Bare minimum or princess treatment? If your partner opens the door for you, that’s “bare minimum.” If they buy you flowers every day, that’s “princess treatment.” If they remember certain things about you, it’s bare minimum, and if they pay for all the meals, that is often categorized as bare minimum as well.
The bare minimum vs princess treatment has been flooding tiktok and Instagram pages where couples debate on where the line should be drawn. However this viral trend may be undermining certain gestures and acts of love. Dawit, a junior at lakeside, thinks that people compare themselves to others on the internet too much. It actually raises an interesting question I want you the readers to think about as you read this article “is social media running the small things.”
For those who aren’t familiar with the terminology or the trend let me provide some context. “The Bare minimum” refers to the basic levels of respect and love in a relationship. So things like honesty and basic punctuality and politeness. While princess treatment is a term to describe a partner who goes above and beyond providing financial spoiling and gift spoiling. Samira, a lakeside senior explains that sometimes people think everyone is doing the bare minimum even though it creates this false reality while some of these “bare minimum things” are actually more princess treatment then people think.
What started as a way for people to set higher standards for themselves has morphed into a rigid checklist. By labeling a thoughtful act as merely “the bare minimum,” we risk stripping away the genuine intent behind the gesture. When every action is measured against an internet-defined standard, the personal connection is replaced by a scoreboard. On top of that for those who do only reach or achieve the bare minimum we have to consider that might be all they can meet in that situation. Many people may not be financially stable to constantly spoil their partner so they rely on the small acts and hope their partner notices these gestures.
The danger of this trend lies in the comparison. When we scroll through videos of elaborate “princess treatment,” the everyday kindness of a partner can start to feel insufficient. Through this social media starts to create an environment where if an act of love isn’t “post-worthy,” it’s treated as the baseline. This in turn makes people lose the fact that love and intimacy isn’t found in grand gestures but in the genuine and sincerity of the person who performed the act. Ultimately, by categorizing every interaction into princess treatment or bare minimum, we are teaching ourselves to overlook the nuance of real-world relationships. If we continue to let trends dictate how we view love and we will start to lose our own perceptions of love, we may find that we’ve traded real love for a performative one.
