Feminism Friday entry.
Other feminist bloggers have written about this extremely silly article in the NY Times about a supposed trend of women eating red meat on dates to impress men. There’s no real way to measure these things, and since there’s nothing new about the various pressures that make even choosing dinner a gendered, sexualized act, I’m skeptical that there’s any such trend. But I do get why you’d want to write an article like this—first dates are situations where you’re trying to make pretty big judgments on people with very little information, so it’s not completely silly to suggest that people order dinner with an eye towards saying something about themselves to their date. (What my dinner choices always, always say: I am a vegetarian, a fact that gets over-analyzed to death.) That said, this article is a train wreck of stereotypes and plain weirdness, and it’s more evidence for the pile that Carol Adams wasn’t off-base to write about the sexual politics of meat.
Eating meat, particularly red meat, is gendered as masculine and being a vegetarian is gendered as feminine, I think it’s safe to say. With that in mind, this article reveals the sort of casual disdain for feminine things that puts women in such a bind, particularly when trying to fulfill our social role of being pleasing to men. You’re supposed to be feminine, of course, but you’re also supposed to embrace masculine things in a non-threatening way to be appealing. The movie There’s Something About Mary sent up these ridiculous expectations on women in an amusing way. Mary had the best of both worlds—rail-thin, beautiful, generous while also being big into sports and beer and man food.
Another example of the impossible expectations put on women to be “perfect”—the virgin/whore dichotomy. Or specifically the sense you get that you’re both supposed to be sexually modest and cautious (feminine) while still being able to be adventurous (masculine) to please your partner once you’re firmly placed in a committed relationship. This impossible dichotomy is on full display in the sexual “purity” movement—girls are told that they should not have sex and often not even kiss or hold hands until their wedding night, but the sex that happens within minutes/hours of having your first kiss ever is supposed to be amazing, because amateurs are just the absolute best at everything, apparently.
Unsurprisingly, the impossibility of expectation of being both a feminine woman with pleasingly masculine aspects shows up all over this article.
Red meat sent a message that she was “unpretentious and down to earth and unneurotic,” she said, “that I’m not obsessed with my weight even though I’m thin, and I don’t have any food issues.” She added, “In terms of the burgers, it said I’m a cheap date, low maintenance.”
The only reason to think that deliberately choosing steak on a dinner date to show off is unpretentious, down to earth, or unneurotic is that eating meat is considered a masculine behavior. In reality, I’d say that fussing over what you eat to impress dates is a good example of neurotic pretentiousness. I also like the virgin/whore dichotomy in food—you are both expected to eat like a pig while maintaining the feminine waistline of self-deprivation. It’s the exact same expectation as demanding that women be able to throw themselves heartily into sex after years of depriving themselves in the name of not being slutty. And of course her last statement echoes another impossible standard—you’re supposed to look pulled together and feminine, which is time-consuming and expensive, all while making sure that you come across as low maintenance, so your man isn’t ruffled by having to know about all the work you do to be pleasingly feminine. (Lynn Peril documents some of the lengths women were told to go to in the past in order to maintain the illusion of effortless beauty in her book Pink Think—I remember one advice book where women were told to get up before their husbands so they could sneakily apply make-up undetected, so that he never saw you without it or saw you applying it.)
The barely concealed throb of fear and loathing of the feminine continues.
But others, especially those who are thin, say ordering a salad displays an unappealing mousiness.
“It seems wimpy, insipid, childish,” said Michelle Heller, 34, a copy editor at TV Guide. “I don’t want to be considered vapid and uninteresting.”
There is nothing wimpy, insipid, vapid or uninteresting about salad. And since children tend to prefer the hamburgers to the greens, I’d say salads are more adult than meat. But salads are coded as girl food, and the stereotype that she’s running from is that women themselves are wimpy, insipid, childish, vapid, and uninteresting. But certainly, I understand the urge. Meat-eating seems like a good way to be pleasingly masculine without being threateningly masculine.
In fact, red meat on a date has become such an effective statement of self-acceptance that even a vegetarian like Sloane Crosley, a publicist at Random House, sometimes longs to order a burger.
“Being a vegetarian puts you at a disadvantage,” Ms. Crosley said. “You’re in the most basic category of finicky. Even women who order chicken, it isn’t enough.” She said she has thought of ordering shots of Jägermeister, famous for its frat boy associations, to prove that she is “a guy’s girl.”
If you’re eating meat to prove something instead just because that’s what you want, that’s hardly a sign of self-acceptance. Same issue with the negative stereotype of vegetarianism as a sign of finickiness. While there are certainly picky vegetarians out there, I’ve found that being a vegetarian has challenged me to be more adventurous in my eating. Most food you encounter is meat-based still, so vegetarians have to do some digging around and experimenting to get some variety in their diets. I hate the idea that being a vegetarian is weak—again, only because it’s coded as feminine. Because in the real world, being a vegetarian often requires willpower.
141 Responses to “Strong enough for a man but made for a woman”
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something funky with the font going on in about the middle of the post…just thought I’d let you know, because it makes it hard to finish reading.
Wow, 20-30% of India is girly vegetarian men!
I haven’t given up meat, nor do I intend to, but I am eating less of it and eating meatless a lot more often than I used to.
Even with my very limited experience in trying to reduce the amount of meat in my diet, I would agree completely that you have to be much more creative and much more imaginative and much more adventurous to eat meatless than to go run to the nearest fast-food joint to buy a burger that is neither big nor tasty.
You know, any guy who rejects you solely on what you order during your dinner date isn’t worth anyone’s time.
I will say that “Get a salad or he’ll think you’re a fat pig!” is just as stupid as “Eat red meat or he’ll think you’re a prude!” Get whatever you want and eat it.
Though deliberately ordering the most expensive thing on the menu with the expectation that your date will pay for it would be pretty rude. I have heard tales of people who do such things, though I have never been friends with them myself.
“She said she has thought of ordering shots of Jägermeister[.]”
The thought of someone ordering a shot of Jager on a first date made me laugh my ass off.
Like wayward, I’m no vegetarian, but my meat consumption has dropped off a bit in the last five or six years. It’s partly because meat is expensive and I don’t make much, of course, but I also just like veggies. Not directly related, but I’ve also been trying really hard lately to drink juice or water instead of soda.
Something else I’ve noticed is that when you order a burger at a chain restaurant (both fast-food and sit-down), it usually comes loaded with piles and piles of veggies. The masculine-anxiety crowd never seems to complain about that. Of course, I don’t think lettuce, tomato and onion are even remotely necessary to the entire burger concept, but I’m pretty sure that feeling is rooted in epicurism rather than sexual anxiety.
But if veggies are so girly, you’d think that would have to apply to burger fixins, too. Touching meat, apparently, makes you extra manly. Heh.
that carol adams book is fantastic, its one of roughly 6,000 books im in the middle of that i need to finish before classes start the 20th.
i second the idea that becoming a vegetarian means expanding your palett, if you had asked omnivorous me if i would eat spinach i would have told you to fuck off, now, i love it.
Dangit. I just noticed that the last three letters of my nick got cut off at some point.
I don’t know what “bananas fos” are.
Shit, they still are. Guess there’s a field limit.
I totally agree - I became vegetarian gradually, beginning about 7 years ago and going completely vegetarian (not vegan) about 5 years ago. And man, has my palette expanded. I used to eat a much more limited range of foods - I avoided beans or mushrooms or eggplant or…you get the idea. Being vegetarian has meant being much more adventuresome about food than I was before. Also, more mature, since it involves smiling politely when the 1000th person says something dumb about it, and graciously making do with what I can in a variety of social settings.
But I think that the article was not written with vegetarians in mind. It was written about the other stereotype: the uber-feminine woman who orders salad on dates and eats a carton of ice cream (why did ice cream end up the villain in these narratives, I wonder?) when she’s sad.
Also, I can confirm from my college days the rewards that were showered on me by a few (note all) guy friends when I did order steak. It was ridiculous. I guess there were lots of vegetarians at my school (this was before I stopped eating meat) and a number of my guy friends would act over-the-top impressed if I talked about liking burgers or steak. Seriously - there was one who would say things like, “Betsy, I’m so glad you like red meat” in this tender and affectionate voice, and another who would go “YEAH!” and high five me on such occasions. It was so silly, but it reinforced the “oh, you’re not like the OTHER girls, you’re FUN” vibe.
*that was supposed to be (not all), not (note all). Oops!
I’m female and a huge, lifelong carnivore. That being said, only the highest quality filet is worth eating pink. Aside from that, it’s medium well at the lowest end (especially with today’s dubious health regulations). I would pretty much think that someone ordering rare for some social reason versus taste preference was a screaming idiot more than I would think them virile, etc…
I have to honestly admit that I have never even considered the gender implications of my diet choices before! It’s amusing to ponder the possibilities…
so it was written about a “cathy” cartoon?
In addition to gender associations, eating meat has class associations. The ability to afford meat is coded as middle or upper class, at the same time “meat and potatoes” (as opposed to tofu?) connotes down-to-earth working class mores. The best of both worlds…
Of course, the gender connections are deeply inter-twined. Meat is considered necessary for the big, strong mens, and in some households I’ve seen the woman (mother) forego her portion of the meat so that he can have double. It’s funny that menstruation with attendant anemia actually means that women might need the meat more.
