the secret language of food and a simpering need for approval

[rm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/fashion/09STEAK.html
Is the life of a woman really such constant mandatory neurosis even if that neurosis is about not seeming neurotic?

“Everyone wants to be the girl who drinks the beer and eats the steak and looks like Kate Hudson,” Ms. Crosley, 28, said.

Actually, no, everyone isn't. And then there's this:

Of course, there are always those rare women who order what they want and to heck with what a man might think.

Saehee Hwang, 30, a production director at Artnet.com, found herself out with friends at DuMont restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when she started feeling attracted to a new guy in the group. She said she had wanted to order a burger, but started having second thoughts. “I didn’t want to appear too much of a carnivore,” she said. “It might be off-putting.”

But then she decided she should not change her order to fit a preconceived idea of what a man might want. She ordered the house specialty, a half-pound of beef on a toasted brioche bun with Gruyère cheese. “We started dating afterward,” Ms. Hwang said. “And he told me he liked the fact that I ordered the burger.”

I mean, really, did you know you were buying your freedom with every second of every day you actually choose to do something for yourself? How shocking!

Comments

[kiji-kat.livejournal.com]

I'll admit that I've fallen into the trap of eating differently because it might be "off-putting" to members of the opposite sex. Fortunately, I'm getting better about eating food because I want to, not because I think it's more acceptable. My emphasis on eating healthier these days is now done for the right reasons - because I can't take a lot of heavy, greasy and/or sugary foods anymore (it makes me feel sluggish and crappy) and because I really do feel better when I have lighter fare.

That said, I may have to go to Quizno's for lunch today. I feel like a toasted sammich. ;)

[fragiletender.livejournal.com]

I'm the same with heavy food - it just makes me sleepy and then I'm no good for anything. It upsets my digestive system too so I try to avoid it, although I'm not as good at staying off sugar even through I know that my health is a lot better when I do. It's tough though because sugar is so damn addictive.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Wow, Internet fame, my icons are a-spreading!

[fragiletender.livejournal.com]

*waves at fellow sufferer*

Oh, fantastic, I'm very pleased to find out who made this. I've credited you in my userpics section if that's OK.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Quite all right - credit is nice, but I'm just glad to see it used. Although slightly bewildered at first because I was fairly certain I hadn't used it to post here, and most of my fellow sufferers from cfids_me don't hang out here. I didn't *think* I was that brainfogged today!

Ani Defranco?

[keith418.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much social class and environment has to do with issues like this.

What if you lived in a community in which no one had a different reaction from yours when you read this article? One of the things I have noticed is that these pieces used to bother me a lot more when I lived in a community full of the kinds of people the article is describing. If you live in a place, and work with people, where everyone is a "progressive" and a nominal feminist, and has to deal with these questions themselves, then this kind of thing tends to bother you a lot less. On the other hand, you can swiftly become annoyed by their little contradictions and "issues" too.

[fragiletender.livejournal.com]

Of course, there are always those rare women who order what they want and to heck with what a man might think.

You mean we're supposed to care what men think? Dammit, why does no one ever send me the memos?

I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever worried about what a man would think of what I was ordering. Sure, when I was young and stupid and in the grips of an eating disorder I worried excessively about calories, but not what a man thought.

“I didn’t want to appear too much of a carnivore,” she said. “It might be off-putting.”

Only if he's an evangelical vegetarian, in which case it's probably best to get that sorted out right at the start.

[a-hollow-year.livejournal.com]

It honest to god never ever occurred to me that a man might judge me based on what I eat. I think my first inkling was my husband saying, "I like that you're not afraid to get messy like other girls," after I'd eaten a rack of ribs.

I just wanted ribs. Now I am apparently making a Statement about Me. :(

[fragiletender.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking that it can go the other way too. I find it slightly irritating when I'm ordering a salad because I really fancy a salad and other people make the assumption that it's because I'm dieting or being virtuous. You know what I mean, that whole female thing of "ooh, aren't you being good". No, I'm not, I was just in the mood for something green and crunchy, dammit!

