Love in This Tub

The sight was anything but romantic.

Lined up side by side, more than a dozen heart-shaped tubs littered the parking lot of Pocono Palace Resort, one of the last remaining honeymoon getaways in the Pocono Mountains of Eastern Pennsylvania. Each tub screamed “pick me,” as if they were part of a rose ceremony on “The Bachelor.”

“They’d all been torn out of the rooms, and they were just sitting outside,” said Savannah Rose, 39, who learned that the tubs were for sale when she saw a Facebook post last summer. “A lot were scuffed or chipped from use and removal.”

Ms. Rose, an event director at a music venue in the Poconos, carefully studied the imperfections and found a match: one with nary a scratch. She paid $800 to take it home.

Margaret and Corey Bienert purchased two heart-shaped tubs, one from Pocono Palace and another on Facebook Marketplace.Credit…Margaret Bienert

While interior design and décor are a matter of what’s trending and personal preference — gray floors, earth tones, chevron flooring — the heart-shaped tubs were rarely considered tasteful. But many Americans were wooed by their tackiness.

To understand how heart-shaped bathtubs went from kitsch to cringe and ended up in a parking lot, look at the evolution of romance in the United States.