I will also say that I can *maybe* see why vegetarians get a bad rap sometimes based on personal experience. The two most committed vegetarians I know are also impossible to please and almost always demanding and rude to waitstaff (standard disclaimer that of course this isn’t repreentative of all vegans, etc…applies). It seems hard to find food that will please their picky palate unless we go to a restaurant dedicated to vegan foods, which of course puts off the steak eaters in the group.
I know. I’m a big, rather muscular guy who, at restaurants, eats almost exclusively chicken or pork and loves salads and pasta. This should mean that I’m “wimpy, insipid, and childish.” Not to mention mousy. But it doesn’t, thanks to the magic of double standards…
As an omnivore who’s lived with vegetarians for most of my adult life, I’ve started to approach meat as an occasional add-on rather than the centerpiece of a meal. Which, even though I have no plans to go veg anytime soon (can’t give up bacon or really good hamburgers, sorry), has been really enlightening.
And I’m with Mnemosyne and others who’ve mentioned, um, if you’re dating a guy who gives a shit about what you eat, that can’t possibly bode well. I don’t go on many dates, but when I do, I order whatever I want. I’d also rather pick a restaurant that doesn’t offer really cliche entree choices like “steak”, “salad” — there are other things to eat, you know…
Fixed. Thanks, Jeff.
This all reminds me of The Breakfast Club (odd, since, unlike seemingly the entire rest of the Western world, I didn’t care for that movie), the part where they were trying to get Claire to say whether or not she was a virgin, and whatever she said, she’d be a prude/slut.
I, too, am a vegetarian. I’m less picky now than I used to be. For example, I have a newfound willingness to eat actual vegetables now (I still don’t trust red onions, though)/
Anyone who orders a steak on their first date in hopes of presenting themselves as low-maintenance needs to consider the fact that steaks are usually expensive. The consumption of extremely expensive food wouldn’t connote “low-maintenance” to me, but that’s just my perception.
I’ve always liked my steaks rare, even as a little kid (well, 13 or 14, which is about how old a child has to be before my parents will even think about giving him or her any steak). It was a tasty way to get my dad’s approval. He always made what was, for my family, a somewhat big deal out of it.
Of course, now, almost 15 years later, the ability to eat a rare steak is sadly behind him, and so my preference still earns me some marvel.
It isn’t only meat that these double standards apply to, and women trying on certain gender coded accessories in order to appear more human i.e. more like men. There’s a plague of women driving 4wd’s (SUV’s) in Australia, I guess to try and take back some humanity and space around themselves. Australia is, afterall, a place where women can be beaten or run over for daring to drive something that’s supposed to be a penis substitute and weapon.
The two most committed vegetarians I know are also impossible to please and almost always demanding and rude to waitstaff
I’ve wondered before if this isn’t a regional thing. Living in New York, I don’t know of very many restaurants where vegetarians have a hard time finding something appetizing to eat without having to make a bunch of special requests. Most of my friends are vegetarians. We virtually never go to “vegetarian” restaurants. I’ve never seen any of my friends make outlandish requests of waiters, or act overly petulant in restaurants.
But, I remember this stuff being a constant tension when I lived in the south. Will we be able to eat here? Will I be able to order anything besides salad? What kinds of stupid questions will I have to ask about the use of chicken broth, etc? I also have direct experience eating in southern and midwestern restaurants with absolutely no vegetarian friendly menu items.
But, I remember this stuff being a constant tension when I lived in the south. Will we be able to eat here?
When I was waitressing, I encountered alot of problems with people with food allergies. It was simply not on the kitchen staff’s priority list to tell me if we cooked with peanut oil and such. Of course, it wasn’t in the training either so every time I got asked another detailed hidden ingredient question it was another journey to get the attention of the kitchen manager.
Apart from noting that one of the ads at the top of the page is for weightwatchers….
Meat is only one of the masculine accessories that a lot of women seem to be going after these days in order to make themselves appear more human, that is more male and less “feminine” except as a sex-bot.
There’s a plague of women driving 4wd’s in Aus, as if to take back some of their personal space on the roads. Which, in car culture are mostly the domain of men driving penis substitutes that also function as weapons.
It’s been almost two decades since I left the dating scene, but I’ve never worried about what my date was ordering. At 21, I worried about what I ordered (I really like the spagetti, but the tomato sauce always splashes I better get something that won’t leave red marks on my shirt how about the steak no I’m always clumsy cutting steak better get something that I don’t have to cut and look clumsy).
By the time I reached 24, I no longer worried so much about it.
Honestly, the only time I worried about what the person I’m with orders is when I’ve got the kids.
Oops… looks like my timing is out. Apologies for the double post. You can’t tell I don’t like SUV drivers, can you?
I would pretty much think that someone ordering rare for some social reason versus taste preference was a screaming idiot
It’s a good thing most meat tastes better rarer, then, eh?
I’m not aware of anyone ordering their meat rare for social reasons, but because anything beyond “medium-rare” is a flavor abomination. Unless maybe we’re talking about beef stew or something. “Well done” beef is the culinary equivalent of white zinfandel, sorry. No. Just no.
Oh, and on the class front, not only do I agree wholeheartedly, but this is something that is so deeply entrenched in Northern European culture that it appears in myth. Beef has until incredibly recently (post WW2) been the food of the wealthiest of the wealthy, because it’s so expensive to raise, and because the loss of dairy or stud possibilities is such a big deal. The ancient Irish epics are all based around cattle raids, which took a similar role in Celtic society that movies about bank robbers take in Western society do today.
Speaking of really severe food allergies, I have a really severe dairy allergy — which is one reason you’ll almost never find me eating steak in a restaurant. Seems around here, at least lately, every restaurant has taken to “butter-finishing” their steaks (whoever’s vile, nasty idea that was deserves to be pilloried and pelted with rancid animal fat…I mean, beef, with butter?! Yuck!!), and even if I order it without the butter finish, I can’t ever quite trust that it hasn’t been cross-contaminated…
I really love a big steak, though, preferably accompanied by a couple hectares of salad…
I’ve cut back myself for the following reasons:
Meat is expensive. Beans are cheap and filling. So are potatoes.
I feel better when I don’t eat meat everyday.
I like most veggies. Still not crazy about broccoli or brussels sprouts.
I’m also drinking more water and less sugary drinks. I don’t miss the sugar rush followed by the sugar crash, and cola does not agree with my system on hot days. Fortunately, I now live in a city with great tasting tap water (Columbia, SC), so there is no need for filters or bottles.
As for burgers, I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57, and french fried potatoes Big kosher pickle and a cold draught beer…
That has more to do with self-centeredness than vegetarianism, IMO. If I’m in a place where there aren’t any obviously veg items on the menu, I might very politely inquire of the waitstaff whether I could get a pasta or grilled cheese, but I’m always appreciative of the extra effort and apologetic for making extra work for them.
Of course, it could also just be self-righteousness on their part, which, sadly, does sometimes go along with being vegetarian (along with any other moral practice, from non-drinking to christianity to left wing politics). But I’d like to think that that’s the minority.
Finally (I’m chatty tonight!) I agree with the opoponax that region makes a huge difference. I live in the Boston area, which is VERY veg-friendly (except at high-end restaurants, which I don’t have the means to frequent regularly anyway). But I’m from TX and have traveled fairly widely, and it’s definitely harder in rural areas, the south, and the midwest.
t’s a good thing most meat tastes better rarer, then, eh?
Hmm, I’d say “better” is subjective. I’m a hyper-smeller, and I can’t stand rare meat. It tastes like sucking on a wound (and I don’t mean just “bloody”).
I was also just struck by the bizarre assumption that permeated that “article,” namely, that there are but two menu choices at any given date restaurant: beef or salad. That seems very strange! It’s like the possibility of ordering seafood or pork or risotto or ravioli never once crossed their minds.
Re: the opoponax
Wow! Yep, I’m in the south, so that may have something to do with it. Even when we make an effort to find a “something for everybody” restaurant things seemilgly just aren’t up to snuff. Maybe the cooks down here just don’t learn to cook very tasty vegan food in general unless there’s a restaurant focus on it (or if they do, it still necessitates lots of questions, i.e. making sure the vegan food is *really* vegan, etc…). Of course, there’s also a polite way and a rude way to go about things, so my friends are at fault regardless for being so rude about it.
As far as steak goes, I actually prefer the taste of more cooked meat over more raw (again, only a very exceptional filet would be the exception). So not only is it my safety preference, it’s also my taste preference. I was thinking of the whole macho “the bloodier the better” bit when considering social reasons for ordering rare…if people really like the taste of it then more power to them!
It’s definitely easier to order vegetarian meals in big cities. Unless you go to a steakhouse or a traditional French or German restaurant, that is. Or a BBQ joint. Big-city restaurants seem much more vegetarian-savvy and more readily accommodate special diets.
I haven’t been on a date with a new person in 20 years, but I can’t imagine ordering anything other than Food I Want to Eat.
