Equality is not a menu. You don’t get to pick the bits you want.
“The bill arrives and suddenly he is feminism’s finest, waving the equality flag like he stitched it himself.”
Azalea Tailor
Last year I found myself in a situation far too many women will recognise – chased for months by a man determined to take me out to dinner.
Not casually. Not one polite ask and a respectful retreat. No. Like his life depended on it chased. Message after message. Suggestion after suggestion. It was the sort of persistence that, against your better judgement, starts to wear you down until you think, ok fine, go on then, what have I got to lose?
I should have trusted my first instinct. He turned up late, blaming the tube. I knew better. His footie team were playing and he got ‘caught up’ watching the first half before getting on the tube. Which, obviously, is exactly the sort of sentence every woman dreams of hearing from a man who has spent months begging to take her out.
It got better. He arrived in trainers, jeans, and a t-shirt looking like he had rolled out of bed and into the restaurant he had cajoled me into turning up to. Great effort. Really premium stuff. And before anyone writes in to tell me women don’t owe men glamour and men don’t owe women a fashion parade, spare me. This isn’t about labels. It’s about energy. If you pursue someone for months, turn up on time, looking like you gave at least a passing thought to being there.
Then the bill arrived. And you would have thought the waiter had slapped him with it. This man had happily ordered food and two bottles of wine at the restaurant he had chosen, only to look absolutely mortified when the time came to pay. Not mildly awkward. Not even just a bit surprised. Full on panicked. The sort of face people pull when they realise their parking app didn’t actually work and the traffic warden is already halfway down the road.
But even that was not the clanger. The next day, he messaged to tell me he had canvassed his female work colleagues and they all agreed I was unreasonable for expecting him to pick up such a large bill.
A large bill… At the restaurant he booked. On the date he pushed for. After months of asking.
Naturally, this then escalated into him telling me I was a gold digger who had clearly turned up expecting to be, quite unreasonably, whisked off to Paris on a first date. Which, to be fair, sounds lovely. But anyone who knows me knows I’m not some woman arranging a date for every night of the week just to get my dinner paid for.
And that was the moment the speech practically wrote itself.
It’s funny, isn’t it, how some men become feminism’s biggest supporters right when the waiter arrives with the bill? Suddenly, they are all about fairness. Equal rights. Equal treatment. Equal contribution. Look at them go. One minute they are ordering the truffle fries, the next they’re leading a TED Talk on modern womanhood because the card machine has made an appearance.
And before anyone goes full ‘hold my earrings, b*tch’ over this, let me be clear, this is not me saying a man should always pay. Relax. I am not trying to drag us all back to 1952 in a cinched waist and a kitten heel, although I do like the look. Split the bill. Take turns. Pay for your own dinner. That is not the issue here
The issue is the little magic trick some people pull, becoming wildly committed to equality only when it saves them money, effort, or inconvenience. That is when the speeches begin. That is when they start sounding like seasoned feminists, despite barely managing eye contact when the bill lands.
Because the bill is never just the bill, is it? It’s never really about £34 and an unseasoned chicken skewer. It’s about expectation. It’s about entitlement. It’s about how some people want the language of equality while still quietly clinging to all the old comforts that came before it.
They want a woman with her own money, her own mind, her own life, and preferably her own mortgage. Wonderful. How very modern. How evolved. How terribly attractive on paper. But they also want her to be in her feminine energy – warm, polished, and poised. Soft in the right places. Strong in the useful ones. Independent, but not so independent that she stops admiring him. Self-sufficient, but still somehow arranged in a way that makes him feel important.
So let me get this straight. You want an equal. But also a woman who arrives looking like arm candy, carrying the conversation, managing the mood, and pretending not to notice you have the emotional range of an unplugged toaster? Sure, let me oblige.
Because that is the bit no one says out loud. A lot of people do not want equality. They want a better deal. Modern enough to benefit, old-fashioned enough to receive, while leaving their ego completely untouched.
