Shakes Sis has a post up about a favor tactic in commercials–setting up situations where men are told that in order to prove they are Not Women or Not Pussywhipped, they are required to do whatever the advertisers tell them to do, no matter how damaging or stupid. In this case, it’s a pretty easy sell because the required behavior is to eat lots of disgusting fast food.
TGI Friday’s: Four guys sit at a booth together. When their food is delivered, guy #1 stabs his steak and holds it up and growls, “Meat!� Guys #2 and #3 follow in kind. Stab. “Meat!� Guy #4 stabs a piece of broccoli and holds it up, saying, “Vegetable medley!� The other three guys all look at each other, then look at him with an expression that would best be translated as, “What are you—some kind of fag?!� Guy #4 sheepishly drops his broccoli, stabs a sausage and holds it up, saying, “Sausage!� They all cheer triumphantly. Guy #4 is a fag no more. You know, because he’s about to eat some sausage.
Burger King: A guy and a girl sit at a table together. The guy throws down his fork and jumps up into a song-and-dance routine, braying about how he’s not going to eat “chick food� anymore. He sings and dances his way to Burger King to get a ginormous burger, joined by other men who are all doing the same. The refrain of this song is “I am man, hear me roar, I’m incorrigible, I eat meat.� Spray-painted signs declaring “I Am Man� are unfurled off of overpasses. An Asian man in a business suit collapses onto the sidewalk, hungrily tearing into a Double Whopper. “I’ve eaten quiche, but I won’t anymore,� the men’s chorus sings. The men riot and toss a mini-van off a bridge, which lands in the back of a dump truck being towed by an old man clad in leather, who’s being led forward by a woman bearing a burger on a silver tray, just out of his reach. “I am man! I eat meat!�
And to think that I used to be a bit skeptical of Carol J. Adams.
(Images taken from Adams’ slide show.)
I shouldn’t have been, of course. The first person to ever mention her book to me was a boyfriend who generally wasn’t too keen on some of the more radical aspects of feminism but didn’t see why I was hesistant to think there was something horribly patriarchal about our culture’s views on meat consumption. Maybe I was defensive due to my newbie vegetarian status. But in the years since, it’s become difficult for me not to notice that not only is vegetarianism something that’s coded as female, but that meat-eating is coded as most definitely masculine.
I won’t go into that too deeply, because you have the link to Adams’ stuff there and you can peruse it. What I find interesting about it is that the consumption of meat as a way of homosocial bonding through the disdain of women fits really neatly into other media portrayals of how men are supposed to bond–generally by a shared loathing and/or objectification of women.
RJ at Bark/Bite has the best post I’ve possibly ever read on this subject. I’ve linked it before but hell, it bears lots of repeating and quoting.
But it just so happens that my favorite example of this kind of boys-against-girls thought is from a piece-of-fluff sitcom.** It really is the best one-sentence description of homosociality. Imagine Del, the manly-but-jilted lover confronting Richard, the very un-manly artist, in the presence of Remo, the manly bar owner:
DEL: How could you set Caroline up with some other guy? Guys aren’t supposed to do that to other guys. It’s a simple basic understanding among men.
RICHARD: You’re not going to report me, are you? I’d hate to have my treehouse privileges revoked.
REMO: When a man breaks up, he is entitled to two or three attempts at reconciliation before things are officially dead.
RICHARD: Uh, does anybody tell the women about these rules?
JOHNNY: Do you tell a football what time the game is? Come on! That’s it.
he men are “playing the game,” and the women in reality aren’t even cheerleaders. They’re the ball. The token, the trophies, the gambling chips. The objects over which men struggle in order to prove themselves in the eyes of other men. You don’t tell women the rules, because what they know, or think, or say, or do is irrelevant to the game.
RJ also uses examples from commercials and sitcoms where men bond over their shared loathing of women and others where they bond by trafficking in women’s bodies, sharing them as objects or giving them as gifts. Whether you find yourself balking at my suspicion that the men-eat-meat-to-demonstrate-shared-misogyny commercials and subtly coded consumption of women, it’s pretty much undeniable that these commercials blatantly push the idea that men bond over their shared rejection of women. And that women are so contemptible that anything associated with femininity, even something as mundane as eating vegetables, must be harshly and loudly rejected.
There’s no doubt that this sort of message is hateful to women. But boy, it’s not doing men any favors. As Shakes notes, it’s a nasty trick to play on men to convince them that they are obliged to hurt their own health in order to avoid being viewed as anything but the hated female. But it also just generally a pathetic view of American manhood, casting men as destructive, wasteful, and stupid to boot.
In other words, in order to be a man by the corporate media’s standards, you have to be a big fucking tool. If I were a man, I’d be deeply insulted. I know a lot of men who are, including no doubt the readership of this blog.
(For what it’s worth, MRAs bitch about the media portrayal of men all the time, but they insist, due to faith-based evidence, that it’s the fault of feminists because they don’t want to admit that the only real way for men to combat this negative view of themselves is to relinquish their enthusiasm for gender-based inequality.)
It’s one more example, to my mind, of how the patriarchy is out to get men and women both and simply persuades men with the consolation prize of dominance over the women in their class. The battle over reproductive rights is the classic example–the only people who really stand to benefit on the whole from stripping women of our right to control our own fertility are very wealthy men, and everyone else is just going to be more subjugated to them. But despite this, the patriarchs manage to lure quite a few men over to the anti-choice side by making them feel that at least they will have superiority over women, even if they won’t have a better life for themselves. (Women are lured with promises they’ll be superior to other women.)
And so it is with this commercial endeavor to pit men and women against each other in an attempt to part men from their money. The pitch is boiled down to this:
“Hey guys! Eat our food! Your health will suffer, you’re wrecking the enviroment, contributing to animal cruelty, contributing to vile labor practices, and our food isn’t even pleasurable to enjoy. But hey, at least you’ll know have momentary respite from feeling like you’re turning into a dreaded woman.*”
I guess I can’t blame the fast food companies. They haven’t sunk as low as BushCo, which sold the Iraq war with a very similiar pitch.
More on the vileness that is fast food from our enviroment-loving buddies at Punkassblog. And if you can’t get enough punk ass enviromentalism, check out Kyso’s post on batteries and the enviroment.
*On top of that, I suspect there’s a strong message that eating meat is equivalent to consuming women, but that’s not a requisite thing to buy into in order to get the general grasp of this post.
133 Responses to “The sexual politics of greasy fast food”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Guy #4 is a fag no more. You know, because he’s about to eat some sausage.
Ahhh, multiple entendre!
But in the years since, it’s become difficult for me not to notice that not only is vegetarianism something that’s coded as female, but that meat-eating is coded as most definitely masculine.
I know guys that are vegetarians. I am not one of them. I think vegetarianism is associated with the left than right (read: PETA). If a guy gets off on looking at a chicken leg… Let’s skip that.
Personally, for me. Every other woman I dated was a vegetarian. I can’t deal with it, but it WOULD REALLY BE NICE to go to a steakhouse every once in awhile. A lot of steakhouses have really good salad bars now
Yeah, I saw the BK commercial late one night. I had half convinced myself it was a bad dream (perhaps brought on by eating fast food), and now I wake up and find out…it’s real! ARGHHHH!
Oh, and did you catch the name of the burger they’re selling? It’s called “The Texas Double Whopper”. Personally, I think the”Texas Double Whopper” we have in the WH and the Vice Presidents’ mansion has already sent enough people to the hospital and the graveyard.
Michael, it’s not that men are vegetarians and women are not. It’s more abstract. Vegetarianism and everything it sort of represents–conservation, gentleness to animals, and yes, focus on one’s appearance (I’ve lost a small amount of weight due to vegetarianism and, strangely, my hair has gotten thicker and my fingernails longer)–is very feminine. On the other hand, meat eating represents hyper-consumption and a certain “fuck you” attitude towards the opinions of others, at least insofar as one’s personal appearance is concerned. That’s coded not only as masculine in our culture, but patriotic. There’s no doubt that there are many more female vegetarians in America than male vegetarians, too, and this is probably why.
“And that women are so contemptible that anything associated with femininity, even something as mundane as eating vegetables, must be harshly and loudly rejected.”
It’s not that women or women’s roles are contemptible, it’s that a man who assumes a woman’s roles is contemptible, isn’t it? I get the sense that a woman assuming a man’s role is going to get smackdowned just as harshly, thought using different language. It’s the not-doing-what-you-are-told that is the big problem, not that act of being feminine. There is a hierarchal gendered element too, but that determines the character of the disapproval less than the fact of the disapproval.
I am reminded of something I read saying that in Brazil, only men who are on the receiving end of anal sex are considered gay–being in the “masculine” role is thought perfectly heterosexual. It’s not who you fuck–it’s how you fuck. It’s all about the role you play. I wonder if only women who are the active sexual partner are considered lesbian?
The irony of that, Blue Jean, is that fast food nearly destroyed old-fashioned Texas ranching. I grew up in a part of the country that has what’s left of the real cowboy culture, not the pretend one that Bush likes to play at, and they have been devastated by Big Ag, which happily cranks out substandard beef raised in vile and cruel conditions. It wasn’t until the surgence of interest in organic, free-range beef that came from us hippie types that there was even a glimmer of hope for the lifestyle of the ranchers where I grew up. Now they can actually bring up a herd on the range and take it to market and sell it at a profit.