Vegetarians’ favorite question: “Well, you eat shrimp, right?”
Actually, Beef (and particularly veal) were totally cheap, common foodstuffs until WW2. Up until that time CHICKEN was the expensive fancy dinner that you only had occasionally. Because once you ate them, no more eggs from that hen.
Birds like quail were cheap because they were FREE for the shooting. And Fish! Fish was NEXT to free. My Mom used to always pine for herring and lamb, because when she was growing up in the 1930’s, those items were cheap, poor people’s economy foods
You know how the early cartoons always have the characters salivating over an idea bubble of a roasted chicken? Back then it was the equivalent of sushi today.
She said she has thought of ordering shots of Jägermeister, famous for its frat boy associations, to prove that she is “a guy’s girl.”
Back when I wanted to prove I was a “guys’ girl” I would just drink cheap beer, crush the empty cans on my forehead and piss off the edge of the deck.
if you’re dating a guy who gives a shit about what you eat, that can’t possibly bode well.
I cannot tell you how many guys I knew back when I was young and single who took a burning interest in my dietary habits — to the point of critiquing the contents of my pantry and interrupting my lunch at a restaurant to tell me what I should’ve ordered instead. I dated a couple of these dudes and discovered what the food-patrol thing should’ve clued me in to — a huge serving of control issues with a side order of contempt. Check, please.
What has turned me off from ordering meat at most restaurants is that it’s impossible to get a decent-sized portion. A nice little 3-4 oz filet is perfectly fine for me, thank you–why do restaurants insist (particularly at dinner) that it has to be 8 oz or more? (6 oz is usually the smallest I’ve ever found and it’s still too much for me.)
Feh.
Oh, and in light of that NYTimes article, what’s the macho quotient of ordering the grilled eel?
Unagi….yum.
One of my favorite meat stories was when I went to a very nice, expensive local steakhouse with two friends of mine from out of town. The friends were a heterosexual married couple. She ordered a big steak; he ordered a grilled salmon dish.
When the waiter brought out the food, he automatically gave the steak to the man, and the salmon to the woman. They just laughed and traded plates. (She’d instigated the steakhouse trip in the first place, because she was craving a good steak.)
The thing that bothered me most in that article was the line “I’m not obsessed with my weight even though I’m thin.” I think the major conclusion I draw from this article is that “effortless perfection” is still the standard for women, and that makes me really mad.
Ugh. Rare meat. My ancestors didn’t invent fire so I could eat undercooked food. Of course, the cuisine I grew up with is African, where undercooked food can mean death, so YMMV.
Also the whole “melt in your mouth” thing for meats is an abomination. It’s animal flesh and it should have the texture of animal, not pureed beets.
Oh, good. Another NYT article based on “I asked a few friends and then made shit up. Hey, I had a deadline.”
So while “masculine” means “not feminine,” “feminine” means “whatever the lowest common denominator of self-centered, emotionally-stunted jerk is supposed to want in a trophy mate, at least until a real human woman actually meets the standard, whereupon the requirements will change again.” Got it.
And if I ever ate meat that “melted” in my mouth, I don’t think I’d ever be able to eat again.
Hmmm … I saw the Durham Bulls in their own park recently. For those of you who missed Bull Durham, there is a big sign in the outfield with a bull on some grass.
It says “Hit Bull, Eat Steak” on the bull.
In smaller letters on the grass it says “Hit grass, get salad”.
Maybe you impress your date more if you hit the bull?
My wife with my bumbling help run a farm & small beef operation. She & I have a rather different view of this whole thing. (I.e. Ah gee, Steaks again, tonight ). She has earned the right to eat whatever she wants after feeding them, doing face plants in their manure and hours in the sun bailing hay.
Anyway I thought you might like to hear the view of the ever shrinking ag sector.
The thing that bothered me most in that article was the line “I’m not obsessed with my weight even though I’m thin.” I think the major conclusion I draw from this article is that “effortless perfection” is still the standard for women, and that makes me really mad.
Reading stuff like that or seeing Nicole Ritchie make a big deal out of eating public makes me think that bulemia isn’t so much a mental illness but a rational response to this pressure.
Living in rural Minnesota after graduating from college, it was rather sad and humorous to watch my vegetarian friends. In many places, the only thing they could really eat was a side salad of (ew, nasty, icky, horrible) iceberg lettuce.
The first question I ask people if they’re coming over for dinner is, “do you eat meat?” I’ve actually found that trying to develop meatless dinners tests my imagination more. But, cooking a chicken breast with prosciutto, fontina, and sage rolled in it, or a pork chop stuffed with dried cherry and mushroom stuffing, probably gets my taste buds going more.
Then again, some days I just want a nice salad. I’m not a huge vegetable eater, but I’ve learned to tell when my body needs some greens. (and I tend to get my vegetables more in my soups than as veggies).
And raw green beans, fresh out of the garden, rock! I never knew they could be so sweet.
I wasn’t even on a date one evening last year, just out for dinner with some people I didn’t know very well. I ordered a veggie burger and it was delicious. One of the guys asked me if I was a vegetarian.
“No.”
“Then why did you order that?”
“Because I like it.”
“But why would you eat that instead of a real one?”
“Because it’s good!”
He didn’t get it.
i’m recalling a dinner I had with a straight couple a few years ago. They’re very good friends and Midwesterners like myself–it is a very meat-centric culture. He orders a steak, she gets a chicken breast, and I orderr a big ol’ Cobb Salad.
“You’re ordering a salad?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s what I’m in the mood for.” I responded.
“But that’s something you eat at home, not go out for.”
—————–
I think part of the association with meat and masculinity is grilling/barbecuing. Although I can work magic with pan searing and wine sauce for a cheap cut, with a nice steak, it’s cooked outside.
Since the kitchen is coded as feminine space, cooking outdoors allows it to escape the feminine association. And when you cook outdoors, you cook meat. (Yes, grilled vegetables are wonderful, but they just don’t carry the masculine oomph.)
My dad is like that. He loves his grill. And he’s never been so excited about it since he found Penzeys. One day, after being quite experimental, and having it turn out very nice, he said to my mother, “Jeff’s not the only Martha Stewart in this family.”
(I mentioned before that he’s also the one who does the canning, so he’s not averse to cooking inside…a large part of that is because when my sister and I were young, Mom worked the 3-11 shift as a nurse, so dad had to cook for us.)
Oh, and a grill has to be charcoal. none of that gas shit.
Phonetic experiments in fruit-based Vietnamese noodle soup?
It’s a stupid game. First you find out what the herd is doing, then you find out whether this is all getting a trifle too predicable, even in the subconscious minds of those who are the most elite of trendsetters. Then you do the opposite, and start a new trend, subtly critical of the old trend. haha.
Unless a woman eats a kielbasa whole, i don’t know how eating meat is supposed to impress men.
Elizabeth, I have that exact coversation with my husband every time I have a soy patty (chopped, over field greens with vinaigrette. Yum!).
“Why don’t you just use a chicken patty?”
“I like this.”
“But it’s a fake chicken patty. Just use the chicken!”
Why would I add unnecessary meat to my diet (cholesterol problems), in order to have the “real” thing that I don’t like as well?
When the waiter brought out the food, he automatically gave the steak to the man, and the salmon to the woman
I have been that man, more than a few times. (I was never a huge beef-eater, but now it makes me think of mental degeneration.) I also regularly get the full monty soda, even though I ordered the diet, because that’s gendered too.
So, ultimately, what’s the femmiest entree to order? Maybe I should follow the logic of the women in the article and try to impress my date with how much I can be one of the girls.
Of course, it could also just be self-righteousness on their part, which, sadly, does sometimes go along with being vegetarian (along with any other moral practice, from non-drinking to christianity to left wing politics). But I’d like to think that that’s the minority.
Ah, clearly you don’t live in California, Land of the Food Fuss. You have vegetarians, and then you have vegans, and then you have macrobiotics, and then you have Zone Dieters and then … you get the idea. What’s okay on one person’s plate is a DEADLY POISON that must be the subject of a half-hour conversation to another.
The best is when you accidentally take a vegan to a vegetarian restaurant. The icy silences …
On the other hand, when a vegetarian friend came out to visit from the Midwest, she was perfectly happy to eat anywhere that would serve her a dish without visible meat in it. And she’s been a vegetarian since birth (Indian family — Hindu and I think Brahmin).
This is such an absurd subject for a major newspaper article. My date and I would usually be too absorbed in a hyperintensive discussion of six topics at once, babbling back and forth in order to mask the anxiety of being in such close proximity to someone we might get to spend the night with, in order to pay the slightest attention to what the other ordered and what that said about them.
My father has never cooked a meal for himself in the 47+ years that he and my mother have been married — with the sole exception of grilled meats, which he produces with great fanfare after taking the plate with the trimmed meat from my mother. My mother, who is a restaurant-quality cook, oohs and aahs over my dad’s mad grilling skills every time. But then my dad puts on his apron and his rubber gloves and cleans the kitchen to perfect sterility every single night right after dinner, and he was born in 1927.
So I guess I’m just saying that there’s a lot of different ways to come to snap judgements about other people. I just wish that we could somehow wave a magic scrubbie and forever break the link between “weakness” and terrified masculinity.
