Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
Speaker 1: I never told your production if I hear radios how
Speaker 1: stuff work. Today we're talking about something I've been wanting
Speaker 1: to talk about for a long time, ever and ever
Speaker 1: and ever and ever and ever, and that is the
Speaker 1: gendering of food. And this could be so many different
Speaker 1: episodes because today we're mostly focusing on toxic masculinity and meat.
Speaker 1: How daintilly you said that? Yeah, that's nice, that's how
Speaker 1: we should say how we say okay um, But we're
Speaker 1: not talking about Brogert Brogert, which is why the favorite
Speaker 1: still just mind blowing every time you say it. I'm
Speaker 1: like why, I didn't know what that was, and I
Speaker 1: was like, what is happening and why? Well, that is
Speaker 1: a fair question, but I don't have an answer to
Speaker 1: broy awesome girt. That's how I can't. We can't buy
Speaker 1: any like yogurt that is in a white like container
Speaker 1: because a white obviously means girl, yeah or feminine, right,
Speaker 1: it's too clean, So that the kind of those specific
Speaker 1: products as a different episode. Right today, we're gonna be broader,
Speaker 1: and this gendering of foods is pretty a pretty big
Speaker 1: deal because it directly leads to health outcomes like increased
Speaker 1: risk of heart disease, and when it comes to animal industry,
Speaker 1: too much meat has negative impacts for our entire planet
Speaker 1: when it comes to global warming and sustainability. So pretty big,
Speaker 1: huge yep. It also relates back to something we've talked
Speaker 1: about before, the gendering of American political parties. Republicans are
Speaker 1: masculine meat eaters and Democrats are a feminine salad eaters
Speaker 1: or vegetarians or vegans. Remember all the push back against
Speaker 1: Michelle Obama's like Garden and her School unsinitiative? What is
Speaker 1: she doing? Or against um a c coming for your burgers?
Speaker 1: Are all the news around Corey Booker being a vegan
Speaker 1: heaven forbid? And these are actual quotes from Fox News
Speaker 1: about this a lot your freezers savior meat? Now, are
Speaker 1: the Democrats really trying to take the White House on
Speaker 1: a platform of banning meat? He wants to impose his
Speaker 1: meat rationing on the rest of us. When you're eating
Speaker 1: a steak and you go, no, no numb, that is
Speaker 1: so delicious, What does Corey Booker counter that with? Can
Speaker 1: you not do num num numb on any other foods? Not?
Speaker 1: According to foxes only steak only stay, which seems kind
Speaker 1: of impossible anyway, because you can't just gum it, which
Speaker 1: is what nominum numb sounds like to me. Yeah, true,
Speaker 1: too much, no, no, not enough For my own personal
Speaker 1: brief journey with gendered eating. When I was younger, I
Speaker 1: ate a lot, and I played outside a good bit,
Speaker 1: but I ate a lot, and I was a chubby kid,
Speaker 1: and me and my brothers used to compete at who
Speaker 1: could eat the most. But then a family member told
Speaker 1: me it wasn't lady like behavior. Like I said in
Speaker 1: a recent episode, maybe you should shop in the maternity ward. Um.
Speaker 1: They said, you don't want to get made fun of
Speaker 1: because you're fat, right, So I became very concerned with
Speaker 1: people thinking I was fat, and I didn't like being
Speaker 1: seen eating in public, and I still have real issue
Speaker 1: around it. Sometimes. Um, I didn't like to fill my
Speaker 1: plate first in any situation. I would watch what other
Speaker 1: people did and get less um. And when I did
Speaker 1: eat in public, I tried to eat something like a
Speaker 1: healthy salad because in my mind that was a feminine
Speaker 1: food that women eat to stay thin. And I had
Speaker 1: internalized all this misogyny, and then it like reversed when
Speaker 1: I went to college, because I would order the biggest
Speaker 1: burger steak when I was out with people because I
Speaker 1: didn't want them to think I was like, oh the
Speaker 1: other girls, that would be terrible. And all the while,
Speaker 1: like when I was by myself, I was heating hardly
Speaker 1: anything to stay thin, and all of that gender bs
Speaker 1: um wasn't about what I wanted or what was best
Speaker 1: for me. And in doing this research, I realized that
Speaker 1: I've seen this play out my family in other ways.
Speaker 1: My mom and I eat way more vegetables and white meat,
Speaker 1: whereas the men and my family eat way more red
Speaker 1: and processed meat and carbs. Right, I think I've seen
Speaker 1: the same thing in my family, but in a different way,
Speaker 1: in which because it was a family mill, no mill
Speaker 1: was complete without some kind of hearty meat. Like for
Speaker 1: myself and my mom, we could be happy with just
Speaker 1: eating vegetables or a vegetable plate, I guess um, but
Speaker 1: we couldn't just have that. No, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: just my mom, but just in general that's fine with me.