It’s a shame, seriously, that the Democrats don’t latch onto examples like that and see how they can create alliances between urban liberals and rural people who we have more in common with than we think.
I dunno: broccoli is incredibly phallic. But if it was tomato—I mean, what could be manlier than eating an ovary?
Oh, heresiarch–interesting discussion. I would say that the smackdown is real on both sides but different in character, definitely. Actually, if you think about it, mild amounts of butching it up is not only accepted in women but expected in certain circumstances. Especially if you are demanding respect from men. Meat eating is a classic example–women are actually supposed to eat meat, certainly supposed to know how to cook it, but you would never have a commercial of a bunch of women chowing down with grease flying everywhere in direct defiance of male expectations of their behavior.
The best way to put it is that women’s gender-bending is discouraged but understood, men’s is treated as vile perversion. There’s a substantial difference between how gay men and lesbians are perceived in the straight mainstream. Lesbianism is either eroticized for straight men (because it’s considered easier for men to understand female desire if it’s just like their own for women) or it’s pitiable (aw, she wants to be a man). However, gay men are treated like absolute perverts, beyond comprehension. Not to say that either homophobia is worse than the other–heh, choose between condescension or being made a monster–but they are different, definitely.
Too true, Amanda. My great grandfather raised Angus cattle in Wisconsin, but that was last century, before the big conglomerates took over; he made sure that his stock was fed on hay and grass, not the cheap feed that’s spreading Mad Cow today. If he was alive today, he probably would be shaking his head about the current state of affairs. He knew there was more to being a rancher than cutting brush for the cameras
That’s one of the Dems’ problems; they’ve written off the rural folks as unreachable, and there’s nobody prominent who can talk the talk. (Well, Bill could, but he could speak well on just about anything). If asked to choose between a party that makes a patronizing, half assed play for their vote, and another party that doesn’t make any play at all, it’s not surprising that rural voters keep going to the GOP. If the D’s are ever going to reverse their fortunes, they need to make connections, like you said.
Jesus God in the ER, is that ever true.
I did some research on the Men’s Movement (1990s version, not the MRAs) and while much of it ranged from vile to laughable, one of my favorite bits was a speaker who regularly handed out strips of red cloth and asked them to tie one on each part of their body that they had seriously injured. Each time, he said, it was a relevation to see this sea of red. The men would just stare at each other, and at the evidence that “being male” seemed to require damaging their bodies.
That’s particularly relevant here because that just a whole hell of a lot of that damage happens when men (and boys) coerce each other into doing stupid shit (like eating greasy fast-food meat to the exclusion of vegetable medleys) just to prove they’re not “pussies.” It’s an ongoing performance, and you’ve got to be always willing to not only do stupid, dangerous shit, but you’ve got to be willing to do shit that is just as stupid and dangerous as whatever the biggest idiot (or drunkest fool) in your group is willing to do. As long as he feels like upping the ante, all the other guys have to choose between following along or getting cast out of the metaphorical treehouse. This leads to some very scary escalation as the alpha idiot keeps raising the ante until someone chickens out–then the chicken can be scapegoated, and the alpha idiot (as well as all the betas) get to feel secure in their masculinity, because they weren’t the “pussy.” At least not this time.
That “I Am Man” commercial is stupid as hell.
Pizza commercials do this too, with really meaty pizzas. My dad falls for it every time. Sigh.
Michael, it’s not that men are vegetarians and women are not. It’s more abstract. Vegetarianism and everything it sort of represents–conservation, gentleness to animals, and yes, focus on one’s appearance
Amanda, some conservatives will look at vegetarianism with disdain. The whole radical left nonsense. They fail to see it’s an dietary choice. They also don’t like the word choice.
As a guy I have never thought of the male/female aspect of vegetarianism. When a go on a date with a vegetarian I think Tofu night. I can deal with it. I’m probably part of the demographic Burger King is marketing to. I haven’t seen the commercial. I did see a guy sing and dance into a Burger King. He went into the bathroom and wrapped himself up with toilet paper. I think he needed his medication more than a burger.
““I’ve eaten quiche, but I won’t anymore,â€? the men’s chorus sings.”
I like quiche.
My mom makes it sometimes when I bring the family over. She uses three kinds of cheeses, sausage, bacon and ham. She even tosses in a secret ingredient that she deliberagely leaves off her written recipe of the dish cause she doesn’t want anyone knowing what it is.
I also love broccoli. ALOT. I like it smothered in melted American Cheese. I grew up eating it and cauliflower(also smothered in melted american cheese) as side dishes to all our meals. They along with a cheesy spinache dish were the only veggies Mom could get me to eat when I was a kid.
I also benchpress over 350lbs.
I can beat the holy living shit out of the guys in those commericals.
While they’re eating meat I’ll be pounding my fists into their faces.
Call me a pussy cause I like greens?
F*ck them.
I haven’t eaten at a TGI Fridays in like three years and a Burger King in like two years.
Mostly because their food is shit and the service was always horrible.
If anyone from TGI Firdays or BurgerKing is watching, realize that I’m the kind of person who will actually stop or not frequent a restaurant or other outlet if their commercials piss me off or insult my intelligence.
MYOB’
.
On the other hand, meat eating represents hyper-consumption and a certain “fuck you� attitude towards the opinions of others, at least insofar as one’s personal appearance is concerned.
To give an example, would Denis Leary eat meat?
I dunno: broccoli is incredibly phallic.
Andrew, doctor, *now*.
Sorry, that should be “Would Denis Leary be a vegetarian?”
I tend to think it’s both, and in fact that women’s roles are contemptible only because women are contemptible. I think the “you’re not following your role” is an important part of it, but when my daughter fails to follow her role by playing with model rockets or wearing jeans she is in less danger of social approbation–and possible physical harm–than my son is if he fails to follow his role by playing with dolls or wearing dresses and lipstick.
Part of what makes this so complex is that all of us are socialized to value a lot of the things that are traditionally male (a paycheck, ambition, etc.) and devalue, or at least not-fully-value, things that are traditionally female (nurturing, cooperation, etc.). So if a woman wants to be an engineer, even those who don’t think she should be understand that she’s reaching for something of value. But when a man wants to be a pre-school teacher, there are a lot of raised eyebrows all around.
When a go on a date with a vegetarian I think Tofu night.
Tofu is for douchebags.
“I’ve eaten quiche, but I won’t anymore,”
Oh God! Stop it! The memories are coming back!!
Am I the only one to remember when Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche broke over the hazy, dying embers of the 1970s like the onrushing storm surge of a backlash hurricane? Should we all not reflect on how that odius little book began life as an essay in Playboy? Should we ask ourselves how many million Regan voters were swayed by the “don’t be a pussy” false dichotomy of “Alan Alda eats quiche. John Wayne does not?”
My question–is this a desperate reach for an old tactic by a patriarchy with fear in its eyes, or the resurgence of an anti-intellectual masculinism the likes we have not seen since Rambo II?
I try to do the vegetarian thing, with intermittant success. But tofu is a tough line to cross. I’ve had it in all of its forms, cubes, slabs, marinated slabs, whipped, whipped with sugar in it, and the only acceptable form so far is miso soup.
The only good thing you can say about tofu is that it’s not natto.
If I eat enough tofu, can I be a radical lesbian separatist and live on a commune in Oregon growing tomatos and having Beltaine orgies?
“I dunno: broccoli is incredibly phallic.”
Where the hell did this phrase come from?
I’ve always though Broccoli resmebled japanese Bonsai trees.
It’s about as phallic as a woman’s tits.
Jeesh!
MYOB’
.
Yeah, that BK Texas Double Whopper sure is manly:
Two STEAMING LEAN HUNKS of TEXAS BEEFCAKE, rubbing up against each other, dripping with HOT, CREAMY WHITE SAUCE as their JUICES MINGLE between a FIRM ROUND PAIR OF BUNS.
Yeah, that’s some Texas cowboy chow, alright. They oughta call it the BROKEBACK BURGER.
. But in the years since, it’s become difficult for me not to notice that not only is vegetarianism something that’s coded as female, but that meat-eating is coded as most definitely masculine.
Yep. And cultures and religions that foster vegetarianism–like Hinduism and Buddhism–are similarly coded as feminine. British occupation of India was often justified by the notion that the Brits ate meat and were therefore manlier, while the Indians were vegetarisn (many of them, anyway).
People are often suprised to find out I’m a vegetarian because my public image is bitchy verging on butch. They expect to find me chowing down on steak.
in a great irony, BK is the only FF chain i could find that sells a vegetarian patty in the midwest. it tastes like crap, but that’s better than eating their horrid lettuce in between what passes for buns.
the funny part is that all the chains(even mofuggin KFC and mickey D’s) sell vegetarian options in india. and they don’t taste as horrid as american versions
I always thought these sorts of ads were playing to men’s continuous rebellion against Mom telling them to Eat Their Vegetables.
Heck, if they want to get heart attacks at 50 and keel over dead, fine with me. Stupidity should hurt.
Kyso, yeah, at least tofu’s not natto. (12 years in Japan and I still can’t stand the friggin’ stuff. That and the raw egg in the morning.)
In my experience, it’s not meat eating that’s considered a masculine trait - it’s certain types of meat eating. A bratwurst, or a steak, or hamburger, those come across as masculine. Some seafoods too. But most chicken or fish doesn’t seem to carry that baggage. I wonder why that is?
