Hi Bob,
Speaking as a woman who used to do this, and is very well acquainted
with several who still do, I can tell you that there are several
reasons why women and teenage girls order something other than what
they really want when on a date.
Occasionally, it's nerves. You can be completely famished, but still
be too nervous to eat.
Usually, though, it's because they don't want to be perceived as
gluttonous or undisciplined. Magazines, television, newspapers, even
the radio tell women every day that to be considered attractive and
desirable, they need to be supermodel thin - and to be supermodel
thin, one doesn't eat more than a salad. Only the fat girls eat, and
they're undesirable and slovenly.
Or so we're supposed to believe, if you leaf through Cosmo or Vogue or
even Woman's Day.
I was guilty of this behavior for a very long time - salad was the
order of the day, and then never too much because I was worried that
my date might be offended or think me unattractive or piggish if I ate
too much.
An unknown man on the 'net figured that one right out in his wry
commentary on the "Battle of the Sexes":
"FROM MEN: On dates, why do women seem to always order the most
expensive item on the menu, take two bites from the plate, then push
it away and announce they're stuffed? I've concluded that women do
this in order to make themselves not look like pigs at the dinner
table. But women beware! Sure, you don't look like physical pigs when
you do this, but right away you look like mental pigs in our minds.
Because hey, if we pay 39 bucks for a piece of chicken, we WANT you to
eat it! We're kooky like that."
The Top 3 Most Asked Questions On The Opposite Sex (from Google's
cache)
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:uv1g3JyPgWMC:c128133.net61215.cablenet.ne.jp/humour/JokePages/mnwmn_top10_qstns.html+women+eat+%22on+dates%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Is that the answer?
"Pretty girls don't eat", says my 17 year-old niece. "If you eat a
steak, the guy will think you're a pig and he won't ask you out
again."
My 16 year-old babysitter concurs:
"Guys think it's gross when a girl eats! They only ever want to date
the skinny girls!"
On the surface, this may seem true. We are daily bombarded by images
of thin, almost perfect women peering at us from every magazine cover
- Maxim has its "Hot 100", Sports Illustrated presents us with the
famous Swimsuit Issue, GQ often features some slender, sultry lass
pouting from the cover. Walk through any high school, and you'll see
slim pin-up girls in the lockers of nearly every boy. Listen to the
men in the bar chatter about how "hot" or "perfect" this or that
slender starlet is. Have a look at the personal ads sometime:
"[...] Seeks younger, 27-35, smart, compassionate, sweet, slim/fit
girl-next-door[...]"
"[...] Seeks trim female, long hair, long legs [...]"
"[...]seeks slim, single/divorced white female 27-36 [...]"
"[...]tall, thin, strikingly beautiful[...]"
"Desperately Seeking—My father's ideal woman - thin, naturally
beautiful[...]"
"[...]Yankee fan, seeks intelligent, slim, active, easygoing white
female[...]"
"[...] seeks attractive, slender, sophisticated lady [...]
"[...]desires Buxom (not fat) female.[...]
New York Metro Classifieds
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:YDe1RwxRGX0C:classifieds.newyorkmetro.com/c_25_p1.asp+Personals+%22seeks+slender%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
...and that's just on one page! Slim, slender, trim, thin, not fat!
And if you're not one of those? How do you compete?
Think about the last woman you saw in a commercial or on a billboard.
When was the last time you saw a Rubenesque brunette in a slinky
dress, extolling the virtues of Black Velvet? Never. The model is
tall, blonde, and very thin - she's held up as the standard for
feminine beauty, elegance and sophistication.
Women see these things, and feel apprehensive about their own
appearance. We want to be seen as trim, fit, slender, beautiful - the
message we are given is that only the slim are attractive, so we need
to make sure we're slim. If we're not quite slim, then we need to
give the appearance of trying to *get* slim. It's what all the
"ladies' magazines" tell us to do. It's what men want, right?
Maybe not. Dan Wasserman and Libby Bakalar rant eloquently on this
subject in a 1997 "He said/she said" editorial:
Dan writes:
"The real difference is not in the media's portrayal of beautiful
people. The difference between the representation of both sexes,
regardless of the medium, is that women are almost always portrayed as
attractive, if not exceptionally beautiful. Almost all of these women,
with very few exceptions (Roseanne, Kathy Bates, the Indigo Girls),
conform to our image of beauty (Jewel, Jada Pinkett, Jennifer Aniston,
the Spice Girls). More importantly, a woman is rarely considered
beautiful if she does not have a "good body." Men however, do not have
to be conventionally beautiful to appear in a positive light on our TV
and movie screens. Prove this by watching the Providence nightly news,
and decide who is better-looking, the less-than-svelte male anchor
with the plastic hair, or the skinny female anchor with the white
teeth and perky breasts.
