If it isn’t already obvious, you probably shouldn’t tell your partner what they can or cannot eat. While this should be clear under any circumstances, you especially should not do it at a restaurant in front of your waiter — but leave it to social media to test that.
In a viral new trend gaining millions of likes, women on social media are asking their male partners if they can order something specific in front of their waiters, giving the impression that they usually ask their partner for their approval before ordering certain dishes.
In this video, the woman asks her partner, “Can I get the fries instead of the salad this time?” to which her boyfriend replies, “What are you asking me for? Get whatever you want,” with a rather horrified expression on his face.
It’s the same routine across all these videos: The woman asks, the man quickly responds with a shocked and embarrassed look on his face, and the waiter sometimes even chimes in with a comment or laughs because they’ve already seen videos of couples doing this.
This trend is so successful because it plays into a few things, one being that a woman is publicly embarrassing her boyfriend by acting like she always asks him for permission to eat food, maybe attributing it to him helping her “watch her figure” or it just being the dynamic of their relationship. To a third-party bystander or an unsuspecting partner, a statement like this would, naturally, catch them off-guard.
But even men are participating, too.
The phenomenon of a “viral couples prank” has existed for well over a decade now, and oftentimes, they cross a pretty drastic line regarding what kind of a prank is okay and probably not okay to play on your partner. Social media has also made calling out bad behavior between couples in relationships on the internet much more popular — so naturally, someone witnessing this kind of dialogue with no context would react put-off by it physically.
There’s something about this trend that makes me look at dating in a greater context, and it makes me think of an article I wrote last summer about the concept of “princess treatment” and how a man picking out and ordering food for his wife, to some women, felt very masculine and assertive in a way that they liked — akin to being “treated like a princess.” It sent up a lot of red flags: Even restaurant workers chimed in to say they’re concerned if they see behaviors like this and pointed out it could be linked to something more serious, like a domestic violence situation. Many people online agreed, and it sparked a wider conversation about what is and isn’t considered “princess treatment.”
Now, we’re seeing a rise of women making fun of an archetype that feels widely outdated, which feels nice. They know their partners wouldn’t actually do that to them, especially given all their reactions, so there’s no actual harm done in a prank like this. The women laugh, and the men even look worried or shocked that their partner would even ask that.
All this to say: As a society, we’ve truly come so far with how people in relationships behave while on restaurant dates.
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