Matt Yglesias responds to a passage from “Bad Tip” Tyler Cowen’s* brief of his new book An Economist Gets Lunch. Yglesias gets all wonky in the response so I’ll just cut to the chase in human talk. Cowen writes:
I also start to worry if many women in a restaurant are beautiful in a trendy or stylish way. The point is not that beautiful women have bad taste in food. Instead, the problem is that they will attract a lot of men to the restaurant, whether or not the place serves excellent food. And that allows the restaurant to cut back on the quality of the food.
But the trendiness of the restaurant does have to be supported by some higher level of quality of the food or else these trend-setting women would seemingly move on to another restaurant hotspot, at least by Cowen’s logic. Otherwise he’s merely saying that he hedges the quality of the food in trendy restaurants.
Initially, I rebelled against Cowen’s implication that men have unrefined palates or that they just don’t care about food quality. I don’t want to make some sort of gender issue out of it, but his argument implies that these trend-seeking women’s palates are unrefined as well. If they’re flocking to the restaurant just because of the trend-factor then the change in food quality is not dependent on the fact that the men are there just for the scenery. I think Cowen is getting a little too fancy in his analysis by taking it a degree or two too far.
I’d venture to argue that Twilight isn’t a good movie because it is the type of movie (and book series) that draws teen girls and young women. That doting boyfriends may go along to see the movies too is a mere correlation that has less predictive power than the fact that the material is watered down to the point that it draws in female viewers for superficial reasons.
On another note, I tend to hedge the quality of the food and the service in places where the waitstaff – not the patrons – are made up of beautiful women. Granted, I’m thinking of Hooters and not of some swanky place in a city on the Coasts. Nothing worse than a waitress who thinks she’s hot shit – and knows it. Seinfeld, as usual, addressed this:
ELAINE: (to the waitress) Could we get a little more? (she doesn’t listen and walks away) Aghh… You know ever since this new owner took over, the service here is *really* slow.
JERRY: Yeah. Have you noticed anything else that’s different since the new management?
ELAINE: Mmm. They’re putting a little lemon in the tuna. I love that.
JERRY: Beside that. Look at the waitresses.
ELAINE: Yeah? (we see that all the waitresses have big breasts)
JERRY: What physical characteristic would you say is common to all of them?
ELAINE: Ah…
JERRY: I mean look at this. Every waitress working here has the same proportions. Wouldn’t you say?
ELAINE: Yes, I would say.
JERRY: What’s going on here. How is that possible?
ELAINE: Do you think it’s a coincidence?
JERRY: No. I haven’t seen four women like this together outside of a Russ Meyer film.
(the waitress finally came with the coffee)
Cowen has replied to Yglesias here.
*Even though I’m a waiter myself, I don’t bristle at Cowen’s suggestion to not tip above 15% per se. Waitstaff are well payed for our work. But I do have to rag on Cowen a little bit because if I didn’t my co-workers would probably murder me. I work with people who think 20% if the baseline for crappy service.
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That sounds like the kind of thing he should let his wife worry about, if he has one.
Attractive women don’t tend to go out to fancy restaurants on their own, nor is a restaurant and ideal place for making a move on a dining woman. Women are usually there with dates, it is their dates that are choosing the location.
For that matter the part of the country which I imagine Cowen is most intimate with isn’t really known for its’ trendy, flavor of the month dining like NYC, so I don’t even really know what he’s talking about in terms of the trendiness of restaurants.
However I have been to bars and clubs that are clearly hotspots based on their female attendance that are very overrated (poor layout, music, obnoxious staff, bad bartending, et cetera), and I can’t explain their popularity.
Yeah men usually choose the restaurant, particularly if it’s an upscale one.
Cowen enjoys cheap chalupas. A refined palate indeed!
I have a chunky friend (albeit with a good personality) who hangs out at Hooters almost every evening and weekend. He gets laid a few times a year that way (by women a LOT younger and prettier than him) just by being social and hanging out with the chicks.
I haven’t been to a Hooters in ten years. Do they still have hot young white waitresses?
I think I’ve only been to hooters once, in Florida. Yeah the girls were mostly pretty hot in a kinda dumb blonde (mostly) kind of way. But that was over ten years ago. I think they had one black waitress. Some white Cuban ones though. Mostly non Hispanic whites.
What an odd post.
Men with taste and breeding pick the restaurants (and the wines)–and the hot women follow.
At least that’s the way it is around here.
You guys should stick to frozen chimichangas.
Women tend to confuse ‘exotic” with good food whereas a man will actually know the difference between wagyu and Murray grey.
I see Fug1 and the little Polack are still commenting, LOL. And Lara still thinks she can get some e-dick, LOL. Buncha dumbass mothafuckas.
Obsidian’s personality did a 180. I wonder what happened.
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My sister and I were both so attractive in our heyday that we would stop diners’ conversations when we entered a restaurant and even beautiful waitresses would remark upon our charms. We went to restaurants that served delicious food. Having been taught to cook and appreciate food by our grandmama who was also interested in fine dining, we were gourmands long before it was popular to be one.