In case you haven’t been following my mess of an Instagram feed, I recently spent 10 days in Japan, unveiling a world so far removed from the Western hemisphere that it would be take me days of waxing poetic lyrics to depict all my observations. As a key takeaway, however, comes an innate admiration for the impeccable etiquette of this country’s inhabitants, a phenomena reflected in each mutually respective interaction. While I was wary to investigate the dating scene, this particular dissonance with the Western world inadvertently triggered me to reflect on the etiquette of dating, a rapidly demising concept within itself. Additionally, I was traveling with two Latin-American boys who had zero romantic interest in me, and yet were brought up to treat women in a way that made me feel like (insert eye roll) a princess, at least as much of a princess as one can be in a never-ending chain of bullet trains and Capsule hotels. Combined with my Russian upbringing, which evokes a similar set of courtesy codes that I struggle to find elsewhere, I am left questioning whether a certain lack of chivalry is an issue particularly pertinent to the European and American cultures, perhaps a downside to the fight for gender equality?
