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‘You won’t like that,’ a waiter recently told me, after ordering a cocktail from the menu.
I blinked at him. He didn’t know me, how could he possibly know what sort of drinks I liked?
‘It’s a very strong drink, I think you’d be happier with something else,’ he continued, following a few more seconds of stunned silence on my end.
He hadn’t made the same comment to my husband, who’d just ordered a martini. It seemed like he’d simply decided that as a woman, I couldn’t possibly handle my liquor.
He proceeded to offer me the menu once more, to see if there was something else I’d prefer, but I doubled down on the order, infuriated by a stranger’s assumptions about me.
The waiter might not have intended his comments to come across in a sexist manner, but as soon as the words left his mouth, the damage was done.
I might love a silly little drink and look like I do too, but that doesn’t mean I can’t order something stronger every now and then. It shouldn’t need to be said, but pink drinks aren’t just for women and hard spirits aren’t reserved for men.
And it’s not just drinks these kinds of gendered assumptions are limited to – it happens with food all too often as well.
Salads and vegetarian dishes are too often served to women, while meatier plates get plonked down on the table in front of men.
Fellow journalist Jo Elvin recently wrote about this on her Substack, explaining that her husband is a vegetarian, but he’s always served the steak she orders at restaurants.
She also claimed that colleagues have brazenly told her they could never be with someone who was vegetarian as it’s an ‘unmanly’ dietary choice.
But it doesn’t stop there. On TikTok women have started ordering takeaways under male names as they claim to receive larger portions when they do so, others are ‘shamed’ for their food choices, and some say they are being ignored altogether in restaurants, with staff focusing their attention on the men at the table instead.
‘I’ve constantly noticed that if a man and a woman are out at a restaurant [or] cafe together, the man is always given the menu first, asked if we’re ready to order, thanked at the end, asked if the food is okay halfway through, has the specials read out to him. This is regardless of whether it’s a male or female waiter/waitress,’ posted Loka123 on Mumsnet.
A fellow user, known as BloomedAgain, felt similarly, replying: ‘It really annoys me, especially when I’m paying/treating and then have to intercept the bill.’
And Minta85 agreed, adding: ‘Yes I notice this frequently and I find it very rude and disrespectful. Just this weekend, my husband and I were staying in a B&B and the woman who ran it kept directing her conversation at him only, when I was there too!’
As someone who reviews restaurants for a living, I’ve definitely noticed a shift in the way I’m being spoken to by male waiters.
Which is to say, that I’m not really being spoken to at all.
Nine times out of 10, when I go to a restaurant with my husband, it’s the same story. As soon as a waiter comes over, their focus instantly locks in on the man across from me. It’s like I don’t even exist.
It’s giving women should be seen and not heard, and it feels so 1950s.
My husband gets the full rundown of specials, the offer to try the wine first and they look to him to determine whether we’re ready to order and when we want the bill (which they also slide his way). I barely get a look in, despite being the one you’d assume they’d want to impress.
Now, this isn’t me saying I need to be the centre of attention all the time, I actually dislike being in the spotlight. But I do like being able to make decisions for myself and I hate that it feels like men are constantly insinuating that I’m incapable of doing so.
I probably shouldn’t be too surprised by this though, given the issues women continue to face each day.
If it weren’t obvious already, traditional gender norms ‘remain strong’ in the UK, as was confirmed by the most recent report in the British Social Attitudes series by the National Centre for Social Research.
The authors of the survey found that traditional gender norms are ‘deeply embedded’ in British society, which impacts equality and influences public attitudes about men and women.
As such, nearly half of girls and young women feel they are being limited by societal expectations about how women should act, (as revealed in the State of Girls’ Rights report) and 56% want more to be done to change the attitudes and behaviour of men towards women.
Women are also being food shamed in restaurants...
A woman named Liv (@livlivinlife__) recently took to TikTok to share an uncomfortable experience she and her friend had in a Spanish restaurant with a male waiter.
Her clip shows the two women attempting to order food to share between them, however the waiter refuses to put the order through as he claims they’re ordering too much.
She wrote: ‘Just went out for dinner and the male waiter told us our order was too much food for a group of women. We literally ordered starters and a main to share.
‘He literally refused to put the order through and made us feel so bad for ordering anything more than what he recommended (we did not ask for his advice on this).
‘I love them men think women don’t eat.’
Liv added in the caption: ‘This is actually WILD, just like god forbid women have appetites???’
The video quickly went viral, garnering more than three million views, and Liv has shared several updates including the manager’s reaction to the incident.
In a follow-up clip, she films herself as the manager can be heard saying that the waiter’s comments were probably ‘just meant in a jokey way’. Appalled, her friend replies that they’ve both struggled with eating disorders in the past and didn’t find it funny.
People in the comments were ‘blown away’ that the manager was trying to ‘justify’ the man’s behaviour and some even thought it was ‘gaslighting’ and ‘shaming’.
And Liv isn’t the only one who has experienced this kind of attitude when dining out.
Another user known as @nurseshark007 shared that she too was recently questioned by a male waiter about her food order.
‘I was just body shamed by a waiter,’ she says to the camera, while sitting in her car.
‘I ordered French toast with egg and bacon and the guy looks at me and says: “Are you sure you want to order that full stack of French toast, you look like you barely eat.”‘
She claims to have called him out on his comment and he apologised as she explained why he shouldn’t have said it.
‘It’s not ok to say that,’ she adds, urging people to be more ‘sensitive’.
And who can blame them? Online misogyny is rife, with a rise of the Alpha Male archetype and an epidemic of violence against women.
This has led 93% of girls and young women say they don’t feel ‘completely safe’ in public spaces, because of the way they are treated.
Clearly there’s a lot of work to be done across the board and there are definitely much bigger fish to fry than waiters who make unhelpful comments.
But if you’re reading this and are guilty of making assumptions about people based on their gender – even if it is about something as inconsequential as a drink order – I hope you’ll think twice next time.
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