Be yourself, but only if you are thin and you eat beef

Saw this post on Salon.com's Broadsheet yesterday. It's a sarcastic response to this crappy article in the New York Times that basically says women should order a big juicy steak on a first date, because it signals to men that they are not worried about their weight or about seeming dainty or feminine. So that's great -- women should be thin, but they shouldn't try to be thin. Or if they are trying to be thin, they should pretend that they aren't trying to be thin. And either way, a cow should be slaughtered. Of course, all this advice is geared towards thin women -- there's no word on whether a fat woman should want her date to think she is worried about her weight. Presumably a fat woman just won't be on a date to begin with.

Another thing that grinds my gears about this article is the way that vegetarianism is portrayed. From the adjectives used to describe meat-eaters in this article, you are led to conclude that vegetarians are: pretentious, not down-to-earth (that one gets in there twice), neurotic, obsessed with their weight, people with "food issues", high maintenance, mousy, wimpy, insipid, childish, vapid, uninteresting, and finicky. The article does acknowledge that maybe the best thing to do is to order what you want instead of thinking too hard about what other people think you should order, but it is quickly made clear that "what you want" is sure to involve a dead cow. So, as the title of the article says: "Be Yourselves, Girls, Order The Rib-Eye"!