GOING DUTCH
feminism’s last frontier?
When it comes to debriefing a first date with your trusted support team, there are a few key questions essential to the process: where you met, what shoes he wore, what was his stance on Game Of Thrones. And then there’s the big one: did he pay? As if a dinner date with a stranger wasn’t awkward enough, the issue of who gets out their wallet when the bill arrives has potential to make or break the encounter.
In an impassioned piece recently published in the UK Times, writer Josh Glancy refers to Moira Weigel’s new book, Labor Of Love: The Invention Of Dating, in which the author points out the tradition of men paying first emerged in the early 20th century, a time when women’s salaries were so low that they relied on men to be able to go out – and were often pulled up on prostitution charges as a result, even if they were just allowing a beau to buy them a theatre ticket. Glancy, a self-described “well-trained feminist male”, laments that while “there is still a fair amount of wage inequality, most of the girls I’ve been out with earn at least as much as me, often more. So why on earth would I pay for them as a matter of course?”
He has a point: in an age where we can buy our own houses and open our own doors, is it hypocritical to call yourself a feminist and still insist that the guy always pays? When we’re told to lean in at work but lean back in our after-hours dealings with men, it’s no wonder modern romance is fraught with mixed messages. At best, dating is a jumble of uncertainty and downright kale-between-your-teeth embarrassment; at worst Weigel describes it as often feeling like “the most precarious form of contemporary labour: an unpaid internship”.
In 2016, women can and sometimes do out-earn men, but if we’re going to start weighing up bank balances there’s the no small matter of makeup tax that even Hillary Clinton recognises is a drain for women everywhere. Personal finance site Mint claims the average woman will spend $15,000 on cosmetics in her lifetime. Some figures claim women’s morning makeup routine amounts to two weeks out of our year. The blow-dry, the waxing, the lipstick – all essential in order to reach the beauty standards popular culture tells us we need to pass muster at the dinner table... and we haven’t even discussed the dress.
“I don’t expect anyone to pay my way... That said, if the guy is insistent on paying, I’m not going to create tension where it previously did not exist. If the guy kicks a fuss over who is paying or makes a point of not paying my half of the bill, I take this as a sign that he’s a) a cheapskate, b) a jerk, and c) will carry this petulant attitude into matters of greater importance,” says Anna, a marketing director in her late twenties, speaking as part of a survey conducted by financial planning company Learnvest and online broker TD Ameritrade in 2013. The results showed when asked who should pay the bill on a first date, 59 per cent of respondents said the man should always pay, unless the woman has asked him out (when broken down into male and female responses, it revealed 55 per cent of men and 63 per cent of women agreed it was up to the man to foot the bill).
Backing up this data, the 18th edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette: Manners For A New World is decided on the subject. The rule: “For a first date at least, the person who asks should pay unless both parties agree in advance to share expenses.” Although it’s unclear at which stage this pre-transactional conversation should take place (straight after we swipe right?), it’s even less clear in the era of mobile-app dating who’s done the asking out.
What is usually crystal-clear, however, is whether round two is on the cards, and as relationships expert Bernardo Mendez tells Forbes, “If during the course of the first date you decide that you absolutely don’t want to see this guy again, insisting on paying for your half can help you signal more clearly that you’re not open to it.”
And if you do want to see him (or her, for that matter) again? Reach for your wallet, smile politely if your gesture to go Dutch is declined and offer to pay for gelato on the walk home.
“When we’re told to lean in at work but lean back in our afterhours dealings with men, it’s no wonder modern romance is fraught with mixed messages”