I recently went on a date after a night out. Bad choice. I dragged myself out of bed, looked at my dishevelled face and realised I did the ultimate of all sins, I slept with my makeup on. It must have been a good night.
Anyway, off I go to this lunch date, trying to hold back the fun from the night before. We had decided to go for lunch, but I had chosen a bakery where the only option were a few cupcakes – rookie error. There was no way I was going to be stomaching one of those, so I opted for a tea as we sat there getting to know each other. As the date went on, we went for a walk on the search for actual lunch and when we discovered a place, I declined the offer of a sandwich.
“Do you just not eat?”
As someone who is overweight, this threw me. “What do you mean?”
“Well you haven’t eaten anything all day and when we were on FaceTime, you were making lunch at 5pm and said you hadn’t eaten all day”
This is the first time I had to justify my lack of appetite, since I was 15 when I had a brief experience with the ‘air and water’ diet. Although it was said with care and concern, it made me incredibly uncomfortable that he had been so observant about my eating habits and for the first time, I understood why girls were so paranoid about what they eat in front of boys. I found myself explaining my irregular eating habits – I work across different timezones and so I had an irregular sleep schedule and the matching eating schedule, and why on this particular day I had an increasing fragile stomach. In all honesty, it felt strange to have to justify my eating choices but a position which I feared is one a number of girls are put in.
This was further confirmed when in the latest episode of the bachelor, a girl was quoted as saying “I don’t want to eat in front of you, that’s embarrassing”. Since when did fulfilling a basic human need become embarrassing?
To answer the question, your first date is the precedent for all the dates to come so eat what you like and if they make any comments about how you are eating, run for the hills. Are you a clumsy person? Don’t want to order spaghetti because you may make a mess of it and it might end up on your lap? Join the club – on my array of first dates, I fallen over into roads, I have tripped over my own feet and spilled my drink all over the place. I still order what I want and if you do happen to spill something, I laugh at myself as I ordinarily would do with any other person. I accept the clumsy part of myself, just like any guy I am with needs to as well. I can promise you that someone who is able to laugh at themselves is ten times more attractive than someone who isn’t comfortable enough to be herself.
I understand the need of wanting to make a good first impression, but I’m a big believer in the last impression, and if the deal-breaker if what I eat, I will happily say ‘No deal’.