Of Meat And Men

Food is not masculine, and food is not feminine. Food is food. Despite this undeniable fact, our society places foods into gender-based categories. It could have something to do with cartoonish associations of hunter-gatherer days, where men went out and hunted mastodons while women gathered plants, or perhaps it comes down to one incredible marketing sham. Resilience and resistance can be learned, and boy, do I get both from my husband when I say we are having a salad for dinner. Besides the election, he believes that kale will be the downfall of civilization as we know it, and it must be stopped at all costs. He is a meat and potato man living in a salad world. Salad, it seems, is out. Gusto, medium-rare, is in.

“Salad,” as a word, as an image, as a category of food, is a shorthand for “healthy eating,” which is just another way of saying “joyless eating.” It evokes diets and weight-consciousness in a way that no other entire category of food does. Sandwiches don’t seem like a chore to eat; soup doesn’t get dismissed as “rabbit food.” When someone orders a salad at lunch, it’s presented as the decision of a martyr giving up their happiness to the waiter: ‘I’ll just have the salad.’” It’s the “just” that defines the ethos of the salad, positions it as less than other things you might have eaten. “Just” is a word of abstention, and salad the food of abstainers.

People tend to think of healthy food as feminine, anyway. Americans, in particular, strongly associate healthy or light foods, such as salad, chicken, and fruit, with women, and unhealthy or heavy foods, such as beef, potatoes, and beer, with men, A study found that both men and women preferred unhealthy foods with masculine packaging and healthy foods with feminine packaging.

There’s also the more insidious truth that, very early on, the pressure to be thin and to look a certain way steers women in a direction to lighter foods. And not only are women supposed to eat these foods; they’re supposed to love eating them. Think of every yogurt commercial ever. There’s been some cultural pushback on the idea that women should eat daintily to be feminine, but unfortunately, much of it has come in the form of suggesting that, instead, women should eat like men, to be cool.

A 2007 New York Times article titled “Be Yourselves, Girls, Order the Rib-Eye” notes that in an earlier era, conventional dating wisdom for women was to eat something at home alone before a date and then in company order a light dinner to portray oneself as dainty and ladylike. In my earlier years, I was guilty as charged; however, for some women, that is still the practice. But now, the Times reported, women were ordering red meat to portray the opposite image. Red meat sends a message that a woman who eats it is unpretentious, down to earth and unneurotic. In dating profiles, “long walks on the beach” has been replaced by “steak dinner for two.” It's a complicated business, eating.

According to my beloved, I eat like a trucker. So much so that he feels obligated to forewarn the waiter not to get in between me and my plate until I have waved my white napkin signaling surrender. He describes it as a full-contact sport. And while it’s embarrassing, he isn’t necessarily wrong. I am woman, hear me chew! But imposing healthier eating habits on someone who isn’t quite evolved may seem unfair, so I offered him this advice instead. Real men may not eat salads, but grown men do. Someone put a fork in me. I’m done.