DINNER’S ON ME
Women want equality. Until the bill comes.
Why would a woman accept a date and not pay her share?
What happened to the equality thing?
I thought women were pushing for equality.
Wasn’t equality mentioned somewhere?
Or does equality end when the waiter brings the tab?
Shouldn’t every date be, you pay for your food, and I’ll pay for my food?
Isn’t that equality?
I understood women want equality, to be treated as an equal, but here’s one stubborn rule apparently women don’t want changed.
The men pay the restaurant tab.
I was prompted to write this after reading a few articles, but particularly the last one, where a woman complained about a man expecting something in return for paying for her dinner.
God knows that would be. More conversation? A walk to look at the moon or city lights?
The woman who wrote the article made it clear some men expect sex in exchange for paying her dinner tab.
I thought that went out in the 1950s.
Seriously.
That was the era when men bought their wives and mistresses mink coats. I thought we had come a long way since Marilyn Monroe crooned, ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.’
Maybe restaurants are an exception on the equality spectrum. Restaurants are different because you pay for food and unless you ask, there is one tab.
Before I married, eons ago, I rarely took someone out to an upscale restaurant, even when I had an expense account.
On the few occasions I did, it was because back then only upscale restaurants accepted credit cards. Debit cards weren’t a thing.
No woman ever thought I paid the dinner tab exchange for favours.
But that was then. That was when the man paying for dinner was acceptable. You knew what the roles were. The man paid. The man opened doors. The man drove. The man walked you to your door. Dinner out was an occasion. It was rare.
Usually things were informal. You grabbed a bite. You grabbed a coffee. “You wanna go over there?” “Sure.” “You wanna meet me there?” “Sure.” Dining out wasn't a thing, really.
Today, women are strident. They want equality. They want to open their own damn doors. And it better be an executive door. They want to be treated as equal, everywhere, all the time.
Except, it seems, when it comes to pay for dinner.
Tellingly, the Medium piece I read on the topic ended with a comment to the tune of, it a man can’t afford to pay for a woman’s meal, perhaps he shouldn’t be asking women out for a meal.
It didn’t occur to her a woman should pay.
I guess we do have a ways to go before there is true equality over the restaurant tab.
