Money Crashers: Two Valentine pieces

Four years ago, I wrote a piece for Money Crashers on affordable gifts and activities for Valentine's Day. This year, the editors decided it was time to update it — but instead of just revising the old piece, they asked me to split it into two, one on affordable dates and one on affordable gifts. The first of these was published three weeks ago, and the second was all ready for publication when the editor suddenly got back to me with a request to split it yet again, this time into a piece on gifts "for her" and one on gifts "for him."

I didn't quite see the point of this, since (a) I'd already done a pair of gender-specific gift guides for Christmas, and (b) with society these days moving toward a more fluid idea of gender, there's no real reason to draw a rigid line between girl gifts and guy gifts. But according to my editor, there's still a lot of search traffic out there for Valentine's day gifts "for him" and "for her," and we have to give people what they want to stay competitive.

So, with some reluctance, I've produced the requisite two pieces on romantic, budget-friendly gifts: 7 Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas for Her (on a Budget) and 9 Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas for Him (on a Budget). I've done my best, at least, to avoid extreme gender stereotypes; I didn't want my piece for men to red like so many other gendered gift guides, which one of our editors summed up as "He Frank. Frank like meat. Frank like beer. Frank live in mancave." I've tried to go for a more nuanced approach ("Frank study art history. Frank have blog to share his haiku") and avoid making any assumptions about the gender of the reader. If I've done my job right, ladies seeking gifts for their wives, or men for their husbands, should find these pieces just as useful as heterosexual couples.