[graene.livejournal.com]

more than slightly irritating when you're craving veggies and they accuse you of having an eating disorder.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, that's just staggeringly rude. I adore vegetables and can happily eat them in preference to other things.

[fragiletender.livejournal.com]

Oops, that was me, I hadn't realised that I wasn't logged in.

[spiralflames.livejournal.com]

1. the only time i've ever thought twice about what a male thinks about my food is when i have gone on a 'blind date' (usually coffee) and i will make sure i get there early and get my stuff so there's no weirdness of some total stranger thinking he's supposed to pay, which i DO find midieval.

2. WOMEN are the ONLY people who have these paranoid weirdnesses. they (we) (i used to..sigh..NO MORE) twist myself into a pretzel thinking OMG, what will he think if....and realized that NOT ONLY Do MEN NOT CARE, THEY DON'T EVEN NOTICE all of this shit. if any female actually voiced this- 'if i order a burger, will you judge me and think i am too much of a carnivore?" i'll bet my yearly income that the answer would be "huh?" and what dude WOULD think was "omg, what a neurotic..run away, run away!"

women will be so happy when they realize that men truly ARE wired differently.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

I know. I read that article and kind of wanted to smack somebody upside the head. Myself, possibly, until it fell back out.

If there are people out there who decided not to date me because I picked the wrong entree, somehow I feel we weren't meant to be.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

How medieval is it that I read this article and thought "Gosh, we all used to order the steak back when he was paying, because it was cheaper than the lobster, but if we ordered the salad he'd think we thought he couldn't afford the steak?"

But it was in a sarcastic way.

I admit that I sometimes think I shouldn't order a particularly messy food if I want to look my best, say if there's something public planned for after dinner. Of course this meant I once ordered udon instead of sushi, which I have a tendency to drop, and instead managed to slurp udon too quickly and had udon whiplash back into my face, wrap around the earpiece of my glasses like an amorous octopus, and yank them half off my face.

I also sometimes refrain from eating large swaths of bloody meat in front of vegetarians, garlic if anyone else has to smell my breath, fish when I'm with my ex-boss who can't smell fish without ralphing, shrimp with the violently shrimp-allergic chick, et cetera.

And, okay, assuming a restaurant in San Francisco would ever serve me veal, I would probably not order it in most company lest I be judged for eating tortured baby tasty animals. Unfortunately it's a childhood treat to me and I sometimes indulge.

But assuming I was on a date with someone who hadn't already seen me eat, I might attempt to order for non-messy food and non-stomach-upsetting food, but not for opinions. Jeez. (Messy food - with the wheelchair, I am often unable to sit all the way under the table, and so end up wearing food a bit more often than I prefer. Plus my hand shakes sometimes.)

I am now going to be paranoid that *women* care about this shit, and if I ever somehow end up on a date with one, dither over the menu until thinking "screw this, teriyaki steak and udon please".

And one of the more convenient things about polyamory is getting to eat at restaurants that your partner hates.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I ate veal three times a week growing up, because that's what my mother cooked. I eat it pretty rarely now, but dude, I would do eat veal with you!

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Someday we'll have to find an old-school Italian or French place for good veal. I have it sometimes when I'm dining out with my parents, but that's about it.

My mom sometimes made "faux veal" out of turkey cutlets, when veal was too expensive.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Oh veal is so delicious! Mmm. The cuter the animal, the more tasty it is!

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

So sad but so true! (Piggies, lambies, etc).

[fragiletender.livejournal.com]

"And one of the more convenient things about polyamory is getting to eat at restaurants that your partner hates."

Heehee, isn't it though! My girlfriend and I occasionally go out to eat sausage together for lunch, since our male partner won't touch them with a bargepole. Er, having typed this out, I now realise just how rude it sounds!