Speaker 1: But in my mind, because of the way I grew
Speaker 1: up and my dad was the bread winner, meat winner,
Speaker 1: whatever you wanna call it. We had to have some
Speaker 1: type of meat, whether it's just a hamburger patty, like
Speaker 1: just regular hamburger patty or something along those lines. And
Speaker 1: I remember if my mom was gone, which was very
Speaker 1: very very rare, and my dad was cooking, it was
Speaker 1: always a piece of steak. All he had would be
Speaker 1: a piece of steak. And that's not even the salad,
Speaker 1: I want to say. It was like steak and then
Speaker 1: whatever else like chips that he could find. That was
Speaker 1: the one thing he could actually cook. Only he can
Speaker 1: grill too, but very manly ways. Yeah, and that's interesting, um,
Speaker 1: when we'll come back to that a bit later. But
Speaker 1: the whole like grilling, is the masculine of cooking. That's
Speaker 1: that's the meat, all right. So first of all, transitions, Um,
Speaker 1: all over the world, men have a lower life expectancy
Speaker 1: than women, and there are a lot of reasons for this,
Speaker 1: but one of the big ones for a lot of
Speaker 1: places is diet. In general, women have better eating habits
Speaker 1: than men, and the reason for that could be totally
Speaker 1: unhealthy for a decent check of women. And you have reminder,
Speaker 1: eating disorders and obsession about your weight both are not healthy,
Speaker 1: but in general, right, women have healthier eating habits. In
Speaker 1: the US and a boatload of other countries, researchers have
Speaker 1: found that we associate bold, spicy, flavorful foods with men,
Speaker 1: and soft, sweet, and healthy foods with women. I have
Speaker 1: found that there's a kind of similar thing with um
Speaker 1: men being able to handle their spice and women not
Speaker 1: so much. I've seen that play out. Um But okay, yeah, men,
Speaker 1: this is all like stereotypical. But men eat burgers and fries.
Speaker 1: Women eats out and fruit. Men eat pizza and beer,
Speaker 1: women eat salad because all we eat a salad and
Speaker 1: yogurt and wine yogurt throwing them It's true. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: these are generalizations, but generalizations we see play out a
Speaker 1: whole of the time in our media, in our lives
Speaker 1: that we might have internalized. I personally feel like I've
Speaker 1: seen a million times in movies or TV shows when
Speaker 1: a woman orders a burger around a bunch of dudes
Speaker 1: and they're so impressed with her right look at her
Speaker 1: that she eats cheeseburgers to sheats beef, and she's finn wat,
Speaker 1: He's the perfect woman. And then you get like Nick
Speaker 1: Offerman's bacon loving character on parks and rec being just
Speaker 1: the ultimate manly man. Um. The Seinfeld episode where Jerry
Speaker 1: orders just a salad on a date and both the
Speaker 1: waiter and his date are horrified shows salad. The Homer
Speaker 1: sipsen quote you don't win friends with salad, right. And
Speaker 1: I know there's definitely a lot of sitcoms that says
Speaker 1: the phrase man meat or like and they really mean steak,
Speaker 1: not just and you win no sword, right, but literally like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a man, so as a man weekend,
Speaker 1: we're having steaks and burgers and blah blah blah and
Speaker 1: beer stuff like that. Nothing out of swords, right, nothing
Speaker 1: outside of the two food groups meats and beer. I mean,
Speaker 1: can I live that way too? I wish I wish
Speaker 1: I could live with that way and not suffer very
Speaker 1: bad consequences of death. Something that's related to this, though,
Speaker 1: are commercials and burger commercials I find are are big offenders, um,
Speaker 1: like way over sexualized women sexually eating burgers. Um. And
Speaker 1: that commercial you know is not men for women, is
Speaker 1: for men because real men eat burgers and all they
Speaker 1: want to see is a girl on a car, half
Speaker 1: naked eating a burger. Yes, correct, that's what I understand.