I sometimes have the experience of thinking of a comment, knowing I will regret saying it, and saying it anyway.
Sadly, I did that the other night after seeing the TGI Friday’s commercial. It led straight into my questioning the masculinity of male friend who is a vegetarian. I backpedaled immediately, but I still said it, even though I knew before I opened my mouth that it was wrong on probably three or more levels.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Amanda, I’m one of those guys you mentioned who is insulted by all of that blatant gender-role-conformity psychomarketing that those BK commercials (and others) embody. I’m not a vegetarian by any stretch of the imagination, but jeez-o-man, what’s the big bloody deal? I like broccoli, dammit (and the only thing phallic about it is the shared use of the word “head”).
The irony is that the people who believe that behaving like a wild animal is the height of manliness are usually the same ones who claim that (male) humans are somehow inherently better than all those other animals.
I am laughing and laughing at the idea that a guy can assert his heterosexuality by eating a sausage.
Think about that image.
What’s next, only Real Men can deep-throat bananas?
DEL: How could you set Caroline up with some other guy? Guys aren’t supposed to do that to other guys. It’s a simple basic understanding among men.
RICHARD: You’re not going to report me, are you? I’d hate to have my treehouse privileges revoked.
Ahh, that brings back some memories. Though I could never quite figure out how Caroline could pass up a snarky cultured passionate artist with a great rapport in favour of… Del. *snorts*
On top of that, I suspect there’s a strong message that eating meat is equivalent to consuming women
Nah — in these images, women are deprecated. Meat is much more important than sex here. There’s a pizza commercial where the guys first gaze voraciously at the sashaying hot chix, then get *really* enraptured by gazing at the pizza. (And, oddly, the women seem disappointed by this development.) It’s only “equivalent” insofar as a better kind of appetite can replace another lesser kind.
That aside, I agree with tzs’s interpretation: devouring the big hunk of meat (no double entendre whatsoever!) is supposed to be an act of rebellion against What’s Good For You. Moms want you to eat your vegetables. Wives and dates want you to eat healthy and, ideally, politely. Women try to civilize and correct and monitor. But buy *this* meaty product and indulge your authentic, primal, politically incorrect urges. Enjoy it with other men who will validate your desires, and make it resemble a protest movement. So even though it’s HIGHLY gendered, it’s meat as rebellion rather than meat as sex.
(I’ve noticed a trend in depicting very sloppy, lip-smacking, big-bite-chomping male eating — Hardee’s seems to be particularly ardent about that image. ‘Are you going to eat your cheese paper?’, etc.)
Wasn’t there some chain trying to use Paris Hilton and some chick on a mechanical bull to sell sloppy, dripping hamburgers? That shit was pretty subtle.
Tofu is for douchebags.
speaking as a man who has eaten more meat today than you will all week, shut your gob. tofu is a damn fine ingredient. anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t know how to make proper chinese food.
and if you can’t make a stir fry to feed 4 people, you really haven’t given much of a reason for anyone to allow you to continue to breathe.
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact vegetarianism and forgoing red meat is traditionally viewed in xtian societies as an act of ascetism (ie fish on fridays, medieval monks eating nothing but gruel and bread). It’s ok for women and gay men to eat their veggies, they have to atone for their sins against the patriarchy. Real men need to glut themselves on steaks to prove that they have nothing to be sorry for. After all, pennance is for sinners and “real” men can do nothing wrong. This would certianly account for the unapologetic tone of these commercials. What’s really strange is the connexion between incivility and meat, in the Bible and Gilgamesh the primoridal state of man is a vegetarian running wild with grazing herds. It’s only when those sneaky civilizing females trick him into having sex and wearing pants that he looses his animal nature and starts craving a side of ribs.
Um. Out of curiousity, is it possible for a person to actually consume red meat, even the shitty BK/TGI Friday/Pizza Hut style meat product, and still detest the commercials? I mean, obviously it’s a blow against gender equality for the shaming of a guy for eating vegetable medley, but well…
I like red meat. I even like red meat with some broccoli. Maybe some rice, bread as well. It makes for a good meal, in my opinion. But am I somehow spitting in the face of radical leftism to have a hamburger?
It’s interesting to contrast Adams’ more-or-less-definitive text on vegetarianism with the sexist show-biz theatrics of PETA. The latter seems obsessed with proving to stupid, macho men that you can live without meat and still be a stupid leering misogynist opportunistic puke puddle.
To paraphrase Katherine Anne Porter, “I would not be surprised if Ingrid Newkirk had driven millions back from the very gates of the fold.”
If I can’t eat steak, I don’t want to be part of your revolution. And yes, people do look at you askance if you’re a woman who doesn’t stick to the I’ll-just-have-salad-how-many-calories-in-that-bread? part of the menu.
That aside, what RJ said about male > female. There’s a certain discomfort with women gettin’ above their raisin’, but it’s nowhere near as socially reprehensible as a man stepping down to a woman’s level.
It doesn’t even have to get into the issue of being a vegetarian. Depriving oneself of food, ordering “just a salad” (never mind the cheese, salad dressing and ham strips may add up to more fat and calories than a steak), and so on are eating habits thought feminine and appropriate for women.
For one of our meetings for school, we ordered several cheese and veggie pizzas. The person who took our order said something to the effect of “What, no meat? Are only girls going to be there?”
Broccoli isn’t phallic. Asparagus, on the other hand…
Mythago’s right. Just check out the bar scene sometime. If a woman orders a beer, (or a straight Scotch or something like that), then she’s one of the boys. If a guy asks for a Fuzzy Navel, or any drink with a tiny umbrella in it, then he might as well announce “Knock me down and steal my wallet.”
Broccoli isn’t phallic. Asparagus, on the other hand…
There was this commercial about a food magazine getting hot and spicy. It featured visual puns involving sex (such as, for example, a finger twanging on a single pea at the top end of an open pod) until a spill of rice cascaded over a desktop bench.
The final shots were of an asparagus stalk and half a cored avocado, both dripping with white sauce…
And you know what the really sad thing is?
Women need more iron than men do. It’s frankly healthier for a man to go vegetarian than it is for a woman–he doesn’t lose blood every month. And yes, I know that there are iron supplements, but how many people, vegetarians and omnivores alike, actually remember to take their vitamins?
Alas, the media conglomerates that should decry this blatant offence will undoubtedly be enticed by the siren song of ad revenues, and remain quiescent. So saying, I intend to inform these (and I use the term loosely) restaurants of my disdain for their practices, and emphasize my continued boycott of their products. I am certain I will receive conciliatory emails in return, along with enticements to sample their filth at a discounted price, with utter disregard to the detriment it will have upon my health and lifespan; essentially my message will be stamped “return to sender,” with a smiling “fuck you” and coupon attached.
Ok, ok…you are all forgiven if you wish to take my pessimistic message and beat me about the head with it; I do it to myself enough, too. However, I purchase my meals from as many independently-run restaurants as possible (no small feat in the Philly burbs) and stock my refrigerator with items from farmer’s markets and organic chains like TJ’s. I write to the BK’s and TGI’s, expressing my disgust. I just wonder, where can a voice of reason find its way to the masses, unencumbered by the financial enticements of advertising, and stripped of the need for political posturing and compromise. Where can the voices of rational science and logic be heard by those with the power to effect serious change?
We exist in an environment of self-seeking politicians, uncompromising clergy, greedy corporations that neither respect, nor value us. Our current administration is hell-bent on a policy of totalitarianism, lies, secrecy and partisanship…damn the torpedoes thinking…let’s make sure all our women are kept pregnant (and they musn’t enjoy the sex, either, because god is watching), and all our men are promoted to power based on their consumption of beef and the length of their (can’t be gay) cocks. Let’s advertise the benefits of meat grown in a cage full of their own shit, and fed the remains of their neighbors…it’s obvious BSE and avian influenza were invented by the terrorists, so we should invest several billion in Baghdad waterparks to make them like us. Oh, and as for veggies? Yeah, we’ll tolerate them, just like we tolerate women with careers. Hopefully, with a combination of pesticides and GM, we won’t have to put up with either in the future…because chemicals make mens’ balls grow bigger, and cause stupidity and a desire for breast enhancement in women.
Isn’t it obvious…god chose America, and god chose beef, because it’s far better to eat the ass of a cow, drenched in the despair of fry-o-later “technicians,” than any loaves or fishes…what could she have been thinking back then? And may I honor a chain (famous for its ads involving a red, oceanic arachnid) whose interpretation of the loaves and fishes has taken the form of Fish & Chips through a manipulation of greasy, gray carp, and shoestring potatoes not worthy of the (forced) accolades bestowed upon their clownish competitor of dual arches in the tater dept.
Sadly, though quite mercifully to those who may read this, I am too sickened to continue, and feel I must shower. My pessimism, though supportive of our mutual cause, is too much to bear. I humbly beg, dear readers, that you can give me a source of hope, free of religious rhetoric and overflowing with rationality and logic, which is my chief religion.
Best Wishes,
Doubting scientist, and hopeful pessimist.
And if you find grammatical or spelling errors in this message, you are certainly not a believer, and the wrath of god and the GOP will haunt you till the end of the world…but be comforted, because that isn’t too long to wait. Rome fell, didn’t it? And if that isn’t good enough, the sun will go supernova at some point, so we should get some decent char-grilled burgers before we meet our end. Just make sure that the veggie-eating feminists are used as a shield to protect us god-fearing beefers until our bitter end…has anyone considered layering ourselves in swathes of bacon?