Wow. As a vegan, I should probably just disqualify myself from even commenting… except to say, if some girl ordered a gigantic rare steak JUST to try to impress me, I’d conclude she was either daft or was trying to kill her heart. Either way, quite silly.
If she ordered it ‘cos that’s what she likes, well, to each his/her own!
Also, I can’t hold back… Jager is MANLY? It a girlly syrup-drink! I’ll take neat bourbon, thanks.
I’ve never cared about the type of food my date would order. What is much more important to me is that she actually *likes* what she orders and wants to eat it. I’ve been on several dates where we had appetizers, starters, main course and dessert and she just has two or three mouthfuls of every dish, then says she’s full and ‘would just like to sit and watch me eat’. It’s a total show stopper for me to go out with somebody like that who makes me feel like a circus act just because I love eating a well-cooked meal and am capable of eating and enjoying a full 3-course dinner. Why not order smaller dishes or just a main course, and then enjoy that instead of trying to get through a full meal if you’re not sure you’re hungry enough?
I think people who are rude to waitstaff are stupid, as well as, well, rude.
But I’m damned well going to be persistent and picky about making sure I don’t get served any meat - nothing fried in meat fat, nothing cooked in a meat stock - because it doesn’t take that much “invisible” meat to give me really disgusting digestive cramps for anything from an hour to half a day.
Still, one can can be persistent, picky, and polite. (And apologetic for the extra trouble.)
Because, if you’re willing to eat meat, you’re willing to …eat …da meat. hur. hur. hur. Seriously, how not paying attention to the conversation do you have to be in order to even care about something so subtle as what your date orders? Eat what you like already.
I like vegi burgers. I like hamburgers. Uh-oh! Sexual ambiguity! I know sometimes reporters have to just fill column inches, but what a non-issue to write about.
I find it rather useful when men comment on my choice of food. It means I am not seeing them again.
My current pet peeve is with staff always giving the wine list to my partner. Admittedly, he is the one who knows wine, but I doubt that’s inscribed on his forehead with ink visible only to waiters. He just gets the list because he’s male. He gets the bill, too. I have even seen it returned to him for signing when it was my credit card inside…
Amanda wrote:
I understand that the writers in The New York Times are supposed to be innovative and find new angles for things, but isn’t the statement above kind of like people who look overly hard in finding some great meaning in a book, a meaning that the author himself never intended?
Admittedly, I’m a long, long, way away from my last first date, but I certainly don’t remember ever ordering my food based on what I thought would impress my date, and I can’t recall ever having a date in which I thought the lady in question was trying to impress me with her culinary choices. I simply ordered what I thought I’d like!
Vegetarianism? Should it be seen as “feminine,” which is going to be a loaded term as far as discussions are concerned, or simply as a choice someone took, for what could be a whole host of reasons. If I met our hostess for dinner, and observed that she was a vegetarian, if I thought about it, I’d probably guess that she was doing so for health or philosophical reasons, reasons which can occur completely independent of gender.
I can see where some sort of dietary differences would make other differences if there was some sort of hope of a commitment: having to either adapt to the other person’s diet (could be other things, such as strict kosher; doesn’t have to be vegetarianism) or prepare separate meals might be an annoyance down the road, but it seems to me that assigning dietary choices gender is way overthinking the (non)-problem.
from MAJeff
::eyes wide:: That sounds delicious! Both of them! I think you have a website, so I may toddle over there to beg for recipes!
I’m (hopefully, barring unforeseen circumstances) going on my first date in over ten years on Thursday. Now, in addition to worrying about what I’m going to wear, I have to worry about what I choose to eat as well?
Screw it. I’m ordering what I like!
Caroline wrote:
Well, I’d have been the guy ordering the salmon, too! But I’ve seen waitresses make plate errors often enough, on meals that couldn’t possibly be misinterpreted as gender oriented (same entree, different vegetables), that it’s difficult for me to impute gender-bias to such errors; waitresses often work very hard, in very up-tempo situations, and I’m amazed that they don’t make a lot more misgoofs than they do.
Is it acceptable to vent a bit on off-topic but sexism-related stuff on these threads?
Was just spending some time at a liberal discussion site, and there are many comments regarding Hillary Clinton that are just… I can’t even believe how blatantly, ridiculously sexist/misogynistic they are.
I don’t want to get involved in the discussions, because honestly, I don’t want to deal with the endless crap that will result and which will drive me completely insane, but at the same time, gah, how can I just let this stuff go unchallenged?
Bethynyc wrote:
Which will, for most guys, impress them far more than being pretentious.
Amanda sez: “Eating meat, particularly red meat, is gendered as masculine and being a vegetarian is gendered as feminine, I think it’s safe to say. ”
Yep, it’s safe to say. Still, I can’t help but think of my favorite co-worker–who self-identifies as a “libertarian” and like most of my co-workers as an avid gun-owner, gun-”rights” guy. When I first saw him I thought, “now there’s a scary thug of a guy.” He was telling some story about tough macho cops, and he’s really big. Actually, as I got to know him, I came to appreciate he’s good at what we do (to drop the mystery, this is what is called “security”) in large part because he’s calm, compassionate, not fussy about pointless protocol–but focused on any real-world issues that actually come up. He handles bizarre situations superbly, and with great humane consideration as well. He was raised in a Hindu religion. (And as a young child, he went to a Sikh school because his mother got a job there, and he told me how “warlike” sikh culture is–yet when I asked him, the Sikh kids didn’t tease or beat him up, despite his being so different from them, and when he eventually went to public school, he encountered the predictable, ubiquitous macho thug culture we raise boys in, and he did have some fights then–which he won pretty handily.)
Point being, as I’m sure y’all guessed by now, he’s vegan, raised that way from birth. His mother cooked at the Sikh school. His father has gone from being a hippie back in the ’60s to a prison guard, and he says his father gets more “conservative” every day, but doubtless he’s vegan too.
I dunno if my co-worker would feel insulted if I said he’s “gylanic” and explained what I mean by that; I think maybe a little but not too much.
So perhaps vegan/vegetarian is indeed “feminizing,” but by golly US men could use quite a lot of that. If all “libertarians” were like my co-worker, I’d worry a lot less about them.
My wife’s eggplant parm tonight for dinner. No meat. It’s my favorite. Swiss cheese is the secret ingredient.
Does this say something about me? Her?
Doesn’t matter. Gotta eat that stuff. It’s the best.
I understand that the writers in The New York Times are supposed to be innovative and find new angles for things, but isn’t the statement above kind of like people who look overly hard in finding some great meaning in a book, a meaning that the author himself never intended?
How You Can Tell A Wingnut: They don’t understand anything about 20th century critical theories, but they just know they are Wrong. Because if anyone in a bowtie lambasts an academic trend that started after the Ivy Leagues went co-ed(and because there’s French people involved), you don’t need to go any further, because his word is gold.
I’d be careful assuming that the haters of modern academic theory are so much smarter than everyone else, because they’re grumpier and misogynist, though, Dana. At least we “crazy” people who read things for underlying meaning and point out subconscious tropes know who painted the Mona Lisa.
Agreed. I’ve been veg for almost 10 years now so I’ve kind of gotten to see the whole rise of the vegetarian items on the menu, and I’ve moved around a lot. Where I grew up it was actually pretty ok because it was the kind of small town where everyone knows everyone, so if we went out, everyone down to the staff already knew I was veg through the power of small towns, so meals could be adjusted accordingly and they always knew what kind of broth was being used because they knew I’d ask. Oh god, now I’m salivating at the memory of a huge steamy bowl of thick cauliflower cheddar soup made w/ veg broth, served with a giant, dense slice of home made multi grain bread smothered in cheese, tomato and green onion…
*snaps back to reality* That aside, I had to live in Missouri for a few months out of the year, every year, for four years. We were off in ass-end no where and I literally survived on a combination of jalapeño poppers, subway veg subs and side salad for 3 months at a stretch because I couldn’t usually find a single vegetarian item on the menu anywhere my mom dragged me to, we were staying too far from a grocery store for me to walk to get food to make, and mom considered herself on ‘vacation’ so there was no cooking/grocery shopping to be done.
I love the city where I live now - even the high end restaurants that I can’t afford to go to all seem to have one vegetarian (though not vegan, which I’m slowly trying to work towards) item on the menu. On top of that, there are something like 5 all-vegetarian restaurants and dozens that are vegetarian & vegan friendly but serve some meat.
Er, this is overly long already so I’m going to cut myself off here!
Sorry, no web site and no recipes. Just things I’ve tried out. (and the chicken is especially good if you do it with a white wine, butter, sage and mushroom sauce.
In my own post above, Dana, I alluded to what I called the “predictable, ubiquitous macho thug culture we raise boys in.” I can’t tell whether or not you come from genteel parallel universe where you’ve never ever observed this in your life, or whether you just don’t see it because you accept it as normal, inevitable…that is to say, “predictable, ubiquitous…”
That Real Men Eat Red Meat is a straightforward inference from that culture, and this is reinforced by the ethical strand of vegetarianism. There are other reasons to be vegetarian of course–thrift, health–but the reason our culture mocks it is because it indicates a “soft” attitude of consideration for the well-being of other life forms. Such consideration is by definition not macho and the proper province of women, who are supposed to use their feminine wiles to seduce the men in their lives to some observance of these values, so that the men don’t have to “weaken” themselves by getting those girl cooties into their own psyches.