Speaker 1: That's what these commercials are telling me. Um as marketed
Speaker 1: to word men use over sexualized women to time meat
Speaker 1: to sex all the time. One adrom Burger King had
Speaker 1: a skimply clad model with a burger between her parted
Speaker 1: lips and like she was lying on her stomach, so
Speaker 1: it was profile and um. The caption red, It'll blow
Speaker 1: your mind. Yeah, Taco bells men love Bacon campaign. Every
Speaker 1: Carl's Junior ad that's ever been made, the Burger King
Speaker 1: ad that featured X Men's mystique turning into a buff
Speaker 1: dude after eating a burger with a tagline man up
Speaker 1: of course, you know. And just the same with Carl's
Speaker 1: Junior and Hardies because they were one and the same essentially,
Speaker 1: uh and Arby's. They use that overtly aggressive voiceover. Have
Speaker 1: you noticed that what everything's like? And it always you
Speaker 1: have to eat this kind of that. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: my impression of that, because that's all I could think of,
Speaker 1: was like, and then it's so whatever the sound effects
Speaker 1: the burger slams down like it weighs two thousand tons,
Speaker 1: like it's a Trucker's right, I'm always like, why it's
Speaker 1: hardy it's hearty and delicious. And I'm like, but it's
Speaker 1: just fried air foods, frid aired, you know, that's why
Speaker 1: do they go fries. There's no real you know, delicious. Still, yeah,
Speaker 1: what is it? What is Rvy's We have the meats say.
Speaker 1: Another study found people are more likely to spring for
Speaker 1: unhealthy food if it's wrapped in masculine packaging, and they're
Speaker 1: more likely to spring for healthier food with feminine packaging. Okay,
Speaker 1: And that same study found that the exact same blueberry muffins,
Speaker 1: one presented in masculine packaging, the other in feminine packaging
Speaker 1: with the word healthy on both of them. Respondents reported
Speaker 1: the one with a masculine baggaging tasting better. Mm hmmm,
Speaker 1: because I think they assume it must be unhealthier even
Speaker 1: though it's healthy, right, I don't know. People people, people
Speaker 1: but with stricter definitions or differentiations when it comes to
Speaker 1: gender are more likely to reflect that and they're eating
Speaker 1: habits and choices. And one study found that even bringing
Speaker 1: up masculinity or femininity impacted people's food choices. When masculinity
Speaker 1: was invoked, people chose the less healthy option. The opposite
Speaker 1: was true for femininity. And I know we've all heard
Speaker 1: about the studies showing that male vegetarians are seen as
Speaker 1: less manly men are socialized to eat meat. One Twitter
Speaker 1: poll directed at men found that when asked what was
Speaker 1: keeping them from being van fort responded with social stigma
Speaker 1: and thirty nine answered masculinity. And we see that in
Speaker 1: the terms sway, boy, I've never heard that term fortunate,
Speaker 1: never good cell. It brings us to the question why
Speaker 1: do we see meat as this manly thing. A survey
Speaker 1: cross several languages looking into whether respondents thought of food
Speaker 1: word was more masculine or feminine. Overwhelmingly, meat products were
Speaker 1: associated with men. Almost of people labeled the hamburger as masculine.
Speaker 1: The same research found that meters were seen as more
Speaker 1: masculine than non meat eaters. And yes, men do eat
Speaker 1: more meat than women, and women make up a majority
Speaker 1: of vegetarians and vegans. And there are a few things
Speaker 1: that play here, some of which go way back um
Speaker 1: dominance and power over another creature, eating your enemy. That
Speaker 1: whole idea In French sociologist Pierre Bordeaux described men as
Speaker 1: quote the natural meeters meet the nourishing food par excellence,
Speaker 1: strong and strong, making giving bigger blood and health is
Speaker 1: the dish for the men who take a second helping,
Speaker 1: whereas women are satisfied with a small portion. Okay, A
Speaker 1: study from pointed to chemical signature on thousand year old
Speaker 1: bones to trace the rise of the patriarchy. Yep, because
Speaker 1: ten thousand years ago, as agriculture was on the rise,
Speaker 1: men and women ate the same stuff. Researchers know this
Speaker 1: from bone analyzes. But when the Bronze Age rolled around,
Speaker 1: women were primarily eating wheat and barley and men were
Speaker 1: on a steady diet of animal products. At the same time,
Speaker 1: women's bones were buried with less treasure, which researchers think
Speaker 1: is another indicator in decreased status when compared to men.
Speaker 1: In more recent history, before women were allowed to work
Speaker 1: and meat could be um an expensive luxury for working
Speaker 1: class families, it was common for the men of the
Speaker 1: family to get the first and largest portion of meat,
Speaker 1: since he needed the strength for working. How that sounds
Speaker 1: like the same idea doing like thanksgiving, the man the
Speaker 1: house is the one that cuts the meat. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: always been a weird thing to me. I didn't understand
Speaker 1: why that was such a huge Uh. Patriarchal thing that
Speaker 1: needed to be done in staid. Yeah, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: In my family, that is not how it is. My
Speaker 1: mom carves. There's no tradition for us when it's carved meat.
