Buying drinks for girls on a night out is outdated and sexist

The clock strikes 1.30am as the night is reaching that desperate pulling stage before the club shuts. Up walks a girl between two guys. The one on the right offers to buy the girl a drink. “Double vodka coke”, she says without hesitation. He turns to pay, but by the time he’s turned back the girl has left, arm-in-arm with the other player.

This method of attracting the opposite sex is outdated. Buying a girl a drink is one of the few surviving traditions from a bygone era where men were seen as the sole providers. Today, this is not the case. Despite this, buying girls a drink in a bar is still seen as the norm. It would be easy to quote the income gap between females and males yet this holds no baring among university students, who all have the same student loan; we are all as poor as each other.

So why does it happen? A mixture of a guy using desperate methods to impress a girl, a way of continuing conversation and social pressure telling him this is the done thing. Too many times have I lost precious cash attempting to keep conversation going with a girl way out of my league and who has about as much interest in me as my dad. Women are either keen or not; drink buying has no effect.

Nothing seems more desperate than buying a girl’s time, which in fact, she has no obligation to give. If my shifts behind a uni bar have taught me anything, the likelihood of a women sticking around once a man has bought her a drink is about equal to the chance she has of being bought another drink by the same guy. A girl is either keen, keeping the conversation going, or goes for the ultimate rejection of “I have a boyfriend”.

This is not a tirade against buying other people drinks, it’s more about the motive. It’s great people buy each other drinks, but why shouldn’t a girl buy a guy one? Instead of guys parading around money they’ve borrowed from the government in order to impress girls, people might as well do rounds. This extends the commitment beyond one drink and means double the alcohol.

This issue is directly linked to the wider question of how we view women in society. It represents a traditional view that women should be looked after rather than being independent and self providing. I am by no means saying this is the biggest gender issue but the one most blatant in student life.

Buying girls drinks in clubs is an outdated, sexist and expensive way of trying to pull the opposite sex, which doesn’t normally work. In today’s world, where girls should feel comfortable approaching guys and splitting restaurant bills, there is no need for this practice, so stop. It’s only costing you money.