7
votes
The trend of "my girlfriend isn't hungry" items on restaurant menus
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- Title
- Screw This Whole 'My Girlfriend Isn't Hungry' Menu Trend
- Published
- Jul 2 2019
- Word count
- 654 words
I just caught wind of the original "story" about these types of menu times a few days ago from my wife who is about a foot and a half shorter than I am, and eats a good deal less than me when we go out. She showed me, said "this would be perfect for me" we both shared a laugh and we moved on with our day. I'm struggling to find the connection between saying "I'm not really hungry right now" and ordering a small meal becomes "men are looking for sex after every meal and believe that women who are coy at the time of ordering food are 'looking for it'". I can't imagine seeing the world through such a lens as this.
I feel like I'm reading a completely different article than what you did. I just see one that's complaining about the presumptuousness of a trend.
Like, the article seems a bit melodramatic about it, I guess? But nothing like what you seem to have read.
Yes, because I can't fairly claim to use just 32 words (out of ~670 words — 4.7% of the whole article) to say "this is what the piece is about", unless they comprised the thesis. The article spends way more words listing restaurants with this menu section on their menus, so it seems like a more accurate interpretation of this article might be that it's just a directory of restaurants with a "My girlfriend isn't hungry" section as opposed to a decree of patriarchy and rape culture!
Taken as a whole article, it's as I said before: a silly, overdramatic rant, and it's over a nothing issue of presumptuous restaurant menu shorthand. Those mined quotes are casual mentions the author throws in a bit too easily as part of her rant, and why chiefly why it comes across as overdramatic.
It's just a stream-of-thought rant, and seems like it was meant to be that all along. It certainly doesn't some kind of seriously considered argument (or even an argument) tying the trend to reinforcing rape culture or patriarchy, like you sold it as. All I got out of it was that someone is really mad enough to write a rant about this thing without much thought put into it, and is instead portraying it as more than it really is.
Just one word can change the entire tone of an article. I don't think this reduction to arithmetic holds water.
Yes, but that's not the case here at all, because that takes very precise writing skills. Does this article seem like it's carefully crafted enough to hinge on just one word, let alone one sentence? It's a word soup of a rant, and proportionally spends more time doing other things than saying the kinds of things portrayed above.
I don't see why you would take that half a point so universally.
What if someone goes on an hour long idiotic rant about welfare and slips in racial slur at the end? They go from a chance of just holding different philosophical beliefs to being nothing but racist.
True. But that's still not what happened here.
And I think you're going to absurd levels to justify your vitriol because you don't like a few statements this article uses offhandedly. You haven't even been able to talk about this article fairly since you've done nothing but pull sentence fragments out of context to do it. Tell me, why don't you acknowledge the beginning of that sentence, where it describes a best possible outcome? You're only focusing on the worst part of that range. Here's the full line:
The first bit is exactly what you were lamenting being called a rapist about in your first comment. But here the article is, offering it as a legitimate possibility without being called a rapist. But you, for some reason, blended the two extremes together. (Also, the second half is patently ridiculous, of course, but it's not like you asked for my opinion on that despite how often I've called the entire thing overdramatic.)
Seems like there's just as much ascribing that it is a silly little joke. Why is only the second half worthy of your consideration and not the first? The only way I can see why you'd take the approach you did is because you want to find a way to be upset at this article, to go to the extents you have at misrepresenting it.
The only "presumption" I described was the article itself. I don't know where you got the idea that I was saying any of the comments here were that. The word I'd use for your comments here isn't "presumptuous". I would have used "overdramatic". In fact, I originally thought you were parodying the style of the article with your initial comment. Now, I'd just say "dishonest".
Like, the very least you could have done to be honest is understand why someone else wouldn't have jumped to the conclusions you did based on reading the same text.
It's important to note here that that quote isn't even about the menu items or the idea of a girlfriend stealing food from the boyfriend, but
Why they didn't pull this quote, which is directly critiquing the restaurants and their practises, is beyond me.
Let me say something I might regret:
I think this "overdramatic silliness" is fueling a lot of real, political trends by giving the alt-right something to point at and say "oh, see how silly the left are! btw, have you heard about their plans to take your freedom away?". Of course you can say, alright then, come at me! But they do. They genuinely do built online campaigns around stories like this and repackage them to target teenagers (let's face it, they're not doing it with razor sharp think pieces).
There's clearly a political tone in the word choices and I don't think it's productive to casually throw phrases associated with rape ("asking for it") into a "silly stream-of-thought" article about extra fries for girlfriends. You wouldn't want a right-wing writer to casually throw this in and dilute the issue, why is it okay for a left (sounding?) writer?
I think the left has a problem with no longer having a clear concept of its goals and where exactly it wants to draw the line. If you have articles like this (which there are plenty of), you're implying that misogyny is so ingrained in society, that it essentially has to be burned down and rebuilt from scratch. Otherwise I simply don't see a scenario in which women stop being indecisive with restaurant choices consistently enough for there to not be jokes about it.
I don't think it has any concrete "intent" and that's the problem.
Presumptuousness of the trend? I'm sorry, but I'm reading this as a very presumptuous take on the trend. Can't we take the hypothetical girlfriends and boyfriends at face value here? GF looks at menu, sees nothing she would like to order(for whatever reason), says she's not hungry. BF orders extra sides because he assumes she'd want to have a bite or two once the food is there. Sometimes restaurants take an hour to prepare your food and by then she's actually hungry. Sometimes your appetite changes once there's a steaming plate of deep-fried food in front of you. There's enough reasons to assume that both parties here can be honest.
You know what I find presumptuous?
Sometimes he just wants to eat an entire meal.
We can talk about the sexist expectations of what people should order when eating out. This article is treating a symptom at best. Granted, so is ordering extra sides. But that isn't meant to be an act of feminism.
I mean, you're right. It's clearly presumption all the way down here. I was only talking about what this article is aiming for, and that it wasn't about tying the whole thing to r/TIA's biggest fears.
Yours is probably the only comment in here that accurately depicts the article.
I think you're personalizing this, taking it as criticism of you as an individual when the author didn't mean it that way.
"My girlfriend isn't hungry" plays into a broader trope that women are unpredictable and fickle, and that they say no when they really mean yes or maybe. I don't think it's that big a stretch to connect that to date rape. That does not mean, in any way, that everyone who's ever joked about this meme is a rapist or potential rapist.
It doesn't have to be either/or. I found it funny, and I also understand the author's point of why others might find it offensive or in poor taste. I think it's interesting because it's in a grey area and not black or white.
And I don't think the author intended to evoke any idea of malice or a conspiracy - that there's a smoke-filled room of misogynist restaurateurs all deciding to put this item on the menu because they hate women. I read it more as suggesting that part of the problem is that a restaurant manager could make this joke with zero ill intent, unaware of the unintended consequences.
Does it though?
My wife does this. Before I got married, I had a number of girlfriends, of various seriousness, and almost every single one of them did this (I can think of but two that did not). My mom does this. My oldest daughter does this. My mother-in-law does it a lot.
I think it more plays into the trope that society puts pressure on women to not eat things and be thing all the time but when presented with delicious food, it's hard to say no.
Not everything has to be taken in the most hostile or offensive way. I honestly think that a connection to date rape is extremely tenuous, and I don't think that the "she says no but means yes" is actually the same between food and actual rape.
I know this is noise, but I love how this is one of the most controversial posts I've seen on this site. You'd never guess it from the title.
Aside from the utter stupidity of the argument in the story, it feels like it was written by a teenager. The writing is terrible and having had a browse further into this site, bad writing seems to be a theme.
Journalism is not what it once was.