Alright darling, can I buy you a drink?

‘Alright darling, can I buy you a drink’, she said as she patted him gently on the arse. The world has been turned upside down, the roles are reversed and Queen’s ‘I Want to Break Free’ plays endlessly on MTV. Girls are now (officially) chasing the guys. It used to be the preserve of man, the hunter-gatherer, to find a woman, bonk her on the head and drag her home. It was expected of men on both sides of the gender divide. But recently, and I have been told by members of the increasingly club-wielding sex that we’re talking in the last two years, that girls here in Belgrade are now the one’s expected to make the move, do the running. The guys are all well pleased, but what’s going on?

Modern man is closer to his opposite number than he has ever been. Men are no longer required to fit masculine stereo-types, even here in the Balkans. They are instead, increasingly metrosexual and the move seems inexorable. Metrosexuals care about their looks, follow fashion and want to buy those new shoes. Such desires used to be the preserve of women, but now with role models like David Beckham and Enrique Iglesias, men are fighting for the right to have, what were formerly, feminine urges. Tits and cars are still great, but modern man’s sophisticated needs have extended beyond them, to moisturisers and tanning salons. A worrying trend if you ask me, but maybe there is a method to the madness. And it goes something like: if we can care for ourselves like women do and aim to look as good, then why shouldn’t we expect to be chased by them too?

Guys are looking after themselves more, but this alone doesn’t explain them becoming passive when it comes to the chase. The passivity that men are increasingly displaying is also tied to the growing rights of women. As women edge towards equality, they are changing the dynamics of that most delicate of subjects; dating. Women have justifiably demanded equal right in all fields, but now it is the turn of men to argue that if women expect equal treatment, then men do too. And it is in the field of dating that guy’s are apparently asserting their long neglected rights. It’s our turn to be chased and play hard to get, and damn it we’re going to enjoy it.

As for women, they seem to be taking on this new responsibility in response to role models from across the Atlantic. Women like Samantha Jones from Sex in the City have encouraged women to go out and get what they want. It is no longer a taboo for them to approach. Why wait for the man to make the first move, women are asking themselves. And if they do some of the running themselves, they are more likely to get their hands on a partner they want. So in a world of equality, men are increasingly asking to be chased as much as chase; and women, for their part, are responding.