Speaker 1: Let's just meat. I just always thought that was the
Speaker 1: idea of It made me angry. In theory, it's like
Speaker 1: one last thing for my mom to do. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, she did everything else, so I don't
Speaker 1: see why. It's like the man gets to present the
Speaker 1: honor of Yeah, like this thing that you put all
Speaker 1: this work into, Yeah, I'll take it in. I don't
Speaker 1: know about that. Carol J. Adams's book The Sexual Politics
Speaker 1: of Meat a feminist vegetarian critical theory debut and got
Speaker 1: quite a lot of media attention. The cover was illustrative
Speaker 1: of one of the main points of the book. It
Speaker 1: depicts the back of a naked woman sectioned out by
Speaker 1: parts like we often see for meat, you know, like ribs,
Speaker 1: chuck around, The point being both women and animals are
Speaker 1: marketed and consumed from her site. The Sexual Politics of
Speaker 1: Meat argues that male dominance and animals oppressions are linked
Speaker 1: by the way that both women and animals function as
Speaker 1: absent reference and meat eating and dairy production, and that
Speaker 1: feminist theory logically contains a vegan critique, just as veganism
Speaker 1: covertly challenges patriarchal society. Patriarchy is a gender system that
Speaker 1: is implicit in human animal relationships. An overlap of cultural
Speaker 1: images of sexual violence against women and fragmentation and dismemberment
Speaker 1: of nature and the body and Western culture exists. This
Speaker 1: cycle of objectification, fragmentation, and consumption links Butchering with both
Speaker 1: the representation and reality of sexual violence and Western cultures
Speaker 1: that normalizes sexual consumption. Yeah. Actually with that, I was
Speaker 1: when I was researching some of the things. One of
Speaker 1: the articles that I saw, I saw had this whole
Speaker 1: concept of masculinity and meet an animal protein to this
Speaker 1: extreme idea like this that included that married women are
Speaker 1: almost fearful of being vegetarians because of disapproval, rejection, or
Speaker 1: even violence from men. Yeah, now that, now that you
Speaker 1: say it, I have seen like kind of a joking, right,
Speaker 1: you know for me, it used to be like you
Speaker 1: don't smoke, do you? But I've seen it with some
Speaker 1: of my well not really friends, but dudes in my life,
Speaker 1: like you're not a vegetarian, are you right? Right? And
Speaker 1: it is. He was like a disqualifier and it is
Speaker 1: counted against you. And I could see that the extreme
Speaker 1: level of any kind of violent relationship, this could be
Speaker 1: one more excuse if you better have this as perfected.
Speaker 1: This is perfection. Yeah, And I have been hurt and
Speaker 1: to see because I have a lot of friends who
Speaker 1: were like one of them is began and one of
Speaker 1: them isn't or vegetarian, right, that's hard, hard relationship. I
Speaker 1: definitely had moments where I when I was first really
Speaker 1: into the dating world, and I was a vegetarian for
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons. And I remember the first date,
Speaker 1: the first thing that dude order was real was not
Speaker 1: even asking me any like he knew I was a vegetarian.
Speaker 1: We kind of already had this as a conversation and
Speaker 1: he ordered that and I kind of looked at him.
Speaker 1: I didn't have too much. I just kind of paused,
Speaker 1: and he was, oh, you know, I just only ordered
Speaker 1: things that I wouldn't cook for myself. And I kind
Speaker 1: of just stared there and thinking, obviously, you have no
Speaker 1: cares about my opinion because you got one of the
Speaker 1: most politically incorrect meats and ordered it on the route. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just like enjoying meals together be difficult. My little brother,
Speaker 1: in my view, very randomly became a vegetarian. But it's
Speaker 1: because I don't see every often. But it happened over
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving when I cooked the Thanksgiving and it was like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm vegetarian. Oh no, no no, and just like um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you forget all the things like yeah, well you have
Speaker 1: to think about all the things that could be in there,
Speaker 1: so stock or what's touched what I mean, that's really
Speaker 1: important and and for those who are vegetarian or vegan,
Speaker 1: you want to be respectful to that. And so you're like, crap,
Speaker 1: what im I'm gonna do? Yes, um And going back
Speaker 1: to the sexual politics of meat, a study did look
Speaker 1: into the premise that all oppression is linked um here
Speaker 1: specifically the oppression of animals and women, and it found
Speaker 1: people who identified as more pro meat displayed a higher
Speaker 1: correlation with sexist attitudes, and people with a more pro
Speaker 1: animal stance correlated with a greater desire to shake male
Speaker 1: female dichotomies like strict dichotomies. But the researchers were and
Speaker 1: are quick to point out that um all the study
Speaker 1: shows and is that these things are somehow related, and
Speaker 1: that it doesn't show that everyone who eats meat as sexist,
Speaker 1: because of course it's like the headline right right uh.