If I had time I might illustrate my own observations of, and involvement in, American macho thug culture. As it is, I have to just appeal to common experience if you want to gainsay that such a thing exists and has social significance.
On Feministing I made the point, that after four years of marriage, I think I’d be in trouble if my husband hadn’t known from the start that I am not a fan of meat, and that if he wants it, he cooks it.
But, thinking about it more, if I had this article’s worldview, after four years of marriage I’d be cooking whatever my husband wanted to eat and doing it cheerfully. Of course.
MAJeff,
You might have fun working your way through recipe books, e.g., like “Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking” by Julie Sahni.
Thing is though, it is easier to learn from another cook than from a recipe book.
I will begrudgingly admit that while I would never in a million years tailor my food order in a restaurant to what I want my date to think of me, part of the reason I’ve veered away from “girly” alcoholic drinks is for similar considerations. I would like to defend said considerations as being somehow more noble and feminist than the article’s discussion of food, but I really can’t.
This is mitigated by the fact that I really don’t like stereotypical “girl” drinks very much, but I can’t say I won’t admit to a perverse tomboy Something About Mary pleasure when guys get all goofy at the fact that my preferred drink is usually Guiness or bourbon, and my favorite bars to take a date are usually beer connoiseur hangouts.
That said, people really do use drinks as a guage of what kind of person you are. And not just on the masculine/feminine spectrum. Bud Lite in a can sends a very different message from a cosmopolitan, which sends a very different message from scotch, neat. Hell, you can tell things about personality based on whether they went for an appletini or a margarita.
Oh yes, the macho beer competition….
Have ended up freaking guys out because I like Guiness. And my favorite scotch is Laphroig. Match that, you punks!
Paul Fussell in his book “Class” makes a distinction between sweet and non-sweet alcoholic drinks–not on the basis of feminity vs. masculinity, but on the basis of class (also youth–younger people tend to order sweeter drinks.)
Still, I sort of have to wonder. Do lower-class dudes usually order Rum-and-cokes as opposed to beer?
I know my own preferences has been for dry wines and dry sherries, but that’s partly because that’s what we had when growing up.
Madhur Jaffrey has been my guide. That little yellow cookbook has given me such inspiration, and is written in such a way that I’ve become comfortable working with some spices and techniques I never would have made use of before.
You have that one, too, Jeff?
A classic, that one is.
also, @ TZS — while lower-class dudes probably aren’t more likely to order a rum and coke, they are more likely to drink something like Coors Lite or Bud Lite than a darker, more bitter “serious” beer. And are more likely to have rum and coke, jack and coke, or crown and 7 than any liquor straight up.
The interesting thing is that, in terms of the liquor mentioned above, cutting liquor with a mixer isn’t just sweeter and lighter, tastes better if you can only afford well drinks. I can’t really distinguish whether the whiskey in my “jack” & coke is actually Jack or whatever generic swill they stock under the bar. But I can tell the difference between Jack Daniels and Maker’s Mark straight up. I’ve also noticed that good dark beers tend to be a touch more expensive, in bars, than light domestics. If you can get Coors Lite $3 for a six pack, and Stella Artois for $12 a six pack, which one is more likely to be the “working man’s beer”?
That toxic phrase “high maintenance” lies at the root of this issue, I think. Besides the more direct set of symbols that equates meat-eating with masculinity and veggie-eating with femininity, there’s also the fear that a woman who orders a salad may be (pick one) a wacky vegetarian, an obsessive dieter, a health nut, or a picky eater, any one of which will brand her as High Maintenance, which in turn is generally assumed to be a uniquely feminine failing.
Though we all know people who are genuinely impossible to please and irritating to be around, it’s also not uncommon for “high maintenance” to mean, simply, “different from me and therefore requiring my open-mindedness and non-intractability.” And women are conditioned not to be an imposition to people, and to assume they ARE being an imposition until someone reassures them otherwise.
I’m a lesbian and a vegan, by the way, and in my experience, when I dine with omnivores, THEY’RE usually the ones who need to obsess over my dietary choices, while I’m happy just to enjoy my meal. (I swear to god, the next person who says “How do you know carrots don’t feel pain?” or [triumphantly] “But our teeth were designed to eat meat!” is going to get clocked.)
the next person who says “How do you know carrots don’t feel pain?”
“Why do you think I’m a vegetarian? I hate plants. I love to crunch carrots up while they’re still alive.”
(FWIW: Dana is a typical ignorant wingnut. He comes over to Pandagon and gets smacked around every so often. I think he likes it.)
Yup, I think that and Julia’s The Way to Cook are my most referenced books.
“I hate plants.”
I use that one a lot.
it’s also not uncommon for “high maintenance” to mean, simply, “different from me and therefore requiring my open-mindedness and non-intractability.”
Maybe I’m being deliberately dense here, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use the term in that sense. What ‘high maintenance’ generally means is “someone who has a lot of picky little idiosyncracies that cause the simplest of daily routines to become impossibly complicated”. This does seem to be applied mainly to women (and men who are viewed as “unmanly”, eg Woody Allen), especially with regard to food issues or morning ablutions.
But I don’t regard my coworker who wants “an ice coffee, black, but with lots of ice, and the ice can’t be all melted and shit, because I don’t want the coffee to get diluted at all, so the coffee itself needs to be chilled, not room temp” as high maintenance because her tastes are different from mine, I regard her as high maintenance because omigod, seriously, get your own godddamn coffee if you’re going to be so picky about it.
I agree, however, that “high maintenance” = female = bad, while “high standards” = male = good. A guy who is finicky about how his meat is cooked or what kind of wine to have has “high standards” and/or is a connoisseur. A woman who is finicky about the same things is “high maintenance” and thus a bitch.
Oh, and regarding “our teeth were designed to eat meat!”
Actually, they weren’t. Our teeth were designed to eat mainly vegetables, but also sometimes meat. And one of the main reasons, aside from hygeine, that we find cooked meat preferable to raw, and butchered meat preferable to hunks of carcass, is that it’s easier on our non-carnivorous teeth.
Next time one of your omnivorous friends suggests that “our teeth were designed to eat meat”, point at the nearest live animal (pigeon, squirrel, the family dog, whatever) and tell them to have at it, then.
Well, I think vegetarians and vegans often get reflexively slapped with the “high maintenance” label, even when they’re requiring absolutely nothing of the one doing the labeling.
Next time one of your omnivorous friends suggests that “our teeth were designed to eat meat”, point at the nearest live animal (pigeon, squirrel, the family dog, whatever) and tell them to have at it, then.
Nah, I just remind them that the “biology = destiny” position is one they probably don’t want to attach themselves too devoutly to.
Heheh, the manly beer competition.
I thought I didn’t like beer until I tried Guinness. I still like stouts best. After that, I worked my way back to brown ales, then red ales, then Hefeweizen and just recently I started trying IPAs. Still can’t choke down most lager, though.
And in wines, I like big, fat chewy red wines. Anything labeled “easy-drinking” tastes like water to me.
I think it’s because I’m a non-taster, in “low number of taste buds” sense, so I need flavors that hit me over the head. But it is funny to out-man guys at bars by drinking beer you can’t see through.
Well, regarding what kinds of foods our bodies can handle, unfortunately, biology does in fact equal destiny. We can’t just up and decide that we ought to be able to digest plastic, so from now on, we will! In the way that we can change social structures, governments, cultural mores, etc.
Once, when I was dining with a male friend (not even a boyfriend), not only did the waiter hand him the winelist, but after *I* selected and ordered the wine, the waiter gave him, not me, the first small pour to sniff and taste. My friend, bless him, pointedly shrugged and handed it to me.
The point is, the people who insist to me that their teeth chain them to a life of carnivorousness are usually not at all averse to circumventing their biological destiny in other ways (hair color, nearsightedness, etc.), so it’s not a compelling argument if it’s all they’ve got.
Also, @ Caroline. Yeah, I was surprised at how sweet and mild Guinness is, when I first tried it. Probably because when I was in my formative drinking years, all the dudes worshipped it as Teh Manly. It has this weird reputation, amongst 20-something Americans, anyway, as this hardcore and inaccessible drink, so I assumed it must be really foul and something that would take years of progressively ickier drinks to develop a taste for.
I also have to say that I’ve never cottoned to hefeweissen or other wheat beers, girly and mild though their image may be. Not out of any need to prove that I’m Punq Rawk in the alcohol department, but just because I don’t like the way they taste very much.
but Lizard, our teeth do in fact constrain the foods we can eat. There’s no contact lense or hair dye equivalent for what we can and cannot digest. You can’t go out and get ultra-canine tooth implants that will enable you to eat a raw and unbutchered cow. You cannot take some kind of supplement that will enable your body to digest pure unadulturated raw flesh.