Amanda Marcotte said: “The best way to put it is that women’s gender-bending is discouraged but understood, men’s is treated as vile perversion.”
And to think some women claim that feminism has never done anything for them! Seriously though, what meat-eating as masculine reminds me most of is pants–they’re a man thing, but women can wear them now, even if wearing a skirt is still considered more traditionally feminine. Feminism really has opened up some elbow room for women to negotiate their identity, room that is sadly lacking on the men’s side.
RJ said: I tend to think it’s both, and in fact that women’s roles are contemptible only because women are contemptible.
Really? I would argue that it is the other way around, if anything: women are contemptible because they perform women’s roles–with the strong insinuation that that is all they are capable of.
Lanoire said: Yep. And cultures and religions that foster vegetarianism–like Hinduism and Buddhism–are similarly coded as feminine. British occupation of India was often justified by the notion that the Brits ate meat and were therefore manlier, while the Indians were vegetarisn (many of them, anyway).
Actually, the feminization of Asian cultures as a justification for imperialist penetration and subjugation (the metaphor really leaps out at you, doesn’t it?) goes back further than that, and considerably deeper. It is, in fact, the subject of a number of scholarly works in the field of post-colonial studies. I would recommend Edward Said’s Orientalism which is the standard basic text on the subject.
P.S. Is that hot-shit realtime preview function new or have I just never scrolled down far enough? Because that is sweet.
Really? I would argue that it is the other way around, if anything: women are contemptible because they perform women’s roles–with the strong insinuation that that is all they are capable of.
How could those roles come to be contemptible if they weren’t associated with women in the first place? Scrubbing bathtubs isn’t fundamentally different from cleaning out rain gutters, except that the first happens to be a “woman’s role.”
Brocolli is one of the less phallic vegetables that I can think of. Carrots, cucumbers, eggplants, zucchini, leeks, even celery are all clearly more phallic than brocolli.
Michael, it’s not that men are vegetarians and women are not. It’s more abstract. Vegetarianism and everything it sort of represents–conservation, gentleness to animals, and yes, focus on one’s appearance (I’ve lost a small amount of weight due to vegetarianism and, strangely, my hair has gotten thicker and my fingernails longer)–is very feminine
Shorter Amanda: Empathy and adaptability is viewed as feminine, selfish egotism with a side order of Will To Power as masculine, and the right associates things that are masculine entirely with the right wing, because it’s all about the penii and crypto-facism.
And yes, people do look at you askance if you’re a woman who doesn’t stick to the I’ll-just-have-salad-how-many-calories-in-that-bread? part of the menu.
Hell, sometimes if the person bringing the food isn’t the person who took the order, they’ll try and give ME the salad.
Oddest time this happened, I had a steak and my then-boyfriend had a light salad. Server started to mix it up, we corrected him, no biggie. But then he brought us the check. He looked at my date. He looked at me. And gave me the check. I don’t know what the hell that says, but surely it says something.
Heart attacks and flab are Macho! Real men have clogged arteries and jiggle when they waddle! Gout is Manly!
Bozhemoi, I love America. Where else can you find such utter kookookery?
Heresiarch, all that was addressed back in the days of Women’s Lib, very clearly and explicitly. (Ginmar has spent a lot of time spelling it out with 21st century examples, too.) This article specifically deals with shutting up uppity women by accusing us of lesbianism, but in tangent it address the homophobia/not-women identity obsessions of the Macho paradigm, and why - to a very limited extent - women who want to be men are tolerated and indulged, so long as they remember their place. (This was a major theme of Harvey Mansfield when I heard him speak the other day, too. Ain’t they cute? Of course all they can do is imitate men, or try to, hahaha) But if you seriously challenge male privilege, they call you a “dyke” - that is to say, a worthless woman, a woman who is only sexually-attractive to other mere women…
You see we also get a description of the IWF gals in here..
I think Mary Wollstonecraft took a whack at it 200 years ago, as well.
Libdevil, if I were being cynical, (well, when am I ever not? but you know what I mean) I would say that the chicken and fish agrobusiness lobbies aren’t feeling under attack the same way that the beef industry is, what with mad cow and cardiovascular disease and obesity in the public mind (and gout making a comeback, too, along with other diseases associated with too much protein and various toxins in the bloodstream) and so the beef people are leaping to the tried-and-true Rush Limbaugh appeal, the same way the tobacco people used machismo to sell cigarettes as they couldn’t manage to shout down the doctors any longer. (Because tracheotomies and being on oxy are *so* macho, you know.) Everyone knows that fish is Good For You (well, except for that mercury bit) and that white meat is better than red when it comes to avoiding the HMOs (except for those hormones and antibiotics, but perception is everything.) Now that the Atkins Craze has crashed, they have to do *something* else to recover market share.
If I were being Dr. Berube and carefully analyzing the semiotics of it all, (except I can’t be quite as gonzo as Michael, unfortunately) I would point out that while broadly this is the same as the sexist “shut up woman” VW commercials, there’s another layer of meta-meaning in the “red meat is manly, vegetables are girly” meme. And that is that the anti-feminist reactionaries have, for at least thirty years, been arguing that men are Obviously the natural masters, because biology designed them to go out and kill wooly mammoths for food, while Women waited quietly at home in the cave for them to bring back the meat so that we could practice the Oldest Profession and earn our protein with sex, just like chimps…
Never mind that we’ve been farming animals, and women as farmers doing their part of slaughtering hogs and chickens, to provide protein on a controlled basis to the group as a whole, for well over 10,000 years…
It’s interesting to contrast Adams’ more-or-less-definitive text on vegetarianism with the sexist show-biz theatrics of PETA. The latter seems obsessed with proving to stupid, macho men that you can live without meat and still be a stupid leering misogynist opportunistic puke puddle.
Gods, yes. Those ads make me want to find the biggest steak I can buy and cook it for my gentle feminist salad-loving often-presumed-gay husband.
Does anyone know who’s actually funding PETA? Where does their operating budget *come* from?
I’ve asked this question before, and it’s not a joke.
Given the CIA and FBI’s propensity for running “opposition” movements that are entirely fake in order to give the opposition a bad name, both oversees (qv Operation Ajax, Iran, Mossadeqh) and at home (all the infiltration of the peace movement in the ’60s) as well as the fact that agents provocateurs have been a standard part of oppressive reactionary governments struggling with bad economies (q.v. the Cato St. Conspiracy) , and add to this the fact that *all* PETA does is discredit vegetarianism and animal rights activism even or especially among those inclined to sympathize - I think there’s *extremely* good odds that they’re a Disinformation Movement ultimately run by Minitrue.
I don’t say that there aren’t genuine gulls in the rank-and-file of PETA, because zealots exist everywhere and are attracted to organizations. But it would not surprise me in the least to find out that, far back, they’re funded by the same folks who run the Independent Women’s Forum…
Can anyone prove that they’re not?
Maybe the meat thing goes back to the old sterotype about cavemen. my wife likes to tease me about going out, killing a mammoth, and bringing it home (I’m the one who does most of the grocery shopping). That image of the caveman going out, killing some meat and bringing it home, while the woman goes out and find berries and stuff has been around a long while. Certainly, it seems to have been around at least as long as the current US habit of eating a lot of meat with every meal, which is a more recent development (within the past 150 years or so, less so for the non-wealthy). Just a thought.
broccoli is incredibly phallic? If I unzipped one morning and it look like a stalk of broccoli I would so totally freak out I’d have to be sedated!!!!
Quiche is like omelette pie. OMELETTE PIE.
That is all.
I think PETA is a pretty bad example of how vegetarians are a bunch of wussy females, considering how pissed-off they’ve made feminists with their fucked-up American Apparal-esque use of women in their ads.
Fast food is sexist, but like many who are, it simultaneously relies on the advances of feminism, even as it plays the war of the sexes out in its propoganda. The typical McDonald’s ads of yore were structured to show a dad who has to take care of his kids because his wife is working now and can’t make dinner … but men can’t cook! So, in order to care for his family, he goes to McDonalds.
Patakin, it’s a common misunderstanding of feminist criticism that if we discuss how activity X, Y, or Z is coded in our culture as a way for men to assert dominance, we are saying that those activities are inherently bad. Couldn’t be further from the truth. We’re saying the coding is bad, because male dominance is bad.
The most common version of this misunderstanding is the guys who think because feminist criticize coding heterosexual sex as an activity of male domination/rape, we are saying that all sex is rape and that male sexual desire is predatory. Not at all. In fact, the opposite–the patriarchy says all sex is rape. And we think that sucks. And that’s true from Dworkin to the most squishy liberal “I’m not a feminist, but….” sort.
Or sports is a good example. The sports culture is often misogynist, and we would like to separate sports from the misogyny, aka preserve what’s good and get rid of what’s bad.
So don’t abandon meat due to feminist criticism of the culture of meat-eating. Abandon the culture, sure. (Easier said than done, I know, but that’s why this take a lot of work.) That said, there are other good reasons to get thee out of a fast food place, because you’re giving money to predatory corporations that ruin the enviroment, hurt animals unnecessarily, promote evil labor practices, etc. Organic beef is a decent substitute that doesn’t do these things.
I used to like TGI Friday’s (well, for what it is — I still think it’s dumb to have one in Times Square) until I saw that ad.
