition forced on to her by the modern narrative of love. When her date rejects her offer to further the relationship on grounds of needing no emotional support, Klorfein’s suspicion that it was the ruse of the chill girl that kept him engaged seems confirmed, leading her to wonder if keeping up the prized persona would help keep the relationship alive (Klorfein 2020, 3). Thus, the double sting of denial of Klorfein’s commercialized self-worth, first by herself, then by the guy, is the result of a culture that puts women in a position of seeking social recognition from romantic partners and demands them to resolve it themselves, a practical impossibility.

 

To some extent, Klorfein recognizes the predicament she is in as “larger than this one person,” asserting that the pandemic has only accelerated the dating process without fundamentally changing the culture of love (Klorfein 2020, 3). This self-assessment sits well with Swidler’s theory of settled and unsettled times (Swidler 2001, 89). While in settled times, social agents may not necessarily live their cultured lives acutely aware of the influence of culture, unsettled times allow them to glimpse the cultural structure with clarity, thus unlocking the potential for new strategies of action. However, critical awareness alone does not guarantee change in action. Hence, while new ways of maintaining romantic relationships have sprung up, like couples buying walkie-talkies to communicate with each other, these changes, in Klorfein and Swidler’s view, are only superficial. The larger structure of love culture that incentivizes women to rush to stockpile boyfriends like toilet paper rolls will remain intact so long as The Bachelor retains its cultural currency and the institution of marriage reigns supreme. Klorfein’s thwarted romance is not so much her personal flaw, but the logical endpoint of a modern system that sets her up to fail. Unless we change the narrative to value other models of love that depart from the institution of marriage, this abusive form of romantic suffering will persist, pandemic notwithstanding.

 

Through a thick description of Klorfein’s circumstances, we can see the multiplicity of reasons that she felt hurt from being ghosted. The text that never came symbolizes a culturally codified rejection of Klorfein’s self-worth in a monetized, performative process that necessitates the participation of other social actors. More importantly, it is  symptomatic of a love culture that presents women with the false solution of self-love and then blames them for not resolving their emotional issues. In lieu of a clear directive, the way to happiness, or at least less misery, is to put forth equally powerful alternatives to marriage and marriage-adjacent paradigms that dismantle the shaming of singlehood and untangle love from the realm of stratified commercial markets, as much as possible. Until that day, casual advice of “self-love” as a solution to ontological insecurity will count for little more than victim-blaming that sidesteps the issue without addressing it (Illouz 1197, 151).

Works Cited

 

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In The Interpretation of Cultures; Selected Essays, 3–30. New York: Basic Books.

Illouz, Eva. 1997. Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Illouz, Eva. 2012. Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Klorfein, Jenna. “Modern Love: The Pandemic Arrived. But His Text Back Did Not,” New York Times, Dec. 4, 2020.

Swidler, Ann. 2001. Talk of Love: How Culture Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.