The problem is what kind of diet your friends think our teeth & digestive systems constrain us to, not that our teeth & digestive systems don’t put very serious constraints on what we can eat. Because if you don’t, I dare you to go out and eat a pine tree, and see what happens.
I think the point is that even though there are high maintenance people, women tend to get slapped with label, deservingly or not, more than men because of the different expectations on how much you’re supposed to put anyone else out. A man who demands a restaurant that serves steak is unlikely to be called high maintenance, but a woman who demands that you go someplace where there’s any items for a vegetarian, even if she’s not picky about which, will be called that. Women aren’t entitled to preferences in the same way men are.
That women are more likely to identify as vegetarian than men only exacerbates the problem.
I will say that I never get called high maintenance for being a vegetarian. The only people who are really nasty about it are people I’ve first met. Most people who know me at all realize it’s a stretch to imply that I’m pushy about that stuff. What I am pushy about is eating on a regular basis—I get woozy if my blood sugar is low, which makes me snappish about being hungry. But that’s it.
I guess these people have never been so poor that red meat was a luxury for both boys and girls, or any kind of meat, something that you were lucky to get on holidays and special occasions - for me a roast, or a steak, or even a chicken breast or pork-chop, is a *treat*, something extravagant, something covetable, after years of casseroles and curries and hamburger-mixes of all kinds, hunt-the-sliver-of-bacon in the spinach and noodles, fighting over second-helpings on the times when we could afford meat in big chunks after payday.
The idea that you’d order food you didn’t want in order to try to project some kind of image to impress your date is not just *bizarre* and surreal, and a sign of class privilege, it also comes right out of 19th century ladies’ ettiquette manuals - contradictory instructions and all.
So I had a totally different take on this article. I’ve always been the type of girl who’s a little tomboyish. I like red meat, I don’t wear heels or make-up, I cuss like a sailor, I like casual sex, I can lift heavy things etc etc etc… maybe having a dyke for a mother made me a little confused about my proper gender roles? I’ve always liked that it made boys treat me different. They tend to treat me as a buddy and when I date them they tend to treat me more as a regular person and not put me on a pedestal as I see them doing with other girls. Over the years I’ve seen more and more women are trying to present themselves as the tuffgrrl even when they aren’t. I’ve actually had “Nice Guys” say to me, “Yeah, I know your type. You act all tough and want to be equal but as soon as there’s a bug you go squealing for some guys to crush it for you.” Um…no actually I’m the girl who squashes the bug while my boyfriend stands on the bed yelling, “Kill it! Kill it now!”
All of this is to say that I have actually seen this trend of high-maintenance girls trying to act like they’re tuff to impress boys and it’s harshing my image, I wish they’d quit. Can’t they just content themselves to dating the boys that like the shiny wrapping paper of a heavily made-up girl. Anywhoo…just playing devils advocate a little bit.
Our teeth weren’t designed for anything. They are, however, evolved to eat both meat and plants, which gives you a wider ability to survive on whatever’s handy. Tigers can’t eat roots and berries if game is scarce.
Now, in addition to worrying about what I’m going to wear, I have to worry about what I choose to eat as well?
Think of it as a jerk filter. Somebody who projects gender issues onto your choice of food is not somebody with whom you want a second date. (Do order ‘from the middle of the menu’ if your date is paying, though–that’s good manners anytime somebody offers to spring for your meal.)
our teeth do in fact constrain the foods we can eat
And our lack of wings prohibits us from flying. No one’s saying that there are no biological limits to what we can do—merely that in many cases, we’re quite creative in finding ways around those limitations if we’re sufficiently motivated. Thus it’s rather silly when people protest that in this world of vegetarian bounty, they can’t possibly go without meat because of their dentition.
Sorry for the sidetrack. Amanda’s interpretation is right—”high maintenance” is a highly gendered phrase, usually reserved for women and gay men, and often applied indiscriminately. And since straight men are conditioned to “watch out for the high maintenance ones,” it’s a neat double bind.
@ mythago - yeah, I know. That’s pretty much what I’m saying, here. “designed for” is a figure of speech (I’m by no means suggesting that God Made Us To Be Vegetarians That Can Also Process Meat Sometimes).
@ Lizard - in many cases, we’re quite creative in finding ways around those limitations if we’re sufficiently motivated.
One of the best pieces of evidence for the fact that humans evolved to mainly eat plants, but sometimes under certain conditions eat meat, is that we had to invent butchery, cooking, and other kinds of processing in order to even become proper omnivores. Just like we were able to invent planes in order to fly.
But “we invented planes” is not a counter to “biology is destiny”. Biology is still destiny. Inventing a way to make tinfoil edible doesn’t turn humans into ferrovores, any more than inventing cooking turned humans into carnivores.
Innovation doesn’t make biology not destiny, it transcends biology.
Again, your friends are wrong. But they’re not wrong in their framing of the argument (our teeth indicate what kinds of food we can digest), they’re wrong about the result of said framing (our teeth indicate that we evolved to mainly eat plants).
they’re wrong about the result of said framing (our teeth indicate that we evolved to mainly eat
plantsmeat).sorry about that. If it’s not clear, I don’t think humans evolved to be carnivores. I think we evolved to be vegetable-preferring omnivores. Your friends are wrong because they think our teeth show that we evolved to be carnivores, not because they think biology is destiny in the digestion department.
Agh.
anyway, I totally agree wrt “high maintenance”.
Wow, somegirls, aren’t you just the bestest girl in all of boyland?
Just out of curiosity, exactly how much do I have to bench-press before, according to you, I’m allowed to be a “tomboy”, instead of a poser girly-girl who’s poaching your “image”?
Believe me, I know how great it feels to be “one of the guys”. It sucks that you feel like you have to shit all over other women to maintain your status. Hmm, what do I blame for that? Starts with a ‘P’…
I bet the connection between “what you eat reveals your real personality” and reporting on that phenomenon is actually backwards. Ridiculous stories like this get into major publications because someone has a deadline, or an ax to grind, or submitted it on a bet and suddenly people start assuming that “everyone else must do that since it was in the New York Times.”
Next thing you know dudes to whom this level of analysis would have never occurred suddenly think they know everything about everyone based on their palate.
Another reason to renew (or start) a focus on critical thinking skills in education.
You know, I would never order a steak to show that I was unpretentious, mostly because I find steak kind of nasty. But I’ve ordered dessert to make it clear that I’m not on a diet, and at work I made a point of eating the donuts at meetings, the way the guys did, rather than doing the whole “oh, no, I shouldn’t be bad” routine that women did. (This only works if you’re thin, of course, which is a whole other issue.) I have internalized the message that people who drink fruity drinks are kind of silly and unserious, and although I like fruity drinks, I don’t usually order them. (Didn’t Jill link to a video of a song in which some American Idol winner berated her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend for ordering “some fruity little drink because she can’t drink whiskey”?) I drink black coffee because I’m seriously lactose intolerant, but it has not escaped my notice that certain people are impressed when you take your coffee black instead of adding cream and sugar or, heaven forbid, sweet coffee drinks. I think this is a really common phenomenon, and it’s not at all limited to meat. I think people, probably including a lot of us here, make all sorts of judgments based on what people eat, and they’re often judgments that favor hard, manly choices over soft, girly ones. Spicy is better than not-spicy. Bitter is better than sweet. Being skinny and not dieting is awesome and sexy, but being skinny because you count every calorie makes you uptight and pathetic. And even though we’re all good progressives who realize that a plant-based diet is superior to a meat-based one, I don’t think we’re immune to the underlying trend.
Erm, drinking sweet coffee drinks. I can’t write for shit.
this seems like another example of exceptionalism for the women interviewed for this article…you know, “i’m not like the other girls; i’ll have a ribeye,” which is then arbitrarily equated with being a fun, interesting, intelligent, risk-taking, adventurous, low maintenance woman, which means all those other girls must not be fun, interesting, etc. and etc.
the women in this article could probably be interviewed for a companion article in which they explain why they naturally prefer the company of men, because men don’t sit around and talk about you know, feelings and relationships and shopping and diets and stuff. you know, because they’re not like the other girls.
I had a huge fight with my boyfriend last week because I mentioned that I don’t think people should eat meat more than three times a week. Apparently his mother (who he hates) forced vegetarianism on him and he sees the halving of the meat in his diet as a huge threat. It was so odd. Our beliefs had lined up so well until then, and then suddenly, it was like he’d stepped out of Carol Adams’s book.
On the other hand, I would eliminate meat from my diet entirely, and I’ve tried in the past, if it didn’t have a drastic effect on my health. I order steak once in a while to maintain my health, and only if I like the veggies on the side.
But why should I need to “prove” anything? Why can’t I be a multi-faceted person with varied interests? I blame Fox News and the proliferation of catchy slogans in advertising. It has to be easy to sum you up in a few words, and some of us defy labels.
Yeah, I was surprised at how sweet and mild Guinness is, when I first tried it.