Speaker 1: Adams's site is also full of examples of this whole
Speaker 1: idea playing out during the Trump era if you want
Speaker 1: to check it out, including a political pin called a
Speaker 1: KFC Hillary Special two fat thighs, two small breast, left
Speaker 1: wing and all kinds of ads actually do use terminology
Speaker 1: like this. You can grab our buons, touch our breast,
Speaker 1: things like that. Um. When Anne Alestio Parson published a
Speaker 1: study finding a link between masculinity and me eating and
Speaker 1: that in Argentina, male vegetarians were more likely to be
Speaker 1: open to feminism, it's similarly got a very big response,
Speaker 1: and when she was invited to speak on a talk
Speaker 1: show on Fox, the male host bought out a steak
Speaker 1: and ate it in front of her kind of proving
Speaker 1: her points. Sheeez um. A recent study out of University
Speaker 1: of Southampton found that for the three groups of male participants,
Speaker 1: they all expressed a desire to eat less meat, but
Speaker 1: that it was difficult without quote social permission, and this
Speaker 1: study has gotten some criticism for its methodology, perhaps most
Speaker 1: notably from author Baalen Lincoln, who cited the masculinity and
Speaker 1: meat consumption trope and desire to make headlines. Another study
Speaker 1: linked class and meat consumption, finding that when given the
Speaker 1: option for either a beef or vegan beast burger, the
Speaker 1: highest demand for meat came from people who rated themselves
Speaker 1: at the lowest socio economically. And yet another study found
Speaker 1: that men who felt that their masculinity was threatened routinely
Speaker 1: added red meat to their meals. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of studies looking into this, UM. And I know recently
Speaker 1: there's been that study about made headlines about veganism being
Speaker 1: linked to white privilege. Whish I could see, right, And
Speaker 1: that's that's true. That's we were talking about. You know,
Speaker 1: me trying to be a vegetarian. It was really difficult.
Speaker 1: That was one I was getting out of college, um
Speaker 1: and changing and I needed to change my lifestyle anyway,
Speaker 1: and this is a good way to go. And also
Speaker 1: I had been reading some books and it was horrifying. Um.
Speaker 1: But one of the things is because I could not
Speaker 1: healthily do it. Part of that because I could not
Speaker 1: afford all of the great ideas and in doing it
Speaker 1: doing it healthy, because tofu was one of the things
Speaker 1: that I could easily afford, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: so much soy was causing a lot of disruption in
Speaker 1: my body, you know, and stuff like that, as well
Speaker 1: as the fact that I wasn't properly getting all the
Speaker 1: greens that I needed and vegetables fresh vegetables are expensive
Speaker 1: and it's absurdly so um and and because I'm with you,
Speaker 1: I actually did read a column not too long ago
Speaker 1: about how uh talking about being a vegetarian, talking about
Speaker 1: being organic is a classic idea, and stopped stopped pushing
Speaker 1: this as this is normal, this is healthy, this is
Speaker 1: what we should be doing as a society. That's really nice,
Speaker 1: that's a really great concept, but we understand us most
Speaker 1: people cannot afford this. And it wasn't until the last
Speaker 1: few years that even our system allowed for people to use, um,
Speaker 1: the food assistance programs within this type of realm of
Speaker 1: farmers markets and areas that you could get healthy options
Speaker 1: that wasn't and and trying to stretch a dollar if
Speaker 1: you can't afford it for a family of five, that's
Speaker 1: almost impossible. Yeah, So yeah, I do have definitely seen
Speaker 1: that I could see where they talk about but definitely
Speaker 1: a classist idea for sure. Yeah. Another part of this
Speaker 1: conversation is the idea that in our society we pressure
Speaker 1: men uh to be more muscular, or that that's a
Speaker 1: pretty big kind of pressure. Um. And to build muscle
Speaker 1: you need protein, and we're told that you need animal
Speaker 1: protein for that, which is not true. Um. Harvard's Men's
Speaker 1: Health Watch found that quote red meat does contribute to
Speaker 1: chronic disease and concluded it was reasonable to observe a
Speaker 1: few meat three days a week. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: going on here, right, yes, um, and we have even
Speaker 1: more to discuss. But first we're going to pause for
Speaker 1: a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and
Speaker 1: we're back, Thank you sponsor. Alright, so let's talk about salads. Salad. Yes,
Speaker 1: I haven't really excited to talk about salad. I'm really
Speaker 1: hungry right now. There's all these tips and depths everywhere,
Speaker 1: but no salad nor a steak. Look, I can't do everything.
