according to Irish tradition, a man who receives a marriage proposal on a leap day must accept it
The film Leap Year is all about a woman proposing to her boyfriend on Leap Day
Most popular rom-coms come with a very standard formula of charming slightly misunderstood guy chasing after girl who thinks nobody is interested and about to give up on dating.
One film that stood out recently was Leap Year. It was made in 2010, so next year is the first Leap Year we will have had since the release. It'll be interesting to see if the message made an impact on viewers!
The film saw Amy Adam's character chase her boyfriend to Ireland on a business trip to ask him to marry her. This is all because it's a leap year and there is an old Irish tradition that a woman can propose to a man during a leap year, rather than the traditional other way around. The rom-com has all the usual twists and turns that are expected of films like this, and it comes with a totally predictable ending.
However, this film is based all around this tradition, that was completely unknown to me before seeing the film.
It is supposedly a well known tradition that orginated in Ireland centuries ago, and different versions of the folklore say different things, this film focusses on "according to Irish tradition, a man who receives a marriage proposal on a leap day must accept it", one other outcome is "if the man declines the offer he must give a silk gown and a kiss to the lady as compensation".
In an age when women want to be equal to men why is it only acceptable to propose one year out of every four?
Relationship experts have a range of views on the topic, some saying that by taking away a mans position to ask a girl to marry him she takes away some of his masculinity. Others say that men only get married when they feel they are mature enough and when they find the right woman to settle down with, so if you end up doing the asking, it's already clear he doesn't want to marry you, or else he would have popped the question himself already.
The topic comes with seriously divided opinion, similar to those of the relationship experts. If a woman wants to get married to the man she is with, she shouldn't have to sit around and wait to be asked. However, if women are so empowered now, taking away such a typically big traditional male thing would make quite an impact on a relationship too.
It is also difficult because women have decided work is important, quite often moreso than relationships, so work will always come first. This leads to desperation in some cases, and that is the view of many people when it comes to women proposing to men. It's sometimes seen as an almost last-ditch attempt at marriage, almost "nobody was asking me, so I figured I'd do it!" It's not always the case, but because society has changed so much in recent years, traditional views on weddings and marriage have become a bit lost in the rest of womens lives. 50 years ago women were still very domestically-based, all they wanted, or thought they wanted, was marriage, family, a nice house and maybe a family car.
But then the 80s came, with power jobs for women (and shoulder pads) and suddenly marriage and family wasn't the most important thing, and to many women, wasn't important at all. So now, it's going a little way back to the traditional view of women wanting marriage and families, but also wanting a good job.
Trying to get the perfect mix between a working life and a family is very difficult. Online dating has boomed in the last ten years or so, and numerous self-help books are becoming best-sellers, such as He's Just Not That Into You. It shows a slightly worrying side to the female psyche, that after waiting or pursuing a career for a number of years the only resort is to turn to online dating to find your perfect match, or be so worried that you have to read several books to reassure you that you are in fact normal, and will find hapiness, whether it's in finding a relationship or realising you don't need a relationship to be happy.
This new attitude to dating may lead to more women proposing once they have indeed found a man they want to share the rest of their lives with. If it takes longer now to find your Mr. Right, you wouldn't then want to wait for him to ask you to marry him. Maybe this leap day will be your opportune moment to grab what it is you are after.
A recent survey found that 20% of women are now proposing to their partners, and 72% of those who don't, pressure their men into asking them. It was also found that a quarter of men would or have found it a turn on to be the one to be asked, of those who didn't agree with that statement however, a word used to describe the act a lot was "emasculating". The key thing here is to know your man, you should know whether or not he would like to be aksed, and if you don't, then maybe it's not quite time to be tying the knot just yet?
Whether you find it to be a feminism mine-field or not being the one to propose this leap day might just be the way forward for you, after all, if he says no, you are technically entitled to some lovely gifts!
tagged in Leap Year