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

*snicker*

My aforementioned ex-boss and friend who can't stand the smell of fish? Is lesbian. The jokes don't stop.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I never noticed this stuff until I found myself doing interviews with law firms (and once at a firm, interviewing our candidates myself). Those callback interviews always involved at least one expensive restaurant meal, and often several. And after a while, I began to notice that my unstudied carnivorousness always got noticed. Usually favorably, mind you, at least by the men, but they noticed. Then I began to watch for reactions, and came to the conclusion that I was in fact breaking a food code: upper middle class women of a particular social profile were supposed to order salad, or perhaps if they were very daring poached fish. Ordering steak instead was like wearing the red stilettos o'doom (which I also did, but that's another story).

Once I did notice, it began to be kind of fun. The stunned admiration of waiters when you order steak frites and follow it up with a single-malt Scotch is -- oh, all right, it's a petty kind of pleasure. But fun nevertheless.

[saltbox.livejournal.com]

Haha, I interviewed with law firms (even though I mostly planned on working for the government) because I *wanted* as much free delicious steak as I could get! Which I did, until the whole process started taking too much time and I started feeling bad about taking up the slot of genuinely interested folks.

That said, I'm now mostly vegetarian, and it was funny because on my first date with my partner, we bonded over how we ordered exactly the same dish, and it turned out because we were both veggie and that was the only thing at the restaurant we could order. (Speaking of men and food, there are a few men who can be kind of crazy about food. Like my partner, who is constantly trying to stay within "ideal running weight." Whereas I love the fried stuff!)

[delchi.livejournal.com]

The only food choices I make when dealing with eating with another person is how sloppy or diffucult it may be to eat. Right now I pratically live on pho, which is basically a noodle soup. Easy to do with chopsticks, but the noodles can provide slight issues. French onion soup is a disaster waiting to happen. Other than that I could give a sweet damn what a dining partner orders, it's the person - not what they eat I'm interested in. Granted it gives good information on what tehy like for that time you invite them over and you cook for them.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

God, I loathe things like this.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I'm most comfortable in Portland is that this sort of gender nonsense is noticeably less common here than on the East Coast. Visiting my parents in the DC area is always a bit of a shock for both teaotter and I, because people are both significantly more conservative in their dress (something that seems especially true about the DC area) and more strongly and traditionally gendered (which seems more generally common on the East Coast). Which is not to say that such nonsense doesn't happen here, but from what I've heard, it's restricted to a far narrower set of people.

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

Man, this hits closer to home than I would like to admit.

One of the many things which caused discontent with the ex-boyfriend most recent was that he consistently ate teeny tiny portions and was much skinnier than me. I am like 190 lbs, 5'6". Either I ate a teeny tiny portion (and was starving the rest of the evening) or ate what I wanted( and felt like a bad fat person). It was terrible. I know that I shouldn't care. But I do.

I am going to visit the preceeding ex-boyfriend next week. It will be awesome because he can eat like twice as much as I do in one sitting. I can't say exactly why I find this reassuring - but I do.

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

Oh hell, I'm fat, so I feel guilty eating anything that isn't a raw or lightly steamed vegetable. When I go in the opposite direction it's because, well, I'm going to get people shouting nasty things at me while I wait for the bus anyway, so I might as well get some goddamn enjoyment in my life. And yes, I really enjoy some foods. I think if you hooked me up to the right instruments my brain on certain foods would be mighty similar to the other brains on recreational drugs or orgasm.

I'd love to have some idea of what it's like to only have the kinds of concerns these women are having.

I didn't see it when I skimmed through the article, but there's also the aspect of food and eating as a sensuous activity and how that can work in relation to how you're perceived by the person you're eating with. I've certainly had men tell me they appreciated that I was someone who enjoyed their food. Hell, I had a relationship that was probably largely instigated by the way I ate a chocolate.