Speaker 1: That's true. You tried. I did try, Okay. So if
Speaker 1: you type in women in Google's image church, one of
Speaker 1: the first things you'll get, if not the very first thing,
Speaker 1: is a woman Brunette White, laughing alone while eating a
Speaker 1: salad having the time of her life. At It's like
Speaker 1: she's she's having a wonderful time. And I enjoy my
Speaker 1: fair share of salads. Oh. I've also definitely ordered or
Speaker 1: made a sad salad to lose weight. I've done it,
Speaker 1: and I cannot think of a time I was ever
Speaker 1: that happy about salad. Wait, what's a sad salad? Oh?
Speaker 1: Sad salad is like, you know, you got the water,
Speaker 1: what's it called iceberg? Iceberg? And it's got to like
Speaker 1: red around it and it's all walty. It's just got
Speaker 1: no flavor. Is that it really? Yeah? Is it no dressing? Nothing?
Speaker 1: What you do? You add carrots or a cucumber or
Speaker 1: sometimes I add cucumber, maybe a celery. Way, it's always
Speaker 1: delicious salad. Have you ever seen them? Me? Which one
Speaker 1: a gift? Who was not in front of my salad? Go?
Speaker 1: Look at us? Hilarious that we can a whole thing
Speaker 1: like in front of my salad. And essentially I think
Speaker 1: it was from a gay porn or something. I don't know,
Speaker 1: because it beguns with When I looked at the whole thing,
Speaker 1: I just saw that one was in front of my salad.
Speaker 1: And then when you look at the whole thing. You're like, oh, hill,
Speaker 1: oh there's more. There's way more to this. Co cool cool.
Speaker 1: I remember um, back when Kristen and I we did
Speaker 1: the video stuff, I'm never told you video series. I
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about the Kardashians and I all I
Speaker 1: know is mostly from her some from Bridget But I
Speaker 1: didn't know that on their show they just eat salad
Speaker 1: in silence. Sometimes there doesn't mean on that what I
Speaker 1: don't know? They did do that? And then afterwards was
Speaker 1: not in front of my salad or in front of
Speaker 1: my salad? All right, well go look at that up,
Speaker 1: will I will in front of my salad? Um, I
Speaker 1: will say, there's a picture of me that exists where
Speaker 1: I am like on a beach in my bathing suit
Speaker 1: and I have salad and I look like I'm having
Speaker 1: a wonderful time. So I'm close. I guess I love
Speaker 1: a good salad. And they're they're stepping up their game. Yes,
Speaker 1: restaurants are, Yes, they are. They absolutely are. Um And
Speaker 1: like we just said at the top, yogurt is another
Speaker 1: big thing. You'll probably see a picture of a woman
Speaker 1: eating younger, yes, perfectly labeled spoonful of it. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And I've been in a video lampooning match that is online.
Speaker 1: You can find it many treasures, yes, so they all
Speaker 1: are out there for your finding. If you google men
Speaker 1: eating results, you'll get a lot of results around images
Speaker 1: of a burger steak. Burger steak. There is a tumbler
Speaker 1: devoted to women eating salads and laughing or are men
Speaker 1: doing it to showcase how weird it is? And I
Speaker 1: quite enjoy it. So from now all and every time
Speaker 1: I eat a salad, I need to be laughing. Yes,
Speaker 1: can't be crying my salad. Not Well, you can be,
Speaker 1: but that's a different that's a different name. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can salad. It's one of the things. You're either the
Speaker 1: sad woman or the happy the sad salad or the
Speaker 1: happy salad. There's no in between. And salad is frequently
Speaker 1: dismissed as rabbit food. Um, it's seen as a food
Speaker 1: of deprivation. Therefore, it's coated as feminine since salads are
Speaker 1: seen as a health food, and as we've already said,
Speaker 1: healthy food is solidly in the four women category. Salads
Speaker 1: are women right When the salad first became popular in
Speaker 1: the earlier twentieth century, they were much fancier and perhaps
Speaker 1: less healthy like jealous salad um than we think of
Speaker 1: them today, but they were still feminine. It was a
Speaker 1: way for affluent housewives to show off all about the presentation,
Speaker 1: the chicken salad, potato salad, all of those salads. An
Speaker 1: article on courts comes with the title women, we need
Speaker 1: to throw off the sexist shackles of the salad, and
Speaker 1: it goes into how most salads marketed as the main
Speaker 1: course don't have enough nutrition out of proteins, on of fats.
Speaker 1: They are a salad salad um or there's a pretty
Speaker 1: sexist one I found on Cosmo for teen things guys
Speaker 1: think about your salad. One of them is great the
Speaker 1: data is already over. Ordering a salad is like ordering
Speaker 1: water at the bar. That's not even a real meal,
Speaker 1: that's a garnish for another meal. My grandmother used to
Speaker 1: order salads. Did you just ask for no crew times?
