In a scene from Ruben Ostlund’s acclaimed film The Triangle of Sadness, a couple of successful models have dinner at a luxury restaurant and a dispute ensues over who to pay the bill. The guy suggests that it should be his girlfriend who does it since he always does it and she makes more money. In the end, the girl does, but reluctantly, and a fight ensues. For them, it’s not about who has more money, it’s about the boy always paying, period, because otherwise they look bad. As anachronistic as such a situation may seem, there are still many people who, for various reasons, feel more comfortable with the man footing the bill on a straight date.
A 2022 study published in the journal Psychological Reports showed that traditional norms are still entrenched among young people. The researchers used a sample of 552 heterosexual college students to answer questions about gender roles. When asked who should pay on dates, more than half said men should take care of everything on the first date and then pay “the bulk” on subsequent dates. On average, respondents of both genders expected men to have greater financial responsibility. These results are not isolated. Another study by the finance portal Money showed convincing data: 85% of men and 78% of women out of a total of 4,447 people surveyed were of the opinion that men should always pay on the first date.
Andrea Ramírez is a 25-year-old Colombian living in Madrid. She’s straight and if she dates a boy both in her country and in Spain, she assumes he’ll foot the bill because she thinks she’s always been like that. However, he clarifies that after meeting a boy for the second time, he no longer expects him to continue paying all expenses. “For me it is a cultural and social custom that men always pay for the first ticket,” he says. “Usually it’s men who make the first move in meetings like this.” Ramírez clarifies that she wouldn’t mind if she was asked to split the bill or even paid her on the second date if it came up is someone she is very interested in, but that it would be “a bit strange” for her to do so It’s their first time meeting. “The first seems very different from the others. “I don’t think it’s a macho custom,” he explains.
Last March, sex and relationship podcast Laid Bare Podcast host Oloni sparked debate on Twitter by asking her followers whether or not men should be the ones paying for everything on dates. The influencer later told Mashable that such decisions would not make any woman the less of a feminist. “If you want something more traditional, you can have it,” he told this news portal.
Kim Elsesser, Ph.D. in Gender Studies and author of “Sex and the Office,” wrote in an article for Forbes that this idea about paid dating is an example of “benevolent sexism,” meaning an attitude that is dangerous and emerges as benign. According to the author, this springs from a macho imagination where women should be revered and men should be gentlemen. Elsesser argues that this has implications that go beyond a simple dinner: “It affects how women think about themselves, how others treat them, and contributes to inequality in general.”
From the point of view of protocol, the idea that the draft law should go to the man is considered outdated. Marina Fernández, Director of Communications at the International School of Protocol, clarifies that this is a topic that is not even being discussed: “We think that it is outdated, something from the past, that the protocol in 2023 exceeds.” What is currently being done, Fernández says, is simply to incriminate the person who made the reservation. “The protocol adapts to social reality. There will be very traditional restaurants where it is customary to give the bill to the gentleman, but that is now very rare,” says the expert.
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