If you want parity, buy your own margaritas. Sex and the City/HBO
Are you a high-value woman? If so, what is your price: a boneless banquet at KFC? A two-courser at the local Italian? Maybe even a tasting menu at Le Bernardin, finishing with a dram of Louis XIII cognac? In New York, these calculations are made every day as befits the land of blingy, Charvet-shirted chivalry.
Dating Stateside is a far cry from London, where it is common to see hopefuls of either sex carrying rounds of pints through beer gardens to their suitor. Drinks, rather than a sit-down meal, are standard; in London, the post-match analysis does not open with an automatic “where did he take you”, and a man ordering for the table would be more likely met with a furrowed brow than a flutter of lashes. But all this goes beyond mere etiquette: the standards and expectations of young women in each of these cities betray a chasm in values. For any Londoner, New York’s old-fashioned rituals of financial courtship come as a mighty shock. And this week, I’ve found myself on the front line.
In young, feverish New York, old values hold sway. I quiz single women about their sex lives and their answers horrify me. One, who insists on men paying for everything as a matter of principle, tells me why: “At the very primitive level, this is a man and this is a woman. The role of a man is to protect and take care.” She sees the early stages of seduction in terms of deposits: the first date, all paid for with a gold Amex, is a downpayment on the second — my time, the logic goes, demands your money. To live the “soft life”, you must be decidedly hard-nosed. If he asks to split the bill, she takes it as a sign of disinterest. Little matter that most of these girls, living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, are already doing well for themselves.
To survey the young ladies of the New World is to encounter a peculiar struggle of choice-feminism empowerment logic and an impulse to tie your worth to numbers of Michelin stars. The absurd theory that any decision a woman makes is feminist has given them license to choose to behave as pedigree pets — and if you’re going to play that game, you must do your best, look your best, to win. Perhaps because of this, women here dress more nicely: on Thursday and Friday nights, dank subway platforms are filled with balayage blow-outs and vintage baguette bags, while kitten heels clatter up the piss-scented steps. There’s more flesh, more glitter; nails are longer and tops are tighter. On Saturdays, reserved for friends, gangs of girls march through the East Village in bandage dresses and moto boots; at bars, groups of men will ambush them to pay for their shots. Drinking culture, forever in arrested development because of the legal age of 21, is sloppy and manic but generally benign: girls get wasted on margaritas, boys struggle to hold their Millers. People kiss, vomit, grind; the sexes actually meet. Over in London, girls sulk in smoking areas while the stupefied talent inside nods to Berlioz in between bumps of ketamine.
And what of feminism? Well, what of it, the American girls reply. Many tell me, in queasy strains of Florence Given, that they are “empowered”. And they feel this power most when hooking up with men. Within this metric, achievement is about bagging the best man — he who hits the highest tax bracket and makes the most exclusive reservation; hypergamy on steroids. The sexual revolution of the Sixties gave New York women permission to have sex like men — coldly and without meaning. What this promise of liberation really meant, as Andrea Dworkin put it, was the freedom to do things “men think are sexy”. It did not give them more opportunity to have sex like women — which is not to say with candles and Milk Tray, but with a minimum expectation of some commitment. Untangling the strange blend of modernity and traditionalism in American metropolitan sex lives might then come down to this fact: a dating scene in which a woman can shag who she likes but can never ask him to care for or commit to her must offer her material comforts instead. A steak dinner is compensation for the fact that he will not text you back.
After the sexual revolution, the Eighties reinvented the New York woman all over again. This time she was shoulder-padded and permed, a career woman living a similar “executive lifestyle” as the men. She was a besuited “superbitch” — like Alexis Colby in Dynasty, fattened on Reaganist individualism and slenderised again by the Atkins. She knew women could “have it all”, as long as all they wanted was a lipsticked imitation of male corporate ascendancy. Her spiritual descendants are the polished, matcha-slurping marketing girlies of today; the difference is that instead of putting their best foot forward in the boardroom, their ambition is limited to negotiations over a candlelit dinner.
If all this seems like a step backwards, that’s because it is. Long have men bemoaned the vanishing of the “feminine woman” — and long have dating coaches urged us to revive her by embracing our “black cat energy” — but the reality of a feminism which pays lip service to empowerment while demanding men pay for everything is that it can never be taken seriously. Put simply: you cannot demand equality in everything but pay; if you want parity, buy your own margaritas. Influencers like Shera Seven — whose “sprinkle sprinkle” method of extracting resources from men has become a depressing battle cry among young women — are setting us back. Earn your own bloody money. Seven’s romance-free lessons on bagging the best men extend the dynamic of the prize and her provider lurking behind the New York dinner-date hustler: how to make a man marry you? “Be the fantasy woman, even though it’s a lie.” Why do men go for gold diggers? “Because they make him look successful.” And perhaps the darkest lesson: paying for prostitutes is not a problem; the real issue is “tricking a woman out of free sex”. Strong stuff.
The American men I’ve grilled about the financial etiquette of dating have jokingly assented: yeah, women should pay their way, they grin, sometimes miming to an imaginary barkeeper for a beer courtesy of the lady. But in going Dutch, women buy something back from men, too: an unspoken obligation to represent value for money, to give in to the kiss, to get in the Uber to their place. Many of these girls are naturally horrified by “sex work”, believing the trade in flesh to be limited to a certain kind of woman. They don’t see the irony that hardliners like myself defend to the hilt: that putting a price tag on your company puts you on that very same continuum. Even if you don’t think so, he might — and will behave accordingly. Anything that gives women less power or confidence to say no is a bad thing.
The reality of affairs of the heart is that they are often cynical, selfish and dangerous: in this real world, it should be impressed upon every young woman that there is truly no such thing as a free lunch. Feminism is praxis: talk the talk, walk the walk, and pay your half of the bill. It’s a hard sell to ask men to take us seriously when we’re rinsing them for caviar on the first date, as one woman confessed to doing on TikTok last month. In the event, she was accused of texting other men during the date; her dinner companion slipped away in disgust, leaving her with a $1,000 bill. In a screenshot of her frantic messages after he escaped, she writes: “I don’t have shit on me!”
God knows I’m no expert, but I know this: the old married couple feeding pigeons on the park bench will not, upon being asked how they met, come back with: “He got a res at Balthazar.” The young women of London may be disgruntled to discover that their bronzed, brasher American cousins are relishing the fruits of chivalry — but do not despair completely. As many women of New York will discover in time, haute cuisine and high romance are not the same: the bill will always come due.