Speaker 1: You're going to eat half my food, aren't you? I
Speaker 1: know you sneak cookies at night. Okay, whether I have
Speaker 1: had a salad or not, or a giant meal, I'm
Speaker 1: probably still but it's still going to sneak some cookies
Speaker 1: at night. Yeah, I'm just gonna say that that should
Speaker 1: be in every front. That doesn't matter what it is. Like,
Speaker 1: I just had a giant hamburger and shake. Let's go
Speaker 1: get some cookies. It may not be cookies and maybe donnuts.
Speaker 1: We do have a twenty four hour don't a shop
Speaker 1: near me? So yeah, I might have recently ordered from them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually never had do nuts from there. I thought
Speaker 1: maybe they were front slut. Oh no, I thought you
Speaker 1: were talking about happy No. No, sublime is delicity, they are.
Speaker 1: You're right. Um. There's another article from the Cut, sub
Speaker 1: send us some doughnuts, please, please, dont too bad. Another
Speaker 1: article from the Cut, called life is Too Short for
Speaker 1: Work Salad goes into how women eating in public is
Speaker 1: like declaring you care more about taste than appearance, going
Speaker 1: against a norm. Heaven forbid. It goes into how men,
Speaker 1: for the most part, don't worry about what people will
Speaker 1: think when they reach for a second cupcake or a
Speaker 1: second glass of wine. Um man, I'm really bad at
Speaker 1: this whole woman thing. Then that's not necessarily terrible. Especially
Speaker 1: these aspects of women are also under intense pressure to
Speaker 1: be skinny, which pushes them towards food like salads. But
Speaker 1: of course, of course, studies have shown that women eat
Speaker 1: a few or calories when they are with men as
Speaker 1: opposed to being with women, and that when told an
Speaker 1: option was healthier and that didn't you know, healthy foods
Speaker 1: are associated with women, they largely stopped going for the
Speaker 1: healthy option. So if they're told, oh, that is a
Speaker 1: women do that, don't Oh no, I don't want to
Speaker 1: do that, then okay, cool um. And this all ripples
Speaker 1: out to restaurant menus. Salads are secondary, not enough for
Speaker 1: a lot of restaurants. There are only a few salad
Speaker 1: options and not a lot of thought went into those options.
Speaker 1: And when you think about the fact that still most
Speaker 1: chefs are mail well, a majority of them are male,
Speaker 1: and most menus are designed by men. Also, in the USA,
Speaker 1: people associate healthy with not as good tasting, which is
Speaker 1: not true for every country I know. In France it
Speaker 1: recently reversed. Um. But this is funny because just because
Speaker 1: something is a salad doesn't make it healthy. It's that man,
Speaker 1: those dressings, those addends. There is nothing more setting than
Speaker 1: getting a sad salad and eating it halfheartedly and then
Speaker 1: finding out later that it was more calories than the
Speaker 1: thing that is really disappointing. It is so upsetting. Um.
Speaker 1: And I was in a movie that was semi based
Speaker 1: on my life. I need I need more details. Excuse me.
Speaker 1: Somebody wrote a movie that's kind of based on my
Speaker 1: life and I was in it and I was playing
Speaker 1: me but not me. It was very confusing, right, Um.
Speaker 1: And there's a joke in that movie about how my
Speaker 1: character slashed me only eats kale salad for lunch, which
Speaker 1: was true for a long time. And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh man, you love some good kill. You've actually how
Speaker 1: much you like kill? Kale is in my top five
Speaker 1: favorite foods, which is really weird that I know this well. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. I know you pretty well, pretty well, and
Speaker 1: I'll tell anybody about my love kale. We had some kale.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh my god, I love kale And I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, love kale. I do? I do? And
Speaker 1: I did eat kale salad every day for a long time. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's socially aptable for women to eat south in public.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, I always think about the fact that there's
Speaker 1: always something left in my energy. Yes, it's the one
Speaker 1: unsexy foods you could eat. I know. And it's funny
Speaker 1: because that's like the date foods you think of because
Speaker 1: um over on our other my other podcast Saver, we
Speaker 1: just did an episode on lobster and that's also seen
Speaker 1: as a date food, and like, these are very dangerous
Speaker 1: on sexy foods to me, Like trying to do corn
Speaker 1: on the cob is sexy? Gave my heart accomplishment? Why
Speaker 1: what's that react? I don't want to delve into corn
Speaker 1: on the cobb being sexy. Okay um, that's too much
Speaker 1: you have um. But yeah, I do have a lot
Speaker 1: of friends of experience that same concern. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, it's like I'll just have a salad. I
Speaker 1: won't get bloated or whatever it is. Really maybe because
Speaker 1: I made too many greens, because that that makes me bloated.
