Not Even Hillary Clinton Knows Whether Dudes Should Pay for Dates
Hillary Clinton had to answer a really tough question as part of a campaign interview with Cosmopolitan yesterday: who should pay on a date, the guy or the girl?
It might seem like a softball questions, but this is a tricky issue that hits on matters of etiquette, gender roles, and even, if you push it hard enough, the wage gap — should whoever makes a higher salary pay? Should girls always get a pass since we’re making 79 cents on the dude’s dollar anyway? Are you a bad feminist if you let a guy pay your way? There are just so many variables to consider.
So here’s what Hillary had to say:
Look, I think splitting the cost on a date has to be evaluated on a kind of case-by-case basis. You know, many years ago I remember doing that, and I know a lot of young people who even today do because they kind of consider more casual dates, group dates, to be ones where everybody pays their fair share, but I think you also have to be alert to the feelings of the person that you are dating. If it’s important to that person to either split in the beginning of the relationship, or for one or the other of you to pay for whatever combination of reasons, you know, you just have to evaluate that and take it into account. So I don’t think there is a hard and fast rule, at least that I have ever seen followed in every instance.
This is an uncharacteristically mushy-mouthed answer for Hil!
But she’s got a point. Some people prefer to have a dude take the lead payment-wise. Others are horrified if a guy won’t let them contribute. My favorite rule: whoever initiated the date pays. If you’re a Bumble fan you might go broke abiding by that one, but if not, it’s a pretty convenient and common-sense way to do it.
Click here to read the rest of the interview, which is full of questions that are hard to answer in a different way, like who she’d have in her cabinet as president…
