This makes me want to barf, on so many levels:
Martha Flach mentioned meat twice in her Match.com profile: "I love architecture, The New Yorker, dogs ... steak for two and the Sunday puzzle."
She was seeking, she added, "a smart, funny, kind man who owns a suit (but isn't one) ... and loves red wine and a big steak."
The repetition worked. On her first date with Austin Wilkie, they ate steak frites. A year later, after burgers at the Corner Bistro in Greenwich Village, he proposed. This March, the rehearsal dinner was at Keens Steakhouse on West 36th Street, and the wedding menu included mini-cheeseburgers and more steak.
Ms. Wilkie was a vegetarian in her teens, and even wore a "Meat Is Murder" T-shirt. But by her 30s, she had started eating cow. By the time she placed the personal ad, she had come to realize that ordering steak on a first date had the potential to sate appetites not only of the stomach but of the heart.
Girls, remember when you had to pick daintily at your salad on the first date? Well, those days are no more. Salads seem "wimpy, insipid, childish," and if you order one, you'll be considered "vapid and uninteresting." Men these days want women who want steak. Big, nasty, bleeding steak. "Meat is strategy" in the dating scene, and ordering a nice fat steak on your first date lets suitors know that you are "unpretentious and down to earth and unneurotic," and that you're "not obsessed" with weight and you "don't have any food issues." Which is so much easier than, you know, actually having to express that with a personality or something.
Never mind the reasons one might have for eschewing flesh, we women better get on board the meat express if we want to bring home a man. Because what we eat, like every other major life decision, should be based on what the opposite sex will think about it. Thank you, New York Times, for letting me know that perhaps what my life is lacking is a meat-centered romance, one where I can "be myself" by eating hunks of dead animal.
Or maybe I could just eat WTF I feel like eating.
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Comments
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JMG Posted 4:37 am
09 Aug 2007
I don't know
He might have a big sexy bulge (in the wallet pocket) and a short life-expectancy (his high animal diet suggests that). She may be acting in a very cunning way here ...
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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WWAGD?! Posted 4:54 am
09 Aug 2007
Torre!
Do all the hormones in beef bring on woman's mustaches at an earlier age?
Just wondering...
Sign me,
Kurious in Kent
John Bailo
Supratext:
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Holly Richmond Posted 5:08 am
09 Aug 2007
on the subject of life expectancy...
Note the very end of the article:
Although that was in the context of suggesting men must publicly adhere to a different diet ("Real men...must eat kale") than women. Mmm, prescribed gender
rollsroles...delicious.Does it bother anyone else that the article's title refers to women in their thirties as "girls"?
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Icelander Posted 5:25 am
09 Aug 2007
Women versus Girls
"Does it bother anyone else that the article's title refers to women in their thirties as 'girls'?"
I'd refer to any woman who acted that way as a "girl." And I'm only 25.
Though I'm not dating anymore, I'd rather have a woman who is adventurous and wants to try new things than someone who sticks with something boring and bland. (Most steaks in restaurants are from factory farms and taste like, well, nothing.)
I'm glad I'm not dating these days, since the idea of being genuine is so old fashioned. It seems more like peacocks strutting around trying to impress each other than people trying to get to know someone.
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odograph Posted 5:44 am
09 Aug 2007
Icelander?
Don't you eat sharks or something?
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AHanley Posted 5:46 am
09 Aug 2007
wimpy salad
I once ordered a salad on a date only to have the young man in question inform me that he wouldn't judge me if I wanted to order something more substantial.
Nice try buddy. I just wanted the salad.
Great post, Kate!
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odograph Posted 6:11 am
09 Aug 2007
article
I just read the Times article, I guess I am bemused.
Though, for the sake of accuracy, an In-N-Out burger is smallish, and a double-double is still smaller than many conventional burgers. You can get weird combinations like 4x4s if you ask ... they make a game of pretending a "secret menu"
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PermieWriter Posted 6:21 am
09 Aug 2007
Blood and romance
If this becomes a trend, in a few years the de rigeur first date will be hunting down a deer and tenderly feeding each other choice bits of still-warm organ meat next to a flickering campfire.
Oh, my bad. That's the plot of the subsequent "Clan of the Cave Bear" novels.
