My mom likes to tell me a story of one of her first high school dances. She went to dinner in a group of four or five couples. When the food came, she was the only girl who actually ate it. Everyone else had eaten before they left because they were too nervous to be seen ingesting actual food in public; especially male public.

I remembered this story one day in Italy last month. My friends and I went out to lunch in Rome. Two of my friends, a girl and a guy, got the same pasta. When the waiter brought out their food and set it down, he noticed that the girl's plate had a little bit more than the guy's. In the U.S., a waiter probably would either have ignored it or said to the girl, "I'll get you a little more."

But in Rome? Nope. This waiter looked at my female friend, said, "You can't eat all that," and switched her plate with the guy's.

Almost every friend I've told this story to has said something like, "I'd have eaten my food and that other guy's! That would've shown him!" And that's totally fine. Girls should be allowed to have big appetites.

However, the friend this actually happened to didn't respond that way. She said with a shrug, "He's right. I couldn't have eaten all of that."

Of course, it wasn't the waiter's place to dictate how much she would eat. But shouldn't smaller and bigger appetites be equally socially acceptable? Shouldn't girls who are full after a salad be no more or less respected than girls who eat a whole pizza in one sitting?

I have a confession to make: I like salad. I like that crunchy green stuff that's--horror of horrors--healthy. If the dressing's good and the veggies are fresh, I'll eat it right up and maybe ask for more. I also love French fries and fried chicken, but I hate how I feel after I've eaten big helpings of them, so I usually don't bother.

I'd like to be happy with how I eat, and I usually am. But it seems like I can't escape those "Other girls on dates vs. me on a date" memes. Guess who always eats more? "Me." And they never seem to be eating salad, even though I can't be the only girl that likes it. Every time I see those memes, I think I should be eating like a horse in the name of feminism or something. Why do I feel so guilty for eating food I like that makes me feel good?

There's a scene in Rainbow Rowell's novel "Carry On" that makes me think of this problem. The two main female characters are making gingerbread cookies together, and one of them is frosting a pink dress on hers. The other girl says, "Why do the gingerbread girls have to wear pink?" She responds, "Why should the gingerbread girls feel like they shouldn't wear pink?"

Maybe it's because girls have spent so long being told to look, act, and eat like fragile little snowflakes that they're going the other way as hard as they can. Girls once were pressed to wear pink dresses and pink bows in their hair, so now they want nothing to do with anything pink. Girls once were told to watch their figures, so now they gobble up chips and ice cream by the ton. And I have no issues with that, as long as it's their choice and not society's.

At another restaurant in Italy, we were served a four-course meal, all of which was delicious and none of which we wanted to leave on the plate. But our stomachs revolted. Some of us did, in fact, leave food behind. The waitress who came to retrieve our meal said, "Look at the ladies, not finishing their food!"

You see? If you listen to the world's idea of how much you should eat, you'll end up pleasing no one at all. Eat the type and amount of food that makes you happy.