There’s a slightly divey pub not far from the Washington Examiner’s offices. Once, while getting a drink with colleagues, I realized it was passing dinnertime. I wasn’t hungry, but I had no groceries at home. So with one part shame and another part chutzpah, I ordered a side of coleslaw. I knew this looked ridiculous to my male peers, because men simply don’t understand this phenomenon: when you want a few bites of something, but not a full meal or even an appetizer.
A few restaurants across the country have picked up on the fact and decided to add a “My Girlfriend is Not Hungry” entry to the menu. This is an act of feminist heroism for those of us adult women who want to stop stealing our boyfriend’s food or, worse, ordering from the kid’s menu. (Any woman who says she hasn’t done this is lying.)
Eater.com says that “My Girlfriend is Not Hungry” constitutes “thinly-veiled misogyny.” But the food blog doesn’t just impugn restaurants for relying on the trope. They say the phenomenon itself is sexist. Because consent culture, or something.
“It’s framed as a burden a man on a date must endure for … sex later?” writes Jaya Saxena of girls claiming not to be hungry. “At its most benevolent, it causes men to roll their eyes when women snag bites of their dessert. At its worst, it gives men cover for their misdeeds under the guise that she was secretly ‘asking for it.'”
This needless injection of dumb, woke politics has sadly become par for the course for Eater. The site has adopted a strange obsession with President Trump’s diet, even claiming that he “ruined” the entire holiday of Thanksgiving. And just days after Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida had a milkshake hurled at him by an assailant, the website ranked the list of foods antifa protesters could throw at their political adversaries. Eater’s Jenny G. Zhang celebrated the practice of milkshaking as “a nonviolent act that leads to humiliation.”
A fortnight later, journalist Andy Ngo was milkshaked with a substance similar to quick-dry cement and subsequently beaten by members of antifa in Portland, Oregon, for his reporting. He was sent to the hospital for a brain hemorrhage, which sounds like the epitome of nonviolence to me.
I, for one, will continue to steal fries, ask for off-menu sides as meals, and order from the kids menu. Because I’m not hungry, and wokeness makes you look fat.