Anyway, I notice there’s a false dichotomy here, and no concept of context. Sometimes I want food coded as feminine; sometimes I want a steak. And yet I’m the same person throughout.
I should add that for lunch today I brought brown rice and ribs.
FlipYrWhig:
Wives and dates want you to eat healthy and, ideally, politely. Women try to civilize and correct and monitor.
Tangentially, I’ve noticed that almost everyone who writes to Judith Martin’s column and gives some indication of their sex is female.
Blue Jean:
If a woman orders a beer, (or a straight Scotch or something like that), then she’s one of the boys. If a guy asks for a Fuzzy Navel, or any drink with a tiny umbrella in it, then he might as well announce “Knock me down and steal my wallet.�
I’m a lot more sensitive (as it were) to such things at the bar than at the table, although I still don’t often drink beer.
Tofu.
I especially recommend Dragon Tofu, Deep-Fried Tofu Bites, Hfnuala’s Chilli, and Dark Chocolate Curry.
Too good for men. Let them eat burgers.
I hate to blogwhore (he said in the face of the evidence), but I noticed and noted that in the invaluable reference work 50 Things Every Guy Should Know How to Do, the chapter on how to cook a steak was written by a woman.
I’m a little surprised that it was fast food commercials that brought about a post on commercials and slickass marketing shots.
Personally, I would expect it to be about the ‘Axe’ cologne commericials.
I think a lot of this post was spot on, and I loved that post on Homosociality as well. But I don’t know what you think of this comment:
Heart attacks and flab are Macho! Real men have clogged arteries and jiggle when they waddle! Gout is Manly!
But I can see where it follows your analysis. In particular you seemed to suggest that eating habits that are coded as male are healthier than eating habits that are coded as female, and I don’t think I agree. I think the messages women are taught about food are much, much, much less ‘healthy’ than the messages men are taught. The sexual politics of grease are mostly about women being denied it, and encouraged to deny themselves of it.
Mythago mentioned it, but a large part meat not being femine is actually related to the wider idea that women should not enjoy, but instead control food. It makes me so angry the way women are supposed to control their food intake, and their partners food intake, but get blamed for that effort.
PeTA is not a vegitarian organisation, they’re a Vegan organisation, a Vegan Kitten Killing Cult for the upper-middle class to be absolutely precise. It may not seem like a huge difference, but they are idealogically opposed to people eating eggs or drinking milk because such things are inherently exploitative of animals.
My personal bet is that they’re a huge money making scheme in the style of scientology, that just happens to use a weird hyper-bolic satire of radical feminisn as it’s core ideology. It’s the urging for real estate based donations that makes my scamdar go off I think.
I saw that ad the other night and the first thing I thought was, “Boy, can’t wait ’til Pandagon gets ahold of this.”
I agree that meat-eating is “manly.” I live in the DC area and along with the (male-dominated) success of dot coms arose a plethora of cigar bars & manly steakhouses featuring huge slabs o’ beef with manly names.
Also, the “Tower Club,” an area invitation-only club ostensibly for high tech executives, had one (1) woman member in the late 90s. Don’t know if it even exists now, but that’s what it was then.
The Palm Restaurant in DC, one place where “movers & shakers” eat, has all those caricatures of DC bigwigs on the walls. I ate there in 1990 or so, and was totally respulsed and felt uncomfortable because all the caricatures were of…men.
Also I ate at the Prime Rib in 1980, with one of the bigwig partners at a law firm I worked at and at the tender age of 19 I realized: all men around me. All men.
So yeah, I totally believe meat is for MEN and everything else is for wimmen. And we need to keep the sanctity of meat pure and unadulterated for MEN.
As an aside, I think many commercials are highly insulting to me. There are so many “man as overweight, shlumpy doofus who can’t heat up the mac & cheese” while the “smart, savvy, rueful, trim, head-shaking woman” comes to the rescue.
Insulting to both, come to think of it.
Oops I meant highly insulting to “MEN,” not to “me.” I don’t actually have enough of a persecution complex to believe Madison Ave. is trying to write commercials with the express purpose of pissing me off.
That Thai thing with tofu and vegetables in a coconut-milk sauce, mmmmmmmm.
If one wants to view broccoli as phallic, one must, well, turn it around, and give the stalk a bit of shaping at the end, and this only applies to individual stalks rather than one of those enormous clumpy broccoli heads. There are many mushrooms that are more phallic than broccoli, although the very best - a stinkhorn named Phallus impudicus - is not generally considered edible. There’s a considerable growth of stinkhorns in the playground at the church my husband goes to, which I, being ten years old, find amusing.
food coded as feminine; sometimes I want a steak
The question is, who coded it as “feminine”? And when, and where, and why?
This is a discussion that would only make sense in late-20th/early 21st century US social contexts.
(Imagine trying to explain that being barbaric and doing unhealthy things with your diet was the essence of vir - ie manliness - to a Renaissance scholar, or a Stoic Roman…or the medieval men who wrote housewives’ manuals on how to cook good nourishing well-balanced meals and make sweet mixed drinks for their husbands…)
[…] See my Valve post for a first helping. This Pandagon post for seconds. Matt Yglesias is discomfited by this advertisement. But hair isn’t meat (you object)! A mere debater’s quibble, easily answered with reference to Anaxagoras! At any rate, I think we need to forge some sort of synergystycal marketing synthesis of Red State red meatist masculinism with metrosexual manscapism. Has Rod Dreher written a book about this yet? Smoothie Cons? (Not to be confused with their English opposite numbers, the Depila-Tories.) Anyway, I think that … queer eye for the meat guy … meatscaping! is the bipartisan marketing breakthrough for May, 2006. I’m seeing a 12-blade Norelco sinking into a thick patty of beef, "adding an extra visual inch to YOUR burger." (I’m going to be a millionaire. Or at least a thousandaire.) Belle is prepared to add extra jokes to this post later, because she knows more about, like, cooking. (She can make jokes about French cuts and things like that. I wouldn’t be able to do it with conviction.) […]
That’s why everyone admired Ike when he had a heart attack (somebody here has to know who Eisenhower was). And famously, when he was disparaging someone who had criticized him, he did it by saying, “That’s only a three-ulcer job.” That’s why everybody complains about how much it costs insurance companies to cover birth control pills but no one complain about how much it costs to cover a heart bypass.
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact vegetarianism and forgoing red meat is traditionally viewed in xtian societies as an act of ascetism (ie fish on fridays, medieval monks eating nothing but gruel and bread). It’s ok for women and gay men to eat their veggies, they have to atone for their sins against the patriarchy. Real men need to glut themselves on steaks to prove that they have nothing to be sorry for.
This is exactly it. Women are expected to practice strict self-discipline–rather, self-deprivation and self-sacrifice–so they can meet the standards of perfection set by men. That’s basically the definition of patriarchy.
Some people do still like Ike, even on the left. But paul, there’s also a conflation of Suffering For Your Job and Dying In Harness which is yes, macho - but also transcends machismo and has a strong female version, q.v. “I work my fingers to the bone/Your mother was in labor 94 hours with you!/You can read the newspaper through my daughter’s pastry” which is *very* traditional as well as carrying on into the “working girl who stays all weekend to get those reports done” and totally genderless Tech Student Self-Immolation…
Paging Dr. Ducat… (emphasis mine)
I’m not going to lie:
This seems like a very desperate stretch to couple the feminist activism with the veggie activism.
Because some feminists are veggies does not mean that most meat eaters hate women.
Bad logic, kids.
“It’s not that women or women’s roles are contemptible, it’s that a man who assumes a woman’s roles is contemptible, isn’t it?”
I strongly disagree.
The whole, tomboy girls are okay, but “sissygirl” boys aren’t, basically spells it out. Women can aspire to manliness–become a doctor, or chow down on steak and be one of the guys, but once a man eats a vegetable or thinks about nursing school it’s over. And not just because he’s not fitting into the manly role, but because he’s saying, “maybe the masculine is not necessarily better than the feminine” and that’s not okay.
Why? Because women are icky, gross, weak, and slightly sub-human, so who would want to be one anyway? Thus we can forgive women for some attempts to step out of their assigned places (but not too much, or the rest of them will get the wrong idea). But the idea of someone male choosing gentleness over violence, being a catcher rather than a pitcher, or weak rather than strong is disgusting and horrible, again, because women are icky, gross, etc. etc. not to mention it’s a rejection our national ideal of strong, independent, tough, street-smart, (god forbid booksmart) manly manly manliness.
Hmmm. I’m thinking of a certain PR / lobbying firm that represents the beef industry, the national resteraunt lobby, buger king, and outback steakhouse. They funded a “vegitarian BBQ” through the squalid, craven advocacy of the campus republicans.
Their propaganda was very heavy on the “Meat is rebelion” tripe (heh heh), calling any evidince that living on whiskey and pork rinds could be bad for you an invasion of the nanny state into your personal freedom, damn those hippies.–Ah, yes, the “Center for Consumer Freedom” would be their name.
Manchildren.
/my ex girlfriend and her friends (vegitarians all) would take anyone facing down an enormous pile of food and start chanting “Feat of Strength! Feat of Strength!”
I am reminded of something I read saying that in Brazil, only men who are on the receiving end of anal sex are considered gay–being in the “masculine� role is thought perfectly heterosexual.
