"I heard that chivalry was dead, but I think it's just got a bad flue." -Meg Ryan

This month our class has continued to study into gender studies and I noticed that majority of our conversations revolved around the gender studies of marriage. How women are to be wives and mothers, are devoted housemothers, slaves to their families, and what you have you. However, I think there is something else that we miss and that is when women are still young, before they step into the marriage, the dating life. Our class talked about how society was breaking away from the norms about women and their roles in society and I think the same goes into dating life such as in high school. Here are some examples of how dating has changed in society:

• When you would pick up your date for the movies or dinner, it was always proper to get out of the car and knock on the front door. It seems that more and more in this society, men don't always take the time to walk twenty steps to the front door, but instead take the twenty seconds it takes to text "here" to their date.
• When girls get into cars, it would be oh so gentlemen like if her date would come around to her side of the car and open the door for her. We are absolutely capable of opening it ourselves, but its a simple sweet notion made by men. Or opening the door or letting the girl go in front of you.
• This one may be a stretch for some- girls paying for the guy's meals instead of the other way around. I feel like this can go either way of the argument. I've heard men said, "You want to be equal in politics, pay, and rights? Fine then you can pay." Its a slow change in society, but it is occurring. Some women will say that they don't think its fair that men pay all the time and want to chip in too. Times are changing and this is another example of how the dating life is.
• Girls dressing nice for a date. Our society has become very laid back that in the dating life, girls are rarely seen as dressed up or wearing anything different from the norm. It use to be special for their dates, seeing them all dazzled up and what not, but most girls will leave the house with jeans and a t shirt instead.
• ^^This one can also go with guys too. Personally, I like the jeans with button down shirt look. But showing up for date in ripped jeans, a dirty t shirt, and muddy shoes, not my first choice of attire. Men use to put just as much thought and consideration in their outfits as women did, but like women, they've fallen out of the importance of clothing while on a date.
• This one is a personal pet peeve of mine... Dating life use to be between two people, not two people and their cellphones. Girls have the tendency to get wrapped up in their cell phones, chatting it up with their friends, thumbs moving at a million miles an hour. Boys may be doing the exact thing. We as a society have our nose so into our cell phones that we don't always concentrate on the person sitting across from us a table or next to us at the movies.
  

Personally, I like the more traditionally dating life better than how society has made dating today. So casual like its nothing when it use to be something special, for both perspectives: boys and girls.