I find Guinness has a horrible aftertaste. I’m ok with it while it’s in my mouth, but a second after I’ve swallowed it, I’m thinking, “Ack! Cough syrup!”
this thought perhaps came up first in a different thread, when everyone was saying how they never ate at McDonalds as children and etc.
perhaps all pandagonians are exceptional. i don’t know. but a lot of people do eat at McDonalds and a lot of women do in fact love steak, not to impress anyone.
i grew up in a small town in the west. i think my parents were average in many respects, especially in the context of rural culture in the western US. There are eight children in my family. I’m one of the oldest. I have never eaten at a restaurant with my parents that wasn’t a fast food restaurant. We ate McDonald’s and Taco Bell frequently growing up. I watched the Smurfs and Thunder Cats every Saturday, and a huge number of advertisements aimed at children between the network cartoons. I particularly remember the commercials for Honey Comb and Lucky Charms.
My mom worked intermittently while I was growing up, but my dad was the primary earner in our family. We went to church every Sunday. I was a kid before the advent of Wal-Mart, but we shopped at KMart and Albertsons. I remember when seat belt laws were instituted my dad adamantly refused to wear a seat belt because it was his right not to, and the government was trying to curtail his rights.
We moved to a quiet suburb of a medium sized city when I was in high school, and my parents continue to live there, as do five of my seven siblings.
After attending a state college, I moved to a booming metropolis, like a lot of other people my own age. I worked hard to build a career before I built a personal life, like a lot of people my age.I eventually married and had two children, like many people I know. They’ve never been to a fast food restaurant. We eat organic. We cook at home, even though we’re busy, not foodies, and neither one of us has discovered an inner gourmand yet. We’re secular humanists, and I am an atheist. In our Brooklyn neighborhood, we are absolutely unexceptional in any of these respects.
How we grow up is important, but it’s not destiny. I wasn’t a 20 year old virgin who married after a short engagement, though given my background that would have been absolutely normal and acceptable. I am not going to have a slew of children, though my parents continually ask me when we’re going to have another. We don’t have cable TV, though it has been a mainstay in my parents’ house from the time I was a young teenager. My parents are hopelessly homophobic Republicans who email me articles written by self-identified liberals explaining why global warming is a hoax or why they voted for George W. Bush in the last election. I love my parents and my mostly conservative brothers and sisters. I have fond memories of childhood and I am still on good terms with friends I had in high school who married before they could legally buy beer.
I don’t think I’m an exception. I think if you polled any white, urban dwelling, secular leftist in their 30s, there’s a 1 in 4 chance that, with a slight change of personal details, their experience growing up was similar to mine.
That NY Times article pissed me off too. So I wrote about in my blog.
So I clicked on the Real Man Doll link at the top of the page (gone now) out of curiosity (well hell, if a guy can buy a $2000 top-o-the-line blow up doll, there’s got to be some awesome sex toys out there). I find it absolutely hilarious that the only sex dolls available to women from that site are either the 4-foot tall “Perfect man” blow-up doll (please note: he has no genitalia) and 14-inch figurines of male faeries (the kind with wings), marketed primarily to gay men.
Whoops, this post was supposed to go on the “Can a Woman Have a Perfect Wife Too?” topic. No more posting for me today.
I had a huge fight with my boyfriend last week because I mentioned that I don’t think people should eat meat more than three times a week. Apparently his mother (who he hates) forced vegetarianism on him and he sees the halving of the meat in his diet as a huge threat. It was so odd.
My ex-brother-in-law can’t eat chocolate because one time when he was a kid, his mother literally force-fed him chocolate pudding until he vomited.
So I don’t see your boyfriend reacting that way to be odd at all. He’s not reacting to vegetarianism as an idea, he’s reacting to his sucky mother.
I haven’t read all the comments because I’m just too pissed and have to leave a comment.
I am so damned sick and tired of feminists delineating everything based on gender. Aren’t we supposed to be taking down those lines?
I enjoy eating red meat once in awhile, it has been a part of my diet since I was a child, the sexual aspects of such never entered into then, nor do they now.
Also, I have a lower voice than most women and like to work on cars and run a construction business.
Believe it or not, I’m heterosexual, can act ‘like a lady’ when its to my advantage and wear high heels and dresses and I can also cuss like sailor and I’ve given grown men black eyes.
So to hell with stereotypes please, because I’m sick and GD tired of having to wonder if I’ll ever find a place where I can just be free to fucking be me and not perform to satisfy some requirement that proves my worthiness as female or, more importantly, to certify my membership into the human race.
Got that off my mind. Thank you.
It seems wimpy, insipid, and childish to who? Not the guy taking her out but to Ms. Heller, apparently. I think she needs to grow up a little.
OK, the thought of anyone out of their teens drinking Jagr makes me laugh my ass off.
And finally, I’m a vegetarian and my wife eats meat, so what does that say about us?
it’s also not uncommon for “high maintenance” to mean, simply, “different from me and therefore requiring my open-mindedness and non-intractability.”
Maybe I’m being deliberately dense here, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use the term in that sense.
It’s used a lot by women who think they’re better than other women because they like steak and aren’t afraid to kill bugs.
So to hell with stereotypes please, because I’m sick and GD tired of having to wonder if I’ll ever find a place where I can just be free to fucking be me and not perform to satisfy some requirement that proves my worthiness as female or, more importantly, to certify my membership into the human race.
Which is pretty much what all the comments you didn’t read were saying.
@ junk science — no, I get that it’s used by women against other women all the time. But usually it does seem to be rooted in some degree of finickiness. If I like Pabst Blue Ribbon and you only drink obscure microbrews, I probably wouldn’t call you “high maintenance” — that’s just a matter of taste. But if your taste for microbrews means there are exactly two bars in the city we can go to, and neither of them are anywhere close to where either of us live or work, so we have an hour’s commute to go grab a pint, and you can’t just have a Heineken at the corner pub to make life easier, then, yeah, that’s “high maintenance”.
For instance, I once had a boss who had this massive addiction to Tab. It was the only beverage she liked. And she couldn’t function without it. So we had to order it online, because practically no stores stock it anymore. I hate Tab, but I didn’t call her “high maintenance” because she liked Tab, but because OMG We Had To Order Her Soda Online.
I’ve never heard anyone describe someone as high maintenance because they would rather have salad than steak, or prefer diet coke to regular, or have a daily frappucino ritual. I’m willing to admit that this is just my own experience, and that maybe there are others out there in the rest of the Anglophone world who would use it that way. But I don’t think I’m wrong, per se, in terms of what my experience of the term is.
I find it rather useful when men comment on my choice of food. It means I am not seeing them again.
Mmm? “I haven’t tried that myself; what’s it like?”
This whole converasation is interesting, in an alien kinda way. I can’t figure out whether it’s just because I was bought up stragely, or whether there’s a cultural gap - red meat as a gendered preference? Class distinctions I can get, but gender?
Sarah, help me out here.
opoponax, women who call other women “high-maintenance” because those women prefer salad to steak are saying to men “look at me, I like what you like, you won’t have to be open-minded or deal with anyone whose preferences are too different from yours if you date me instead of those bitches.” There are valid applications of the term, but that’s what women who want jerks to like them usually mean by it.
junk science - I think you’ve just described a Nice Girl ™, the female equivalent of the Nice Guy ™. Can’t we pair all of them off so that the rest of us can have regular people?
Wow, my tm got turned into superscript! Awesome. I didn’t know it would do that.
I became vegetarian gradually, beginning about 7 years ago and going completely vegetarian (not vegan) about 5 years ago. And man, has my palette expanded.
Except but for limits of appetite, that is not really incompatible with eating meat. Granted, we bloodthirsties can cut non-meat foods out of our diets, since I’ll find something without eggplant on as many menus as you’ll find something without meat, but I don’t have to omit any foods other than for medical reasons.
I’m not saying there are no good arguments for vegetarianism, and I certainly wouldn’t say it’s not healthy–much as I like meat, I’ve gone without it for several days in a row in the past–but I don’t find that particular argument valid.
JS, I’m not sure if your comment is about women who make it clear that they share a man’s preferences or women who pretend to. As a heterosexual man, I think it’s silly at best for a woman to pretend to like something for the sake of a man, just as I think it’s silly at best for anyone to fake on anything significant for the sake of a romance.
But yeah, I’d rather be in a relationship with someone who has tastes that match (or certainly complement) my own. I’ve been with someone who tried to remold me in her own image, and that certainly didn’t work. There’s nothing wrong with preferring to have a partner whom you can live with, not just in the same bedroom as.
Jager? Jager? If the bitch can’t pound a pint of Evan Williams green label in under an hour, she isn’t man enough to date meeeeee!!!
//coming from the “masculinity = painful and stupid” angle.
I had a very strict diet growing up- not vegitarian, but low carb (type I diabetic, back in the dark ages) and out of active rebellion, I now deeply embrace omnivory. I’ll eat everything except peanut butter, because in an effort to give stability and controll to my metabolism, my mom made me the exact same goddamn sandwich every day for about 7 years.
I had a girlfriend who was a very strict vegetarian and near-vegan (excepting her love of cheese), and I would leave places we’d allready been seated at to find a resturant she’d eat at.
She made me bacon when I was sick.
Sorry about this, I’m reading the comments out of order. This is about #87:
I would never base my political or cultural positions on the empirical sciences, because I’d hate to spend years supporting something and backing it up with biology only to have to change either my mind or my justification if biologists suddenly realize they were wrong the whole time.