Eat what you grow, grow what you eat
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MarkUK Posted 6:21 am
09 Aug 2007
Yep
I can't stand women that just pick at a salad... Eat something for god sake...
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wayneluke Posted 6:55 am
09 Aug 2007
First Dates
Steak would have been a hard thing to handle during my first date with my wife. It was a Lynnard Skynnard and Styx concert.
I think that a woman who is engaging and fun to be around is more important than what is on her plate that night.
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Pangolin Posted 8:48 am
09 Aug 2007
Men's perception is.....
that the same vegan waif who refuses to eat in 2/3's of the restaurants in the city will turn her fussiness on HIM sometime in the future.
I would say that perception is accurate. The average table in a vegan restaurant is occupied by two 30-50 year old women. The average table in Outback is occupied by a mixed couple.
When turning vegan turns into a fast track to plentiful, kinky sex, there will be a rush to vegitate by men. It's going to be a lo_o_o_ong wait before anything like that happens.
I think I have carnitas in the fridge. Bye.
Put the Carbon Back
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Sarah K. Burkhalter Posted 9:29 am
09 Aug 2007
Vegansexuals
Hark, Pangolin! Your lo_o_o_ong wait is over.
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Sam Wells Posted 10:33 am
09 Aug 2007
Youse guys
So, we're dealing with a salad, nuts, and fruits crowd here. Oh well, have fun, and watch those toxic dressings you've been using. I suppose nobody here want a few bites of raw yellow fin tuna or raw prime beef fillet to go with that salad, right? No octopus? Oh well.
Beware the toxic dressings though, my friends.
Onward through the fog
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watermirrors Posted 12:15 pm
09 Aug 2007
WTH
In college it seems to be the exact opposite. Don't like seitan? Say goodbye to those hot vegan boys. If you want the skinny boys in college, vegan is the way to date.
Not that I believe in modifying my diet to get dates. If you pretend to like food you don't actually like, you are attracting men who are attracted to your act, not the real you.
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Liz Borkowski Posted 1:36 am
10 Aug 2007
The "trend" article trend
Does anyone else find it alarming that the NYT and other respected papers make a habit of identifying trends based on skimpy anecdotal evidence?
In this article, we hear from a few individual daters:
- Two women who attribute their dating success to ordering meat
- One vegetarian who wonders if eating a burger might improve her dating success
- One woman who doesn't want to be seen eating too much
- One woman who doesn't just want to order the salad
And a few "experts":- "Restauarateurs and veterans of the dating scene" (This could mean anything from "I phoned the top 50 Zagat-rated restaurants for their take, and posted a poll on the top five online dating sites" to "I asked my single friends and someone I know from high school who runs a cafe.")
- Wollensky & Smith's Concept VP (clearly an unbiased source, right?)
- A dining editor from Time Out NY
Oh, and Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton have been seen eating burgers or professing their intent to eat same. Color me convinced!Will the NYT commission me to write an article about how going vegetarian to stop global warming is a hot new trend? I promise it will be just as compellingly sourced.
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carrie1 Posted 2:04 pm
10 Aug 2007
red meat and dating
I have to say that The New York Times story on women eating beef had some valid points, and brought back fond memories of one of my first dates with my future husband, about 7 years ago. He took me to Les Halles, where the menu is, you guessed it, beef and more beef, and I ordered, you guessed it, my favorite then and now...prime rib! At one point, it was clear that I would have to pick up said beef in order to fully enjoy the bone, primitive though this may have appeared. I debated briefly whether this would turn off my date, but quite the contrary, he concluded from my actions that I was an independent, take charge kind of woman. Would this have happened had I picked up a piece of quiche and wolfed it down sans fork? Who's to say...but my decision to wolf down the prime rib in this case was a true reflection of me, and had nothing to do with impressing him.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 4:42 am
11 Aug 2007
This was article..
was yet another in a long string of pathetic NYT's articles. You'd think maybe there were actually some real issues out there, but I guess not. Anyway, meat is for people who don't know how to cook very well and don't have too much taste in food. It's the lazy man's or woman's choice.
I teach environmental economics and blog at www.voicesofreason.info.