And frankly, it’s hard not to notice. You see it in dating all the time. Men who say they want a strong woman, right up until she has standards. Men who say they love independent women, then sulk the moment she stops centring her life around them. Men who shout fairness over the bill, but still expect the woman to have spent time and money making the effort. To look good. To be gracious. To be easy. To turn up as the most polished version of herself while he arrives looking like he got dressed during the adverts and still expects a gold star for being emotionally available enough to ask what she does for work.
And women know this. God, do we know this. We know what it costs to make an effort, even when that effort has become so normalised we almost stop calling it effort at all. The outfit that says effortless but took six changes. The hair. The face. The internal negotiation over heels versus comfort, sexy versus sane, approachable versus too much. The emotional calibration of trying to be open, engaging, attractive, interesting and safe, all at once, while also making sure you are not accidentally making a mediocre man feel inadequate because you used a long word and paid your council tax on time.
It is exhausting. And yet that labour is so expected, so baked into the wallpaper of heterosexual dating, that many people only notice it when a woman withdraws it. When she turns up comfortable. When she stops performing. When she mirrors the same ease men have enjoyed for centuries and suddenly, somehow, she is the one not making an effort.
That is when the mask slips. Because equality sounds marvellous when it means splitting a bill. It sounds less marvellous when it means surrendering the quiet little privileges you never bothered to examine because they arrived dressed as normality. The woman making the effort. The woman softening the moment. The woman carrying the emotional weight. The woman making herself appealing, agreeable, easy to be with. The woman doing all the tiny invisible things that make an interaction feel smooth while you mistake that smoothness for your own charm.
That is the scam, really. The invisible things are still expected. They are just no longer named. Modern double standards are clever like that. They don’t announce themselves in some grand, cartoonish way. No one is standing on a table yelling, “I demand equality, but only the bits that benefit me.” No. It is subtler. Slicker. Better dressed. It comes wrapped in the language of fairness and progress, while quietly preserving the old perks in the background.
– It is the man who wants you to pay half, but still expects you to look like the soft-focus version of yourself from five filters ago.
– It is the partner who believes in independent women, but not when that independence means you no longer tolerate the breadcrumbs he is giving you.
– It is the person who says they want honesty, but only when it comes gift-wrapped in a tone gentle enough not to bruise their ego.
– It is the one who wants the modern woman, but still expects the old school service.
It’s not really about dating. Dating is just where the nonsense is easiest to spot. Romance has a habit of dragging people’s contradictions into the light and sitting them under a very expensive pendant lamp.
But this pattern is everywhere. In relationships where both people work full-time, but one still becomes the household manager, therapist, birthday rememberer, and finder of lost school shoes. In workplaces where people love equal opportunity until equal accountability turns up in a blazer. In friendships where people demand understanding by the bucketload, but disappear the second emotional labour has to travel in the other direction.
Principles are easy when they are flattering. Anyone can believe in equality when it gives them something. The real test is whether you still believe in it when it costs you. That’s where you get to see someone’s true intentions.
And maybe that is why that date stayed with me. Not because people are contradictory. We all are. God knows I have had enough bad takes in a fitted dress to last a lifetime. But at least have the decency to be honest about it. Do not stand there calling it principle when what you really mean is preference. Do not dress up convenience as morality and expect nobody to clock the outfit.
Just be honest, say you like the bits that benefit you. Just say you enjoy the lighter bill, the softer woman, the easier road, the reduced expectation, the flattering version of progress that leaves your comfort completely intact. Just don’t call that equality, because it is not. If you want equality, want it properly.
– Want it when it costs you.
– Want it when it inconveniences you.
– Want it when it humbles you.
– Want it when it means you are no longer the automatic centre of someone else’s effort.
– Want it when the standard lands back in your lap and suddenly it doesn’t feel quite so sexy after all.
Otherwise, let’s not kid ourselves. This was never about fairness. It was about convenience. And convenience, however modern it sounds, has never been the same thing as equality. 💋