Not just in Brazil. This meme is alive and well in American high schools even today, though less about anal sex than about getting blowjobs. The guy who sucks cock is a fag, but not the one being sucked on.
Smash, the reason tomboys don’t matter as much is because women are already untermenschen, they aren’t less untermenschen because of how they behave they are always, inherently, inferior to men.
And you also ignore the fact that “dyke” is an insult thrown at women who refuse to be totally dominated by a man, one that has been coopted by women as much or more than “bitch” of course, but it is still an insult that gets play sometimes.
“Salad is not food. Salad is what food eats.”
John Freeman Ragonetti
tinfoil hattie said:
“I don’t actually have enough of a persecution complex to believe Madison Ave. is trying to write commercials with the express purpose of pissing me off.”
Sometimes I start to think that very thing (i.e. that somehow they’re finding out what I hate the most and making an ad with that in mind). At least I can come here where I don’t have to feel quite so alone in my outrage…
I tend to agree with those who have suggested that it’s about controlling food/self vs. not having to control food/self. Women should be on various restrictions (limited foods and drinks, and remember not to enjoy sex) even if it’s physically and emotionally unhealthy, whereas men should get to eat (drink, smoke, have sex with) whatever they want. Only babies listen to Mom’s lectures about eating your veggies. My dad always leaves it to my mom to police his eating habits–maybe because then he has the social sanction to ignore her?
It’s a deliberate rebellion, like driving SUVs just to prove that you don’t need to think about stupid girl stuff like safety and the environment.
Afrit asked: : Really? I would argue that it is the other way around, if anything: women are contemptible because they perform women’s roles–with the strong insinuation that that is all they are capable of.
How could those roles come to be contemptible if they weren’t associated with women in the first place? Scrubbing bathtubs isn’t fundamentally different from cleaning out rain gutters, except that the first happens to be a “woman’s role.
The roles are contemptible because they involve cleaning up after someone else, taking care of others, etc. And only a girl, or girly-man, would even be interested in that, right? Basically they involve having to think about somone besides yourself. See my first two paragraphs above.
P.S. My SO wants to know, does MRA stand for Male Rape Apologists, Men’s Rights Activists, or both?
Okay, I have read all the comments, so I don’t think I’ve missed anyone mentioning some recent chicken ads I’ve seen on television. Presumable it’s for KFC, although honestly, I can’t remember. It might be Foster Farms. It starts with a white-coated guy, obviously a physician, addressing the camera as if it’s the patient, and talking kindly about how small breasts are just fine, but if you’re considering augmentation…blah blah blah something else, and suddenly it turns out he’s talking to a chicken, and we segue into an ad for the biggest, tastiest chicken breasts. Holy piece-of-meat imagery, folks.
Bleargh. I spent my early years learning to ignore my father during chicken-eating times, when he’d inevitably leer at everyone and announce that he’s a breast man. Now I get to have flashbacks. My father was born in the 1920s, which is not an excuse exactly, but it does make me wonder what year advertising thinks it is right now.
Carol Adams is absolutely right about the way meat-eating is culturally coded as masculine. As Adams is aware, meat is about domination, not only of women but of nature. But more than that, meat-eating is a quasi-religious practice: an attempt to prove to oneself that one will not meet the same ultimate fate as non-humans. As I argue in a post on my blog, what vegetarians typically evoke in meat-eaters is existential terror. That’s what I see in all those TV commercials, in snide jokes about butchering cabbages, and even in some (not all) of the criticisms of PETA: existential terror. This, more than anything else, I see as a formidable barrier to ending the barbaric and unnecessary practice of factory-farming, and meat-eating in general.
The whole, tomboy girls are okay
Keep in mind that this, however, is something that is very, very new.
Tomboys have always been more tolerated than sissy-boys because, as someone else said, it’s more understandable. Of course women want to be like men - who would actually want to be a woman? However, until very recently that indulgence ended when puberty arrived (and to a certain extent it still does). Women are supposed to understand their place and can’t excuse their behavior on immaturity the way children can.
Sissy-boys are more frightening because they suggest that the entire heirarchy is screwed. A little boy who thinks that it’s ok to act “like a woman” is one that doesn’t understand something even tomboys get.
I don’t actually have enough of a persecution complex to believe Madison Ave. is trying to write commercials with the express purpose of pissing me off.
I don’t think they are doing it to piss me off - period. I do, however, think it’s quite obvious that many of these commericals are trying to piss me off as part of their strategy. The fact that feminists think such commercials are stupid and degrading only makes them more popular with the audience they are aiming for. Again, as someone else said, they are supposed to be “rebelling” against Mommy. (Straw)Feminists act as the Mommy substitute for the kind of idiots that would find these commercials persuasive.
Broccoli has to be the bisexual of the vegetable world. As my 5 year old son said after absorbing the heteronormative culture through TV “I only eat the bush, not the stalk.”
Awesome post. Now I know why I keep dating vegetarian guys despite having fallen off the wagon years ago.
Oddly the one super-meat-eating guy I dated — he’d only touch fast food or the frozen microwaveable equivalent, used to eat raw meat for lunch, maybe it was a goth thing — grew up to be transgendered. Um.
I think Ch’mee summed it up:
“How much brains does it take to sneak up on a carrot!”
Mickle, it’s another instance of political incorrectness as a virtue You should sbumit to that particular corporate master because they have the guts — the balls — to stand up to the leftist-feminist-environmentalist coalition that’s running the show in this country. Thus, buying a branded, aggressively marketed product demonstrates your independence.
Fernmonkey, I feel your pain. :/
Sadly, bellatrys (and R. Mildred) I think that PETA is genuine. It’s just that Newkirk is off her fucking rocker. Frankly, her cartoonishly overblown internalized misogyny (who could forget the fur-as-pubic-hair-is-disgusting-on-a-woman ad) probably wins very few converts. It does win attention, though, which I think is she confuses with conversion, whether she acknowledges the possibility or not.
It’s not all different from when a troll shows up at your space, says the most stupid, cruel, personally wounding thing it can say given your content, etc. When you hit the ceiling and ban it, it goes crowing to everyone else “HA !! The very fact that she was so upset proves beyond a doubt that she knows I’m correct !! Busted !!”
And speaking of creatures coded as “it,” does the fact that half the time I can’t even decide if I want a burger or a big plate of vegetarian pad thai mean that I’m confused about my gender ? Honestly, there’s very little that I’d outright refuse to eat. Okay, no liver, no raw meat, no raw fish. I had to draw the line somewhere.
karpad is wise. The other reason tofu rules is that when mangoes and papayas are at their cheapest, you can –if armed with a good blender– make killer fruit “pudding” with little more than ripe fruit, a packet of silken tofu, and a bit of your favorite sweetener. And you don’t need to fire up the stove and stand over it stirring when it’s 80+ degrees out.
Take that, Mr. Macho ! :p
Smash isn’t wrong - and it isn’t new, either. Consider the whole massive body of semi-subversive pop culture out there in which women get to cross-dress as men, save the men, and then win the grateful adoring men, having their cake of fun and eating it to as they morph from docile girlfriend/wife to living the free life of a guy often better than the guys around them, playing off the sexual insecurity of gender roles by being able to be “male,” - and usully lusted after by women, too! - while simultaneously desiring the men they’re around, and go back to being the gal on the pedestal afterwards, without a hair out of place, the worst they’ve had to suffer (usually) besides the ordinary physical hardships that they’ve shown they can excel just as well as a guy, is the emotional anguish of not being able to make out with the guy they’re hanging out with as they hear him talk about how much he longs for their feminine alter-ego.
The opera Fidelio, the ballads Jackaroe, The Female Smuggler, and Sovay, most of Shakespeare’s comedies (and the original stories they’re based on,) an obscure English Civil War play called “The Valiant She Soldier” I read about, part of the Robin Hood/Maid Marian canon, the Mulan stories - there’s this constant thread in “lowbrow” culture, always with a comic element based on the discomfiture of guys at having their male privilege debunked and the hints of bisexuality (even apart from the hidden crossdressing of sex-segregated theatre), of Heroic Women who are better at everything than any man. (This carries into the early 20th century with actresses like Sarah Bernhardt becoming famous for playing the role of male heroes on stage, and becoming stars for this; and it’s still done in Western opera for 18th c theatre where the starring roles were not originally given to tenors but to castrati, who have since been played by women like Frederika von Stade, who get to swagger around in jackboots, frock coats and swords…)
However, these are much less common dramatic elements - especially in the 20th and present - than the swooning heroine, or even the “feisty” heroine who has to be taught the error of her ways by being rescued by a male and then submitting to him, chastened and humbled and grateful, at the end. We see this regression going on across the SW original Trilogy, in fact, where at the beginning the indomitable double-agent who takes an active part in her own rescue ends up passively surrounded by teddy bears at the end, and within Jedi particularly as the Jackaroe rescue gambit fails and she is turned into a harem girl who has to be rescued by “the guys”, even if this is partly subverted by her choking her captor with her own chains.
Women can play at being men, so long as they’re not too good at it. That’s Harvey Mansfield’s “debunking” of Simone de Beauvoir, you know - “The feminists are all trying to copy men! They’re just following in male footsteps! Nyah nyah ne nyah nyah!”
but alsis, where are they getting their money? That’s the trick - and since I learned this past year that the Nixonites specialized in untraceable bribes in cash, I’m even more skeptical. It’s like the vegan Taliban, only in the US instead of against the Soviets.
