A couple of weeks ago, my partner and I were trying to decide where to order takeout from for dinner. As I tapped through the menus of all our favorite places, I discovered an item I had never noticed before: Dude Salad.
Dude Salad was basically a cross between cheese fries and a Greek salad. Imagine a Greek salad, but instead of a bed of lettuce you get a bed of fries. Since I wasn’t super hungry but I also love potatoes, I decided to try it.
(image description - low quality photo of Dude Salad)
Now, I won’t lie to you. The Dude Salad was pretty good. It reminded me of The Before Times, when we used to share giant Instagram-worthy appetizers with our friends at restaurants and chaotically not worry about germs. But, as I ate, I couldn’t stop thinking about the name “Dude Salad.”
This is the curse of having a master’s degree in American studies; you are contractually obligated to think about the cultural impact of Dude Salad.
Anyways, I’m not going to name the restaurant here because my intention is not to disparage them. They’re actually a really great local restaurant that I order from often. I don’t think they were trying to single handedly ensure that men never eat vegetables, they were just using a shared and recognizable language to communicate with their patrons. And I can’t say it didn’t work! Even though I didn’t know exactly what Dude Salad would be, I assumed it would be some kind of salad with some added bulk, like meat or potatoes.
It bothered me that my brain was already wired to make that assumption. As a vegetarian, I also usually skip over any menu items that have words like “manly,” “hungry man,” or “lumberjack” in them because those items are almost always loaded with meat. Dude Salad turned out to be an exception to that trend. However, even that subtle (or not so subtle?) messaging is starting to feel weird to me. What are all these gendered food names shorthand for? Can men not eat vegetables? Can women not be hungry? Are men, statistically speaking, more hungry than other genders?
We’re supposed to think so. This brain rabbit hole I fell into reminded me of a male roommate I had once who constantly told me he could never be a vegetarian because his body needed so much more protein than mine. He had some kind of office job, and went to the gym 2-3 times a week, so an average protein intake probably would have sufficed for his lifestyle. I never offered him advice about that, and I never even asked him if he was considering going vegetarian, because other people's food preferences and nutritional needs are almost always not my business. Whenever he found me in the kitchen cooking for myself (which is my business), it was almost as if he was compelled by the gender gods to tell me about how his body was so different than mine and required so much more meat. He’s not the only man I’ve had this experience with, he’s just one of the few who constantly brought that “men need more protein than women” energy into my home all the time. It was so weird!
I do want to make a quick note that though I will be speaking in binary a lot in this essay because of the specific ways that marketing targets “men” and “women,” this does not reflect the reality of gender or the spectrum of experiences folks may have with body image, dysmorphia, disordered eating, etc. If anyone has any thoughts on what a non-binary salad might be like, I’m all ears.
Diet Culture
I’m not going to get into the ins and outs of diet culture here, but if you’ve ever watched a commercial break on television or spent more than ten minutes on Instagram, you’ve probably seen diet culture in action.
Diet culture has been an advertising staple for decades, but it’s even more prevalent now that we spend so much time in front of screens. From weight loss apps to fad diets to diuretic “skinny” teas, as a woman on the internet I am constantly bombarded with diet culture content. This is in spite of my best efforts to unfollow, block, or otherwise disengage with as many agents of diet culture as possible.
Although anyone can be targeted by ads for products and ideals designed to make them feel bad about their body, advertisers are particularly interested in hurling diet culture at women (it’s a $70 billion industry). This mission has been so effective that our brains know to code salad as lady food and meat as manly food, even though that dichotomy doesn’t make any sense!
At best, diet culture is a toxic mechanism of control. At worst, it’s a genocidal project.
Eating disorders are overwhelmingly socialized illnesses. Though anyone can experience disordered eating, eating disorders are far more common in women than in men. Obviously, this is a complicated issue, and specifics vary based on different cultural norms and beauty standards. I won’t blame the eating disorder epidemic on Dude Salad. I do, however, think it is worthwhile to think about how our tacit understandings of branding and marketing signals shape the way we see the world and our bodies.
Here’s Looking at You, Lorelei Gilmore
I won’t blame Lorelei Gilmore for all these problems either, but she is a perfect example of the “girl who can eat a lot of junk food and still be a size 2” trope that’s often used to code a character as “cool” or “not like the other girls.”
Hunger and appetite are often framed as personality traits in female characters, and the way these traits are controlled, policed, or put on display is supposed to tell us a lot about who they are. Women who always talk about their diets and only order salads at restaurants are supposed to be uptight, unrelatable, or (if they’re bigger than a size 4) hopeless and worthy of our pity. Women who eat cheeseburgers and pizza all the time (and are bigger than a size 4) are supposed to be unattractive, unfeminine, or at least unworthy of sexual interest. But a woman who maintains a size 2 figure effortlessly while constantly eating hot wings and nachos? That’s our dream girl.
I have to imagine that if Lorelei Gilmore woke up in my neighborhood and found Dude Salad on a menu, she’d be thrilled. She’d make a reference to a random movie from the 90s, and then she’d order a Dude Salad with extra fries and black coffee. Her order (and her shameless desire for food), coupled with her body, would be intended to communicate something to us about her personality and her likability. She’s effortless and cool. She’s not like the other girls, who would probably order a regular salad because they’re busy trying to live up to the expectations of western beauty standards. But, she’s also not like the other girls who would order Dude Fries while their bodies are not already in compliance with those same beauty standards.
The Body Politics of Dude Salad
I know how ridiculous that subtitle sounds, but I think there’s something here! What does it mean that we recognize gendered food names as shorthand for portion size or calorie estimates? What does my body need to do or look like to be valuable? What do men’s bodies need to do or look like to be valuable?
I don’t have all the answers, but I am very interested in thinking critically about the subtle ways in which the messaging we are bombarded with all day, every day shapes the way we view our own bodies and behaviors, as well as the bodies and behaviors of others. I’m even more interested in thinking about how we can carve our paths to liberation through all that noise.
Anyways, writing this essay is making me hungry. I’ll be back in your inbox every weekend this month with content for National Poetry Month!
See you then,
Christina