can we afford love?

I finally watched the ever controversial 2025 film Materialists and I loved it. When the film first came out, my For You Page was filled with videos slamming the film for being “broke boy propaganda”. The film stars Dakota Johnson, who plays Lucy, a matchmaker in New York City. At a wedding for one of her successful matches, she meets Pedro Pascal’s character, Harry--a tall, high-earning, and attractive man who works in private equity. Soon after their meet-cute comes Chris Evans’ character, John, Lucy’s ex-boyfriend who’s working as a waiter at the wedding. We come to find out that Lucy, who grew up poor with divorced parents, wants to marry rich. In fact, she broke up with John because he was poor. Throughout the film, which if anything needs to be criticized for its poor dialogue more than anything else, we watch Lucy be swept off her feet by Harry, while simultaneously falling into intimate moments with John. The film asks us to choose: money or love?

Spoiler alert: Lucy chooses love. And this came at the dismay of many viewers. Some have criticized the fact that Lucy chooses her poor, no career having, 37 year old ex-boyfriend who still lives with two other grown men in a dilapidated rent-stabilized New York City apartment, over a wealthy, smooth-talking, “unicorn” who resides in a 12 million dollar Tribeca apartment. Over and over again in the film’s very literal dialogue, Lucy tells us that dating is about math. A perfect match is made when two people share political values, upbringings, and class backgrounds. In Lucy’s work, people are reduced to their stats, not who they are as people. It’s not until one of Lucy’s clients is sexually assaulted by the “perfect guy” on a date that she realizes that people need to be vetted more deeply than how much they bring home a year, but by who they actually are and what they are capable of. In the end, Lucy realizes that though loving John doesn’t quite add-up on paper, she simply loves him. It doesn’t help that Harry admits that he doesn't think he’s capable of loving anyone. Materialists follows a classic romantic-comedy trope: girl could have rich prince, but falls for true love with modest earnings. So why is everyone so up-in-arms about this film?

Money and dating has been the topic of the decade. From 50-50 talks, to talks about who should pay the rent, to hip-hop songs like Latto’s “Brokey”, I notice that in a time where funds are the tightest, we might just be the most materialistic. I was having a conversation with a friend about a month ago where we were talking about my life post-grad and what I want my dating life to look like right now. At the time, I was jobless and confused, but in the words of said friend--face is still tea, ass is still fat. My friend asked me if I expected the person I’m dating to have their life together. I interpreted that as asking if I needed the person I’m dating to have a job, a car, make six figures, and be on track to pass the New York state bar. I honestly hadn’t thought about what I expected from a partner right now in regards to money or career, so I appreciated the question. I answered back saying I had never thought about that, but no. I would want someone who has something they're passionate about and that they’re working towards, you know, some type of goal. And I’d want that because even though I was confused about where I was at, I had a goal of what I wanted to do. I like the idea of working alongside someone to achieve our individual goals. Money is never something I’ve thought about when it comes to friends, and so I guess it just never crossed my mind for that to factor into a romantic relationship. 

I want to be clear that this is not in defense of ambitionless men or an attack against women who want a high-earning partner. Nor is it to say that being low-earning means you are ambitionless. My point is that should lack of money mean that you can’t fall in love with someone? 

Dating in the year 2025 is so rigid. It’s full of rules, checklists, expectations, and transactions. But, dating is supposed to be fun! It’s supposed to be about getting to know people with hopes of falling in love, but taken on with the understanding that you’ll learn something about yourself along the way. Yet somehow on Tik Tok, there are comment sections full of people saying they can’t afford to date right now. And people affirming this resignation. That is mind boggling to me. I believe that love is necessary to conquer the culture of domination our society is founded upon (see my thesis or any of my creative projects). This has been told to us time and time again by Black world-changers like James Baldwin, Assata Shakur, and bell hooks. Love--in all of its ugliness, difficulty, and complication, is an act of resistance. So if we aren’t loving because we don’t have the funds, then what hope is there left for us?

We know that we need to uproot white supremacy, racism, sexism, and all forms of social prejudice from our world. All of those things are also deeply entangled with class. So when I hear us tell each other that we shouldn’t be dating--which at its core is about connection, vulnerability, and seeing one another for who we are below the surface, unless we can afford it, I question why we’ve surrendered our power at such a basic level? And, why have we convinced ourselves we’re denying ourselves love for our own benefit?

My favorite scene in the movie Materialists is when Lucy and Harry talk in the kitchen after Lucy discovers Harry’s scars from a surgery he had to make himself six inches taller. He confesses that he is unashamed of the surgery because it changed his life. Women approach him, he gets treated with more respect in establishments, and his self-confidence skyrocketed. He considers the surgery an investment, a call back to when Lucy referred to the dates Harry took her to at expensive restaurants as an investment. In response, Lucy affirms that Harry has nothing to be ashamed of and reveals that she’s “invested” in her body as well with a nose and boob job. This language of “investment” drives home the fact that Lucy, Harry, and many people in our generation look at relationships as business arrangements. How do you compete in the dating market and maximize earnings? How do you “earn” a relationship that allows you to “beat” other people who have less impressive relationships? By the end of the film, Lucy wants out of the market. Both literally because she’s engaged to John and is off the market, but also that she may decide to quit her job as a matchmaker.

Though many people threw tomatoes at the screen once the credits rolled, I believe that the movie wanted us to take a look in the mirror. Yet, most of us decided to pick up our phones and look through a filter instead. I am admittedly a little inexperienced with dating, but I do know that my friends are the loves of my life. Falling in love with my friends was out of my control. I couldn’t control who they were, when they came into my life, or what baggage they carried with them. But I made a decision that whatever it was, I’d be there to support them and love them because our relationship made me grow in ways I did not realize possible. The same can be said about John in Materialists, who by the end of the movie indicates that he is going to, and already has, change(d). He’s motivated to do more with his life, humble himself, and stop being so damn cheap because he knows that his love for Lucy means more than his ego. 

I can go on for hours about love, gender roles, and decolonizing how we approach dating in modern times but I’ll stop here. Relationships, romantic and platonic, don’t have to be so transactional. A lack of resources has been the catalyst for some of the most creative shit I’ve seen. Yes it is horrible that we exist in a capitalist society where the cost of fun is growing more and more by the day. But we are still alive. We have to exist and we have to experience fun and love. We need to get creative with our hang outs and with our dates! 

I encourage us not to throw our standards out the window. Money makes life easier, and if you want to marry up, marry up! I am definitely not saying date men who are stingy with their money, or men who don’t want anything for themselves so they refuse to get a job, or men who freeload off of their partners and are basically taken care of by women who are so desperate for a relationship that they become a caretaker to a grown ass man. Don’ t be a bird! What I am saying is that alt right, colonial, talking points are being repackaged as feminism and empowerment, and we need to interrogate that. When we put a price tag on love, when we tell one another that you cannot afford to experience and to give love, we make an investment into a colonial, white-supremacist, violent world. 

~

"Love"

Love is contraband in Hell,

cause love is an acid

that eats away bars.

But you, me, and tomorrow

hold hands and make vows

that struggle will multiply.

The hacksaw has two blades.

The shotgun has two barrels.

We are pregnant with freedom.

We are a conspiracy.

Shakur, Assata. “Love.” Assata: An Autobiography. Lawrence Hill Books, 1987, p. 130.