Hershele, I’m talking about women who claim that they are more attractive to men in general than other women because their tastes are coded as masculine rather than feminine. Whether they genuinely have those tastes or are pretending to, they’re obviously trying to appeal to misogynists by claiming they’re not like those other icky girls.
I am so damned sick and tired of feminists delineating everything based on gender. Aren’t we supposed to be taking down those lines?
Uh, Kate, did you miss the part where Amanda is saying that the article is perpetuating stupid stereotypes and that perpetuating those stereotypes is a bad thing?
If you think that feminists are the ones running around saying, “Women should eat steak because it will make them more attractive to men!” I think we’re going to need to have a talk about what you think a feminist is, because I don’t think it means what you think it means.
I know it’s been a while since I was on a date, but the “what to order on a date” issue for me wasn’t a feminine-stereotype thing, but a “will I spill this on me or have something stuck in my teeth?” thing. And not because I wanted to impress my date, but more that I didn’t want to embarrass myself.
And Dan: maybe the rest of “Bananas Foster” would fit if you abdicated from the “Really Good” part of your title–which wouldn’t really be a sacrifice, since there are no other kinds of Bananas Foster *but* Really Good.
red meat as a gendered preference? Class distinctions I can get, but gender?
Yes. Meat is manly, you know. Eating salad is girly and weak.
Also, meat is tasty and indulgent and artery-clogging, exactly the sort of thing your mommy-girlfriend wouldn’t want you to eat. Salad is healthy and tasteless, and only for girls who have to maintain a fuckable weight, which men don’t have to worry about.
I don’t find that particular argument valid
I don’t think most people who espouse vegetarianism as a way to expand your dietary habits and learn more about food are saying that everyone must be strictly vegetarian for this reason, but that if you were looking for reasons to try it, that would be one “pro” on the list. Also, it’s a great counter to people who say that they can’t be vegetarian because they would starve, because they wouldn’t be able to eat anything. And similar arguments.
If you find that being omnivorous enables you to be just as expansive in your culinary skillz as a vegetarian, I don’t think anyone here would argue with that. The problem only comes if you say that there’s no way a vegetarian diet could be more expansive than an omnivorous one, because we all know you can’t have meals that don’t center on meat. Because you can, and part of the fun of vegetarianism is finding ways to do that that don’t just center around salad, veggie burgers, and pasta with marinara sauce.
Just wondering… is there any scientific evidence that supports the theory that women who are 10 lbs underweight are more fuckable than women who are 10 lbs overweight?
“red meat as a gendered preference? Class distinctions I can get, but gender?”
Yes. Meat is manly, you know. Eating salad is girly and weak.
Mmm - I repeat the “cultural” thing. Growing up in NZ, I never saw meat as “manly”, just… normal. The *type* of meat was a class thing, though. Now, I don;t know if that’s just my upbringing or a real cultural difference; I wish Sarah would chime in here.
Salad is healthy and tasteless, and only for girls who have to maintain a fuckable weight, which men don’t have to worry about.
Yeah, right. I’m sure my inability to get laid over the last few years has nothing at all to do with my weight drifting up.
I thought it was pretty obvious I was speaking from the point of view of a surly, carnivorous man-child. Believe it or not, I have met men who think women don’t care about a man’s appearance and that men therefore don’t feel any pressure to watch their weight in order to appear conventionally attractive. I don’t know where these men spend their time if not in the real world, but there it is.
Are people really this shallow (I mean the writer)?
‘Of course, there are always those rare women who order what they want and to heck with what a man might think.’
And the one woman they put in this category strongly thinks about not eating what she wants. This certainly doesn’t seem like the typical person to me.
Anyway, I notice that the article works for me (since I’m a vegetarian):
‘Gentlemen, be careful. Real men, it seems, must eat kale.
“When a guy sits down and eats something fatty and big, you wonder if they eat like that all the time,” said Brice Gaillard, a freelance design writer. “It crosses my mind they’ll probably die early.”’
On the other hand, I’m not a real man if I eat quiche and certainly unmanly if I don’t eat beef (as noted in a near infinite number of commercials).
Totally late to this thread. Sorry. My roomate had a beach towel with that picture on it. Wow. Hadn’t thought of that in years (this was maybe 1989). Always preferred the rump, myself. JK
hbsweet:
That’s a very good point.
I’m talking about women who claim that they are more attractive to men in general than other women because their tastes are coded as masculine rather than feminine.
That’s still an ambiguous phrasing; does “because their tastes are coded . . .” modify “they are more attractive” or “[they] claim that they are more attractive”?
If you don’t want to get into semantics, don’t get into arguments with bored writers who are stuck at home. Seriously, though, it makes a real difference—did I mention I’m specifically a copywriter? Image is as important as reality—in that if you mean the claim, it represents internalized sexism, whereas if you mean the tastes, it’s more societal sexism which for all you know the woman in question may be trying her best to escape.
My girlfriend’s tastes in . . . well, let’s go with in food: those are aligned with mine, or, venturing into other areas, she sincerely (as far as I know) likes wearing the sorts of clothes I tend to think women look good in—and I don’t pay attention to how much that overlaps with what our culture tells women they look good in, so I can’t really measure my pig factor. Be that as it may, I don’t think she eats masculine meals as a strategy to attract men; I think she does it because the foods she likes are seen as masculine.
The problem only comes if you say that there’s no way a vegetarian diet could be more expansive than an omnivorous one, because we all know you can’t have meals that don’t center on meat.
Well, yeah. Because that’s moronic. I can think of a few right off the top of my head, without even starting in on stuff used or intended to replace meat.
And refusing to even consider substitutes. I don’t understand the point of “not dogs” and such. If you want to eat franks, wouldn’t it be a lot simpler to abandon vegetarianism? If your personal ethics demand that you refrain from flesh, isn’t it worth the sacrifice?
(I’m bitter, no pun intended, because there are a bunch of foods I like that I can’t eat now due to drug interactions—all of them vegetables.)
I’m talking about women who claim that they are more attractive to men in general than other women because their tastes are coded as masculine rather than feminine.
That’s still an ambiguous phrasing; does “because their tastes are coded . . .” modify “they are more attractive” or “[they] claim that they are more attractive”?
If you don’t want to get into semantics, don’t get into arguments with bored writers who are stuck at home. Seriously, though, it makes a real difference—did I mention I’m specifically a copywriter? Image is as important as reality—in that if you mean the claim, it represents internalized sexism, whereas if you mean the tastes, it’s more societal sexism which for all you know the woman in question may be trying her best to escape.
My girlfriend’s tastes in . . . well, let’s go with in food: those are aligned with mine, or, venturing into other areas, she sincerely (as far as I know) likes wearing the sorts of clothes I tend to think women look good in—and I don’t pay attention to how much that overlaps with what our culture tells women they look good in, so I can’t really measure my pig factor. Be that as it may, I don’t think she eats masculine meals as a strategy to attract men; I think she does it because the foods she likes are seen as masculine.
The problem only comes if you say that there’s no way a vegetarian diet could be more expansive than an omnivorous one, because we all know you can’t have meals that don’t center on meat.
Well, yeah. Because that’s moronic. I can think of a few right off the top of my head, without even starting in on stuff used or intended to replace meat.
And refusing to even consider substitutes. I don’t understand the point of “not dogs” and such. If you want to eat franks, wouldn’t it be a lot simpler to abandon vegetarianism? If your personal ethics demand that you refrain from flesh, isn’t it worth the sacrifice?
(I’m bitter, no pun intended, because there are a bunch of foods I like that I can’t eat now due to drug interactions—all of them vegetables.)
I keep trying to leave a comment but it keeps not showing up.
That’s still an ambiguous phrasing; does “because their tastes are coded . . .” modify “they are more attractive” or “[they] claim that they are more attractive”?
The latter. That is, they claim they are more worthy of male attention than women who don’t drink Jager and eat steak. They tend to be smug, but not so secure in their own wonderfulness as to intimidate anxious misogynists. They also seem to exist mostly in New York Times editorials.
And refusing to even consider substitutes. I don’t understand the point of “not dogs” and such. If you want to eat franks, wouldn’t it be a lot simpler to abandon vegetarianism? If your personal ethics demand that you refrain from flesh, isn’t it worth the sacrifice?
A lot of vegetarians grew up in a meat-centered world and still LIKE those foods (taste/texture), but chose to stop eating them because a being shouldn’t have to die for their meals. Meanwhile, my family has a cookout: it’s a whole lot easier to pick up fake beer brats at the market and put them on the grill with everyone’s food than to spend hours in the kitchen to impress them with a recipe they won’t recognize. Sometimes I just want to eat, not make a statement.
Of course it is simpler to be omnivorous. I’m annoyed that I have to work hard to find something good at a standard restaurant where everyone else wants to go; if they offered something tasty or interesting I’d skip the veggie burger, but I’m lucky to get even THAT choice. I don’t see why I should have to “sacrifice” by abstaining from fake meat in addition to achieving my real goal of not killing the animal in the first place.
I’d order a steak salad.
Heh.