The question is, how hard is it to *grow* a carrot - or anything else. And how much hard, muscular, dirty, sweaty *work* is involved in agriculture - being able to control and dominate the fields and make the formerly oxen and horses tame to plow for you *used* to be considered essentially “macho” as well as the sign of civilization which separated man from beast, and the Wilderness was conceived of (often) as essentially feminine - q.v. Diana of Ephesus, the Lady of the Wild Things, Ishtar/Astarte, Tycho, etc etc etc.
I must say that even as a non-vegetarian, I have noticed this trend in advertising for a while now. This latest crop of adds has taken it to a whole other level of idiocy though. Now I like (well love) a good burger or steak, but these commercials are too much. The general message is: “Eat Meat, faggot.” And I believe in the BK ad, they unfurl a giant banner that reads “Eat Meat”, all the men rally around this banner as they toss a minivan off a highway overpass. Really what these ads are saying is that if you care at all about your health, appearence, or just don’t care to consume fast food, then you’re a pussy. This trend is not limited to food commericals but can be seen in various mutations elsewhere (cars being the other obvious realm). The idea is to shame the weak-willed into buying shit that can grant them status as a “real man” (i.e. one who only eats meat, drinks beer, and drives a large pick-up truck, one who remains untainted by the feminization of our culture.) These commercials work very well on the pyscho-sexual level that all advertising works on, they play on the anxiety and fear of the viewer and offer an anditode in the form an easily purchased product. Now as a meat-eating, sports watching, hetrosexual man I’m rather familiar with the constant message of marketing towards men in our culture which is basically: eat this shit, drink this beer, then drive this, and women will fuck you, oh yeah, and stay stupid. Its taken awhile for me to become alarmed but its reaching a tipping point. I can begin to imagine how women feel about the way TV and popular culture portray them, the message to both men and women seems to be its better to be stupid than smart, and that any attempt to live a healthy, intelligent, or cultured life makes you worthy of scorn. Stay stupid America!
You know it’s not just meat, but undercooked meat that describes manliness. Years of restaurant work provided ample evidence that the guy who ordered the biggest steak and/or the least cooked steak was the one going for alpha. I once had a table of guys get into a bidding war over who would get the biggest by-the-ounce steak. The “winner” ended up eating a 36oz. filet. His entree cost nearly $60. “Willingness to do reckless or potentially harmful things” indeed.
But the easiest way to “not be a girl” is to eat the least cooked steak. There’s a style called Pittsburg or Black and Blue, which is essentially a steak that is charred on the outside and still cold on the inside. “I’m a steelworker, I kill what I eat….”
But this vegetarian guy has two words for the whole “manliness defined by consuming cow flesh” argument: colostomy bag. It’s like a special purse you get to wear all the time.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/293/2/172
Of course, there’s a dirty little secret to all those alphas who are going for the rawest steak. They’re secretly, loathesomely tapping into the most feminized culture known to man…the hated French.
There’s a good case to be made for rawer, rather than burned-er beef, as the French would be quick to tell you - and their gender politics are something that I really don’t know, other than that a Parisenne was amazed that I knew plenty of guys (self included) that would describe themselves as feminists. Even just the word. But let’s face it, tartare is French for something or other, no?
bellatrys:
I presume from contributors, fundraisers, grants, and what not. Same as other non-profits. However, if you want to do the investigation, I’ll gladly pop over to your pad to read it. You could be the new, improved John Stossel. The one that’s not a big overbearing asshole.
Fronts:
these commercials are too much. The general message is: “Eat Meat, faggot.�
That’s a Patton Oswalt bit, I think.
stryx:
You know it’s not just meat, but undercooked meat that describes manliness.
My girlfriend converted first her then-husband, then me to eating steak rare (well, med-rare). But I have noticed it’s considered more masculine somehow.
NEWSFLASH! PORTER GOSS JUST RESIGNED!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060505/ap_on_go_pr_wh/white_house_shake_up;_ylt=Aqfrnd
(article makes it out like bush did it all-intentional like, as part of the genral shakeup, but $10 says there was something to all that speculation over at Gilliard’s that he was in on that watergate poker/ hookers ring)
I’ve done some basic googling, alsis. But I don’t pretend to be that kind of researcher, which is why I am so immensely impressed by Media Transparency, and the reporter in San Diego who figured out that Cunningham was living well beyond his means.
And, alas, I have, and have to have, a full-time day job in order to pay the rent and, hopefully, feed my cats and eat afterwards. While I sometimes get slow bits, it’s not really within the realm of possibility for me to go off and become a fulltime researcher (my blog readers, while often generous, are not enough in number to allow me to become a full time blogging reporter.)
bellatrys: You should realize that the Ch’mee who is misquoted as asking “How much brains does it take to sneak up on a carrot!â€? (it was “intelligence” and “blade of grass,” as I recall; I may still be slightly off), is a sci-fi character who belongs to a race of oversized tiger-like aliens, who eat meat and nothing but meat, and went so far as to breed intelligence out of their females. To top it off, he was addressing a member of a totally herbivorous race (with its own dirty secrets, though), which regarded cowardice as the ultimate virtue, but at least applied that cowardice logically.
Also, how do you feel about Eowyn’s role in Lord of the Rings, then?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it the case in hunter-gatherer societies that the gatherer women provide the vast bulk of the calories consumed by the group, but the hunter men reserve the glory for themselves?
As for the whole women representing things that are “good for you,” like vegetables, there was a scene in The Sopranos a few years back where Tony and Carmela were having dinner with Adrianna and a very coked-up Christaphuh. Christaphuh snapped at Carmela and Adrianna, who were talking about a produce vendor’s supply, with “Is that all you can talk about is food?” And Tony said menacingly, “When you’re married, you’ll appreciate the value of fresh produce.”
I’m not really sure what this has to do with the sexual politics of burgers anymore, but the whole idea of eating raw or rare meat is full of symbolism.
The traditional way of eating steak tartare is to garnish it with an uncooked egg yolk. And the classic, archaic preparation of Chateaubriand is to wrap a beef tenderloin in steak and roast the whole thing until the steaks are burnt crispy, then throw away them away and eat the tenderloin.
The wastefulness and explicit gluttony of such practices are only extreme examples of what fast food really is. As Amanda has pointed out, the ecological trauma caused by having a burger available within a short drive of all Americans is tremendous. The sexualization of meat leads directly to destruction of the environment.
But who gives a shit, right? I mean what kind of pussy worries about cryptosporidium anyway? Besides, burgers come from Bovine U., right?
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dpd/parasites/cryptosporidiosis/factsht_cryptosporidiosis.htm
Hey, I like tofu, a lot. And natto, too.
But then, being Asian, I grew up with the stuff.
Actually, for most cultures throughout history, meat was considered a luxury item due to the economics of scarcity.
Today, thanks to advances in agriculture and food science, as well as increased affluence, we can eat meat pretty regularly.
[…] Those commercials touting the manliness of huge burgers or slabs of steak have not escaped the notice of Amanda at Pandagon, or Shakespeare’s Sister. […]
Tofu. Natto. Mmmmm . . .
smash said: “Why? Because women are icky, gross, weak, and slightly sub-human, so who would want to be one anyway? Thus we can forgive women for some attempts to step out of their assigned places (but not too much, or the rest of them will get the wrong idea).”
That doesn’t entirely explain it. Once upon a time, wearing bloomers was an act of incomprehensible rebellion. There was no “forgiv(ing) women for some attempts to step out of their assigned places.” The semi-acceptance of the tomgirl is relatively recent–you only have to go back fifty, sixty years to find plenty of examples of the tomgirl stereotype directly equated with lesbianism, just like the sissy-boy stereotype is equated with being gay now. That nowadys tomgirls get a patronizing pat on the head instead of a brutal smackdown is, depressingly, a big step forward.
I think that there are two forces at work here. First, there is a clear hierarchal component in that the masculine is meant to be superior to the feminine. But there is also a component of difference: women’s roles and men’s roles are simply different, and trying to play a different role than the one you were assigned at conception is bad, bad, bad. There is more wiggle room on the feminine side, won by long decades of struggle.
Roving Thundercloud said: “The roles are contemptible because they involve cleaning up after someone else, taking care of others, etc. And only a girl, or girly-man, would even be interested in that, right?”
I think that that is about right–there are roles that are considered contemptible, and thus the people who are forced to do it, women, are considered contemptible–both because they perform those roles, and also because they can be made to perform them.
It is a bit chicken-and-egg, though: women are contemptible because they do contemptible things which are contemptible because women do them, ad infinitum. Tautologies like this aren’t really susceptible to causal analysis.
Hey! What part of steak tartare is wasteful?
Steak tartare. Mmmmmm . . .
You natto people! You’re impossible.
Now, I’ll admit that I can see why it was funny for life-long Japanese natto eaters to introduce their gaijin freinds to that crap, but words can not describe how awful your first bite of natto is. Really, pandagonians, don’t listen to Westerners who say it’s edible…they’re superhuman freaks for being able to acclimate to it. And don’t listen to your Japanese freinds who will follow you around with a package of it chanting “It’s so delicious! It’s so good for health! Good for health!” because they are trying to trick you. It is good for health but it is not delicious on a nearly unimaginable scale.
What’s so bad about food with the taste and texture of fresh boogers? Not that I’d know anything about that.