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Biodiversivist Posted 11:47 am
11 Aug 2007
Hmm
"Anyway, meat is for people who don't know how to cook very well and don't have too much taste in food. It's the lazy man's or woman's choice."
There are a few chefs in Paris who might take exception to that and calling everyone who eats meat lazy is somewhat disingenious ...also.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Sam Wells Posted 4:17 am
12 Aug 2007
and the Vietnamese, too!
Beef is not my favorite although I like it for a change every now and then, and in very small portions. What's the deal with expecting people to eat 16 onces of red meat or even more? It's hard on the liver and takes forever to digest. In fact, folks with compromised immune systems are advised to avoid red meat. But I still like it occasionally.
You mentioned the French ... some Vietnamese recipes were heavily influenced by the French but they could make any meat go a long way. They're pretty good at balance of taste, heat (watch the peppers!), starches, fruits, and vegetables. A bowl of Pho (noodle soup) might only have a few teensy pieces of meat in it, but is good with me. Na Trang, mainly seafood in soup with Chinese spinach, is my favorite, though. The pineapple makes it somehow very special. /sammie
Onward through the fog
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kmp Posted 6:42 am
12 Aug 2007
Slow news day?
Even the author of this tripe seemed a bit annoyed - perhaps it was forced on him by his editor (who's lover owns a steak joint)?
Pathetic indeed but I can guarantee there are women in NY right now testing the (bloody) waters, simply because of those three little words: date, proposal, wedding.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 4:12 pm
12 Aug 2007
Take a gourmet vegetatarian chef...
and match them against a meat and dairy chef and the vegetarian chef will wipe the doormat with the latter. Dairy is salt and fat, which is about as creative as a McDonald's logo, and meat is the easy way to get a hunk of salty protein without any skill whatsoever. Sorry, I ate top-notch meat and seafood for half my life and the culinary pleasures to be drawn from plants by an expert chef are so much more intricate and complex than animal food. There is no comparison.
I teach environmental economics and blog at www.voicesofreason.info.
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keaty Posted 11:58 pm
12 Aug 2007
since when do I only eat salad...?
Isn't anyone else bothered by the false dichotomy presented by the NYT article, Grist commentary and subsequent posts? It's not as though the only choices are elfish-waif-vegan-in-a-hemp-skirt or obsessive-man-chasing-beef-eater. I'm vegan and I honestly don't eat that much salad. It's great on the side with a savoury nut roast or tofu quiche entrée, but I love food too much to subsist on leaves alone. So I don't. On a side note, I don't have that much trouble at restaurants. Could just be that I'm a college student so my friends aren't really in a financial state to blow a ton of money at a steak house, but by and large I have no problem with someone else choosing where we eat.
My main point is that the snarkish criticism and side-taking doesn't help anything. We're all just doing what we can. I happen to forgo animal products. If that's not a good option for you, no biggie. But what the heck does either choice have to do with finding someone to love?
Cheers,
Keaty
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amc89 Posted 2:05 am
13 Aug 2007
Agree with Keaty
Well, said. The false dichotomy thing was my first thought when I read the article in the Times. Vegetarian food runs the specrum between salads on the light side and more hearty fare. I've rarely just ordered a salad at a restaurant.
Interesting that in the UK, news articles have described how eager people are to show off their eco-friendliness in order to attract mates. Wish the same could be said in NY City. At any rate, I've never had a man express disapproval of my my veggie diet. And if a man did give you a hard time for having a vegetarian/vegan diet diet, I think that should give a woman signals that he's not the most open-minded and tolerant of people.
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therealpotato Posted 9:38 am
17 Aug 2007
...but i just like food.
I thought this was an insanely sexist article. I mean, really, in 2007 we're still supposed to be either picking at salads or going all out just to prove we don't pick at salads? I'm just sick of everybody thinking that what a woman eats is a topic for general conversation. How about eating what you like? And I bet steak and salad aren't the only things on the menu.
Personally, I try to pick an original spot where the food is remarkable enough to spark the conversation. If your potential date mentions they've never tried Ethiopian food, why not go out for some doro wat? If you're using food to learn about someone's personality, wouldn't you rather gauge things like how adventurous they are or how much joy they take in delicious new dishes? Come on, people, you're in New York, live a little!
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