Today, I spent an uncomfortable twenty minutes in the barbers with my brother while he had his hair cut. Before I left to meet a friend, the barbers, clients and I were listening to a debate on radio station Kiss about ‘first dates’. The host, who’s name I don’t know/care about, relayed information from a survey that said on average, a huge percent of women want a minimum of £100 to be spent on the first date. The barbers at this point had to stop what they were doing to laugh wildly at the outrageous statistics. “Nah man, I’d want them to spend that on me init,” one laughed, waving around a comb. As I slunk down further in my chair, trying to hide the 50 shades of embarrassment on my face, I thought about first dates and what they mean to us as girls.
The host of the show said that women are hard work. A tough cookie to break. A real pain in the arse. Well not so much in those words, but she was insisting that women are strong and know what they want in a man and in a first date. One barber, again, fought back shouting at the television that women are “easy”. Oh how wrong you are, sir.
It’s a true fact, though: women do know what they want. We want a man who is loyal but manly, romantic but strong, funny but laid back, good looking but a real sweetheart. We want it all: a man who can put up a shelf but who melts at the sight of their dog, who can shout at the football but give the best cuddles. But what do men want in us? The “gentlemen” in the salon all laughed and poked fun at common women’s expectations, before saying they wouldn’t care as long as she was “fit”.
Excellent.
If a woman needed her confidence in dates boosting: here it was. The barber whose trousers were so far down his legs they may as well have been laying flat on the underworld, acted like he knew everything about women. It was until he laughed, jokily: “just take her to KFC, init,” that I (excuse my language) lost my sh*t. The reason women dream about men who derive from the likes of The Notebook, Dirty Dancing and all that malarky is because some of the men that surround us in this day and age are not men, they are boys.
These ‘boys’ don’t help the expectations, instead they make us lose faith in relationships. They make us think that there is no man that fits into the criteria above. First dates are always a touchy subject with most women. It either goes really good, or really bad. But what is a perfect first date? Is it that romantic meal that women who took part of that survey desired? Or is it that simple fast food takeaway and comedy film? It depends on you and the person you’re dating. If you find that you have things in common before your date, you can compromise.
While one of the low-aged barbers made a silent promise to his future ‘wifey’ that their first date would be to KFC courtesy of her pay-packet, it’s no wonder that women want £100 spent on them via romantic meals and excellent adventures: men could probably afford it.