There IS a bit of sadism in the natto experience. My Japanese mother once made a meal for us that not only had natto, but also featured shrimp fried in the their intact shells, head, feelers, the whole deal (to keep them juicy–pretty tasty), and fish with their heads still attached, the better to slurp down the eyeballs in front of my horrified wife.
The funny thing is, heresiarch, that Amelia Bloomer modeled her pants on Turkish harem trousers, worn by Muslim women in the Ottoman empire. (The Ottomen men wore long, flowing robes) So, if a 19th century woman showed up wearing bloomers, she’d be scorned as a masculinist deviate by the West, and accepted as a feminine woman by the East (I.e., property) No won situation.
…setting up situations where men are told that in order to prove they are Not Women or Not Pussywhipped, they are required to do whatever the advertisers tell them to do, no matter how damaging or stupid…
You think hamburgers are unhealthy? How do you think the manipulators talk so many men into volunteering for armed combat?
They could probably make most of their money reselling the fur coats they ask people to donate to them again and again on their website.
As far as money and repugs go, some googling shows that PETA apparently gave a few hundred dollars to Bob C. Smith’s presidential campaign in 1999 (he was running as an independent because the repugs weren’t anti-choice enough for his liking at the time - they accepted people who didn’t support a ban on late term abortions *gasp*) before he flaked and took up john chafee’s job as chairman for the Public Works committee after chafee kicked the bucket in july of that year.
And I hate humanoid felines in Sci Fi, if only because they never ever end up filling the space ship with cat vomit, as a real humanoid feline would have to do so that their stomach didn’t get bunged up with cat hairs.
Why the hell don’t puppeteers wear clothes either? Was niven trying to meet heinlein’s “a civil society is a polite society” quip with a “a paranoid society is a naked society” counter?
While we’re at it, why do the menus at so many restaurants label their low-fat entrees with embarrassing cutesy names that reference attempts to lose weight, buy into the food=sin equivalence that particularly seems to be pushed at women all the time, or both? “Xtra-Skinn-E No-Guilt Chicken” and such? Really, if it’s in the low-fat section of the menu, that’s as much information as we need; you don’t need to make it humiliating to order by adding the stupid name. They’re worse than the Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘n’ Fruity, which at least doesn’t imply that there’s something wrong with you when you order it.
I have absolutely no need to lose weight, but it’s a lot better for my esophagus and my cholesterol if I lay off the fatty foods. But I suspect that if I really were trying to lose weight, I’d be even more embarrassed. Maybe if I were a better, more confident person I wouldn’t be embarrassed about this, but I think people ought to be afforded a little dignity concerning their bodies.
Do the restaurants make lower margins on these dishes, or something? I doubt it, since they tend to be simpler and don’t cost any less.
I don’t actually have enough of a persecution complex to believe Madison Ave. is trying to write commercials with the express purpose of pissing me off.
Uh, your name IS tinfoil hattie.
On the smoking as macho thing: the “Marlboro Man” campaign started because Marlboro was, at one time, thought to be a woman’s brand. They went hypermacho to start attracting male customers.
bellatrys:
Unfair !! It’s time those cats got off their duffs and brought home some $$$.
(Not that mine will…)
alsis, I know my cats are making money on the side (probably with spam or phishing schemes) because I’ve caught them poking at the keyboard while I’m away from the desk. (That may be why there’s all that bad spelling and strange cut-paste jobs from literature which turn into gibberish at the end turning up in inboxes lately. They’re going to the Project Gutenberg bookmark but they can’t help their short little digits and claws.)
But they’re not sharing any of it with me - probably offshore accounts, altho’ they may just be squandering it on video poker…
John - book or movie? And do you have several hours? Are you sure you want to be asking me this? (Hint: my personal website is strongly Middle-earth themed…)
You Have Been Warned. (Though out of courtesy we probably shouldn’t hold what will undoubtedly turn into a major nerd flamewar on Pandagon.)
–Also, is it just me or is there something incredibly wierd and meta about this Burger King commercial being set up as a classic movie musical setpiece?
Given that this advert ends with a little old lady holding up a piece of beef and shouting “Beef”, to which our heroes return the battle cry, I find it rather difficult to imagine any misogynistic intent here.
Why assume the uncomfortable silence after the broccoli is some sort of homophobic “Dude you just crapped on the carpet.” sort of moment?
Meaty Gender Post…
Over at Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte has an excellent post about the gendered politics of eating meat.
While this idea isn’t a new one to me, this is the first time that I’ve seen it explicitly stated. Up until now I only had it internalized, and a …..
[…] Unsurprisingly, the aforementioned commercial was asinine beyond belief: four dudely young morons boo-yah over some disgusting meat entree (served, no doubt, on a bed of Velveeta and Jack Daniels). Meat, meat, meat, and then one guy tries to boo-yah a sprig of broccoli, whereupon the other three basically call him a faggot until he waggles a sausage in the air, reaffirming the meatly phallocentricity of the group. Meat = dick, vegetables = pussy, nonconformity and gender ambiguity weaken male cohesion, etc. I was overcome with inarticulate rage over this fucktarded display, so naturally I was relieved this morning to see that both Shakespeare’s Sister (”Be a man! Eat shit!) and Amanda have given this thing a proper skewering. […]
I mentioned being more sensitive to the gender-political implications of my choices at the bar than at the table, and it recently struck me why: I started making dining choices at 3 or so. I started drinking at 19, when the patriarchy had had a lot more time to work on me.
LC Scotty:
Why assume the uncomfortable silence after the broccoli is some sort of homophobic “Dude you just crapped on the carpet.� sort of moment?
What do you think it is?
A Present For the Manly Men Out There - UPDATED 12:45 PM…
What should you eat while you’re driving your SUV through a crowd of hippies? Why, the Burger King Texas Double……
I always Liked the Foster’s “How to speak Australian” commercial where they show this huge porterhouse steak and someone puts a piece of parseley on top and they say “SALAD”.
[…] Check out this idiocy. Folks, they don’t get no stupider than this. […]
I just heard the ad — it’s echoing in my apartment as I type — and they’ve removed the offending “vegetable medley.” Now it’s just four guys celebrating their meat. Er, you know what I mean.
Okay this is beyond silly but I have to reply, I don’t know why.
Any guy who bases their masculine self-image on their diet has way too many self-esteem issues to go into. (I suppose I could also say any woman who bases her feminine self-image on her diet likewise has some self-esteem problems going on.)
In the last week I have eaten Pad Thai with Tofu, a Ribeye, Spaghetti, a hot dog, catfish, an omelette, a quiche, a spinach salad, some chicken soup, a bunch of gorgonzola and well you don’t need to know my entire dietary history but I think you get the point. I ate a wide variety of foods and I cooked them all (okay I didn’t make the gorgonzola). I like variety and I’m a good cook. It has nothing to do with my sense of “manliness.” (Although I do get a sort of macho pride out of being a good cook.)
I think Americans are so messed up by food because they can’t cook and neither could their parents. My mom was a great cook and got me started. I’m a great cook and eat healthy balanced meals.
If your idea of a good restaurant is a steak house you need to get in the kitchen. I refuse to spend 50 bucks on a meal that takes less than 30 minutes to cook with ingredients that shouldn’t cost more than 15 bucks.
Matt McIrvin:
That’s funny restaurants I go to have things on the menu like: Bharta Makhni, Masaman Curry, steak au poivre, or Sheesh Ta’ Ouk.
If you ever find yourself in an establishment with something like Xtra-Skinn-E No-Guilt Chicken back away quickly for they do not serve food. They might serve a food-like substance but it is not food and has no nutritional value. If you often find yourself in this situation I suggest a trip to the cookbook section of your local bookstore followed by the grocery store.
If you know how to cook you will find you are able to eat quite well at a reasonable price.
I’ll just step in here with some personal observations.
From personal experience, a preference for meat appears to be at least partly hormonal. I have no idea what hormones are involved, probably not just testosterone, DHT, estrol, estrodiol etc.
Guys - chicks dig salads because they taste better to them.
Gals - guys genuinely like meat more than you do, and salads don’t taste nearly as good.
This has nothing to do with sexual politics, but it appears to be about protein receptors in the brain, and how the brain was wired up starting from the 6th week after conception. Girls have more white matter in the frontal lobes than guys do, for example.
So what’s my evidence for this? Consistent accounts by Transsexual men and women who all report the same thing. And naturally YMMV, there’s plenty of women who love steak, and plenty of men whose idea of great food is a waldorf salad.
I’m one of the few (1 in 3.5 million?) whose bodies changed hormonally from M to F mode for no apparent reason. It happens to maybe 1 in 1000 transsexual women. The change was so sudden that it was obvious, and being a Geek Girl scientist I recorded it at the time. Blogged it too, I wasn’t sure this was a survivable event, but I digress.
As for the Ad? It helps to have a sense of humour, but it doesn’t appeal to me even then. But I’d say it’s harmless, and not a Tool of the Patriarchy.
One interesting note that I haven’t seen picked up on yet: The guy in the mini-van is supposed to represent the cook from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Hence the close-up of the New York License plate on the van.
There’s a certain redemptiveness to this shot: If you’re gay, there’s hope. We can fix you with a hamburger.
[…] Might this have a little sumthin-sumthin to do with the stereotype that “real men” eat meat, while the womenfolk can suffice on tiny sparrow’s portions of lettuce and broccoli? […]