Current mood:	annoyed
Current music:	Ben Folds--Annie Waits
Entry tags:	gender, hunger

Gendered Appetites
As someone who was raised as a woman, I can tell you that (regardless of what weight I was at, fat or thin), I was never encouraged to eat more.  I was never told, "You're a growing gal.  Eat up so you can grow big and strong!"  I was, however, consistently told by many adults to eat less. A big appetite isn't feminine, I was lectured.  Some folks even told me that by eating a lot in front of a male suitor, he would be scared if my appetite was bigger than his!  (Would you call that appetite envy?)

Viewing images in popular media, we can see this message holds true today.  Although the diet and plastic surgery industry is expanding to more aggressively include men, women are still the focus of the command to be thin.  There are male protagonists on TV and in movies who are quite hefty who are allowed to have beautiful (and thereby skinny) wives, but we rarely see a pleasantly plump gal on TV who has a muscular, gorgeous husband.  The connection back to appetite and gender may sometimes seem tenuous, but I assure you it is there.

One recent television ad brings this connection to the forefront in a rather glaring and obnoxious way.  There has been a commercial running for the last couple months for Swanson's Hungry Man line of frozen meals.  While the very name of these entrees is already telling you that to be hungry is to be manly, this commercial basically says that eating "light" or eating smaller portions turns you into a big sissy girl.  A group of construction workers, often thought to be the very essence of butch maleness, agree to go to the bathroom together (a behavior classically attributed to those of the female gender only) after dining on lunches consisting of low-cal meals or smoothies.  A "real man" co-worker they pass by on the way to the loo, who is conveniently chowing down on a Hungry Man  lunch meal, calls their feminized ways to their attention.  Although I don't remember what the announcer says at the close of the commercial, the construction workers have said it all: eating "lite" or eating healthy is something that only women do.

Sadly, the message of this commercial may be correct in some respect: where are the Hungry Women frozen entrees?  What do hungry women get to eat?  Anything?

On a side note, not eating a Swanson's Hungry Man dinner may save your life.  They are notoriously bad for you and are trashed in many foodie blogs, like this one, for the astronomical amounts of sodium and fat contained in one single platter of food.

But my point is not that women deserve shitty frozen meals as much as men do.  My point is that women should be allowed to be hungry.  I would even like to see their hunger (*gasp*) celebrated in mainstream media.

Off to have some lunch.

Cheers.