As a male of the species, I can't pretend to understand the pressures
women feel concerning their bodies from the media, or from their
peers. I have heard men complain about a girl's obsession with her
weight and body, and in the next breath mention the "fat girl" in
their History class. I understand that us men are part of the problem.
However, women may want to ask themselves if they would date that fat
kid in their section before they condemn us for our inability to see
past the skin-deep."
How Does The Media's 'Ideal' Body Image Affect You? - Dan Wasserman
http://www.theherald.org/herald/issues/100397/wasserman.f.html
Libby responds:
"The image of women in the media is, as far as I can tell, harmless at
best and deadly at worst. Though I am certainly no authority on the
subject, I can say without reservation that images of women in the
media inevitably affect the self-image of a great number of people,
myself included. I think that for many women, this is an inescapable
function of living in a society that sexualizes its members to the
point where only an idealized body structure is considered
satisfactory or acceptable. The American media consistently conveys to
its female targets the notion that there is a dangerously limited
range of attractive body types, and inundates them with suggestions
about how to achieve them.
Pick up any "women's" magazine at a newsstand--Cosmopolitan, Vogue,
Seventeen--and you are almost guaranteed to find therein hopeful tips
on "loosing five pounds in just five days," or "101 ways to a tighter
tummy." These periodicals even go as far as to assume the role of a
charlatan therapist, doling out such generic advice as "ten ways to
make your man commit to you," or "what men find attractive in bed."
The models in these magazines are either thin to emaciated or toned in
a "sporty" way that for most people, including models, is unobtainable
without excessive and often unhealthy amounts of exercise and dieting.
The media objects to such accusations, claiming that these images are
merely an extreme ideal not intended to be emulated, and thus
considers itself absolved of any and all responsibility for the
effects that their advertisements have on consumers. "
How Does The Media's 'Ideal' Body Image Affect You? - Libby Bakalar
http://www.theherald.org/herald/issues/100397/bakalar.f.html
Is it fair to blame men or the media for some women's strange eating
habits? Julia Watson, of iVillageUK doesn't think so:
"Bridget Jones may have spent most of her time and diary focused on
her excess calories, but the resulting shape didn’t seem to put off
either the Hugh Grant cad-and-bounder or the Colin Firth pill of a
hero. It was that cow of a pencil-shaped publisher from New York, not
one of her two suitors, who cattily observed Bridget Jones was fat."
Why can’t women celebrate food?
http://www.ivillage.co.uk/print/0,9688,176608,00.html
A survey conducted by Wheeling Jesuit University suggests that the
women do this to themselves:
"Women, however, underestimate the female body size that men find
attractive. Women want to be smaller than they think men like, and
what women think men like is smaller than what men actually do like."
WJU Conducts Body Image Study
http://www3.wju.edu/events/press/041200b.html
A 1985 study at the university of Pennsylvania showed much the same
thing:
"[...]women tend to rate the "ideal weight" and "what men prefer" as
being significantly thinner than "what men actually prefer." In
addition, most women see themselves as being significantly fatter than
any of these three standards — whether it is true or not.'
Female Fear of Fat
http://www.awc.cc.az.us/psy/dgershaw/lol/Female.fat.htm
Ack! Why do we do this to ourselves?
Mixed messages. The media says "thinner is better", but men like
yourself ask "Why don't you eat?!". The media shows us very thin
women eating tiny little salads and holds that behavior up as the
feminine ideal, but then there's the man who (Goddess bless him) told
me in college that he really adored women who would eat a full dinner
with him.
Lack of communication. Women are surrounded daily by images of other
women who are taller/thinner/prettier/more perfect than they are.
More often than not, the men around them swoon out loud for the
perfect image that's been living on rabbit food and bottled water -
women see this and think they need to do the same thing to be found
desirable. They don't know that this isn't the case because *no one
tells them*!
All we hear is the loud appreciation of the perfect image, and
deafening silence when it comes to the less than perfect.
You fellas could help us out, you know.
Don't make disparaging remarks about someone's weight in front of your
date. The next time your date reluctantly orders a salad, tell her
that you think it's hot when a woman eats dessert. Tell her that her
dress looks great on her curves. Tell her you think a woman who
enjoys her food is sexy. Look her in the eye and tell her you'll be
dreadfully upset if she doesn't order *exactly* what she wants to eat,
that you really want her to enjoy dinner with you.
She'll appreciate it, Bob. Really.
--Missy (who is now reformed, and happily eats dessert) |
