Why Do Hot Girls Settle?

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, it really got me thinking ..... men just ain't it!

Last Friday, I had the treat of catching up with my girlfriends for drinks and a well-needed boogie. But before the alcohol began to take its effect, we all threw our life updates across the sticky pub table, and the common consensus was that men are very much underwhelming.

My friends are pretty goddamn hot; they’re smart, they’re witty, they’re funny and alluring; pretty much, they’re the girls you’d take home to meet the family. But why are they stuck with mediocre crusty men who can’t even commit to a dinner plan, let alone their feelings? Last year, I experienced the treacherous hell of the London dating scene. After multiple failed first dates, some lacklustre one-night stands, and a failed 8-month-long situationship, I, too, began to question the reality of modern dating. Luckily, when all the doors felt like they had shut, a whole new opportunity popped up out of nowhere, and now I’m with one of the only good men out there, it seems. But that’s beside the point. The point is, where the fuck has chivalry gone?

Growing up, I would spend my Friday nights watching rom-coms with my mother, and in these films, the bare minimum was a man opening the door for a woman, getting her coat, or helping her with her chair at dinner. These were never deemed exemplary tasks - they were simply expected. While I’m all for the feminist movement and encouraging women to strive for an independent lifestyle, this shouldn’t mean manners don’t matter for men. Women still want flowers; we still want you to open the door for us, and we still want you to take the initiative and plan a DAMN date. I’ve heard myself and my friends preach to the lords above about how amazing a man is for simply booking a restaurant?!? Even as I write this, I acknowledge how obscene that is. ‘No, but seriously, he even took me to this new restaurant he has been wanting to try’; I hear us women preach as if this man is a godsend. Instead, he, at this point, is just a man.

But are we, as women, just lowering our standards while men are making the most of these easily achievable expectations? Or have we been forced to settle on the bare minimum in hopes of finding ‘the one’?

It’s a question I often wonder: why are we ever so desperately chasing these breadcrumbs when we deserve nothing less than a Michelin-star experience? On the plane the other day, I watched He’s Just Not That Into You for the first time, and though my first takeaway was ‘Wow, what a cast!’ it put things into perspective. Throughout my short-lived dating adventures, the one thing I would always tell myself whenever I waited for a reply after three days of silence was, ‘If he wanted to, he would.’ However, I also fought myself by saying, ‘If I wanted to, I would,’ and I would inherently send that double or triple text.

But will things ever change? And what needs to happen?

I truly believe that dating apps have helped turn the dating scene into a fiery pit of hell. They have allowed people to flee conversations without explanation. Thus, ‘ghosting’ is now a standard practice. The abundance of choice has devalued real connections, turning dating into a mindless swipe game where commitment feels optional. We’ve been conditioned to think that effort is a rare commodity, something to be cherished when we stumble upon it rather than a baseline expectation.

So, where do we go from here? Perhaps the answer lies in recalibrating our standards and demanding more. Women need to stop glorifying the bare minimum, and men need to step up. It’s about valuing effort, not just in grand gestures but in the consistency of everyday actions. Chivalry isn’t dead ….. it’s just on life support. But if we collectively refuse to settle, maybe, just maybe, we can bring it back to life.

xoxo