Speaker 1: I don't know, this is what I read. I've never
Speaker 1: really put conscious thought all maybe recently have, mainly because
Speaker 1: I to eat a lot of vegetables. But I've been
Speaker 1: really giving my kimchi back into my my foods of everything,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, man, there's a lot of sodium in itself.
Speaker 1: It was like, well, that's different than a salade. But anyway,
Speaker 1: okay um, I still for me, I don't like eating
Speaker 1: in publican because I feel like eating is something that
Speaker 1: I should not be doing. This is actually something we
Speaker 1: were working on in therapy. Um, like, I'm not thin enough,
Speaker 1: so salad is a way to be like, oh see,
Speaker 1: I'm making effort. Um. It draws a little attention to
Speaker 1: the fact that I'm eating as possible. I did the
Speaker 1: same thing. I think if I'm eating fast food or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think people automatically assume, of course she's fast food
Speaker 1: because I'm not, you know, very very skinny. So I
Speaker 1: feel like everything's Also, we already know there is judgment
Speaker 1: out there. When we talked about what's normal and all
Speaker 1: of that, it's probably true for some people that they
Speaker 1: are being judged, so therefore they have to do the
Speaker 1: best to put on the show. Yeah, which again going
Speaker 1: back here, I remember learning that the salad you get
Speaker 1: at McDonald's are like just terrible for right, but it's
Speaker 1: it's like a show. Um. That being said, I recently
Speaker 1: have had some amazing salads and restaurants. Like you said,
Speaker 1: I've had salads that were like the happiest of salads.
Speaker 1: So I don't want the happiest of sal I do
Speaker 1: love salad. I don't want to reign on salth parade.
Speaker 1: It's just, um, don't be sad salad. You're good to
Speaker 1: be happy salad. It's not sad salad. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: think we've talked enough about salad for now. We do
Speaker 1: have a little bit more for you, but first we
Speaker 1: have one more quick break for word from our sponsor
Speaker 1: and we're back. Thank you sponsor. So what are we
Speaker 1: do about this whole gendered food unhealthy thing that we
Speaker 1: have going on? Um? Eat more meat, just playing not that. Um.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is often viewed as a massive exaggeration
Speaker 1: of the hunter gatherer narrative, which is far more complex
Speaker 1: than what we typically boil it down to. I could
Speaker 1: go into it but then be here for hours and
Speaker 1: no one wants that. Probably maybe like four people want it.
Speaker 1: But I mean we could just split it up like
Speaker 1: we do. Yeah, yeah, we could do that. Um, I
Speaker 1: thought for another day. Researchers suggest that we reframe how
Speaker 1: we view food that we look at it as genderless.
Speaker 1: For instance, cooking isn't masculine or feminine, but it does
Speaker 1: the skill necessary for being independent. Ask yourself why you
Speaker 1: are making a food decision and if it's because of
Speaker 1: beliefs around gender, to challenge those beliefs, drink more beer, Ladies,
Speaker 1: drink more beer if you want to, if you want to,
Speaker 1: and it's healthy. Public figures challenging this notion is something else.
Speaker 1: Researchers posit helps the fact that Samuel L. Jackson, for instance,
Speaker 1: is vegetarian, or the football player known as the three
Speaker 1: hundred pound vegan. We have to come into it so
Speaker 1: rude because he's a big football player. Okay, so three
Speaker 1: hundred vegan. Yeah, And according to one article, we'll see
Speaker 1: how this goes. The UK Advertising Standards Authority has put
Speaker 1: in a new role which bands adverts which featured gender
Speaker 1: stereotypes that can be considered harmful or sexist. I am
Speaker 1: very interested to see, right, and now that happened this year,
Speaker 1: in two thousand nineteen, so we'll see how that has
Speaker 1: played out. There is just so much to unpack here,
Speaker 1: and until we stop associating femininity with weakness, and everything
Speaker 1: coded as feminine, including eating habits and foods, will be
Speaker 1: seen as less than something to be avoided. I really
Speaker 1: could just talk about this. Very excited about this one.
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong, I'm very hungry. Now I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to go find a meat salad somewhere. Combined them good.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna do a gender neutral all the things
Speaker 1: and then combine the both gender nutual salad. Please, we
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you listeners. Um and in
Speaker 1: the next episode, we're gonna be talking about the gendering
Speaker 1: of drinks if anybody wants to preemptively right in about
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm ready for that one. Yeah. You can
Speaker 1: email us at Stuff Media, mom Stuff at iHeart media
Speaker 1: dot com. You can find us on Twitter at mom
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast and on Instagram at stuff I've Never Told You.
Speaker 1: Thanks as always to our super producer Andrew Howard, and
Speaker 1: thanks to you for listening Stuff I've Never Told You
Speaker 1: the protection of I Heart Radios how Stuff works for
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