Rachel
Jen
Eating and Food Policing in Advertizing
Yanno whats been bugging me for the longest time now? How women are allowed to eat on tv commercials. To wit, TEENY TINY BITES. BITES SO TINY AS TO PRACTICALLY BE MUNCHING ON AIR. WITH A GODDAMN HAPPY SMILE ON THE FACE.
Who eats this way? Seriously?
I don’t ever see a man eating food this way on tv. No; pizza, burgers, whatever–its being shoved into a wide open, anticipating maw. I guess such rapacious enjoyment of food is too UNSEEMLY for women.
Has anyone else noticed this?
Fat Sisters 
bigliberty 8:16 pm on April 19, 2011 Permalink |
Yes. This. Completely agreed. It annoys the hell out of me.
The ads where I see women taking a big bite? Sexualized with food as a poor proxy for a penis.
So if we’re not blowing a dude, we better not be eating, either.
Rachel 8:39 pm on April 19, 2011 Permalink |
OMG YES. Yanno whats really sad, I never really noticed that I had noticed that until you mentioned it just now, and its totally TRUE. Goes to show just how normalized objectification is.
Kathy 8:21 pm on April 19, 2011 Permalink |
I know! Who bites a teeny edge off the corner of a Dove chocolate like that?! I put the whole thing in my mouth and suck it! *nods*
Rachel 8:40 pm on April 19, 2011 Permalink |
I eat TWO at once!
vesta44 11:17 pm on April 19, 2011 Permalink |
Ah, I’ve figured it out!!! Those women who take those teeny tiny bites? They’ve had WLS to get thin and can only take teeny tiny bites of anything, otherwise they won’t be able to keep it down. And the ones who are taking the big bites, well, they’re sluts, of course (food sluts or sluts for sex, same difference).
The “tiny bites” registered with me because I’ve had WLS (it failed, of course, and I’m fatter than ever) and tiny bites is all I could take of anything I ate and they had to be chewed to mush in order to keep them down (and even though the stomach-stapling has come partially undone, for some foods I still have to take small bites and chew it very, very well to keep it down, and this is 12 years after the stapling came undone).
Elizabeth 1:35 am on April 20, 2011 Permalink |
I tend to nibble on things, but when I do it around people, they laugh it me (often calling me “Squirrel”), so I can attest it’s definitely not the usual way people eat.
But I think the ads with small bites are aimed at women (see dainty and lady-like you’ll be if you eat our product! You won’t be a glutton and you DEFINITELY won’t get fat!), whereas the ads with women eating phallic food–as Big Liberty so aptly mentions–are aimed at men, associating the food with sex in the time-honored advertising strategy (I’m thinking particularly of the horrible Paris Hilton hamburger/car wash ads).
Though it’s strange really, if you’re trying to get the average woman-objectifying straight dude to buy, say, a hamburger, isn’t showing that hamburger as a stand-in for the phallus kind of counter intuitive? Since the point is for him to eat it, right?
Kirsten 7:20 am on April 20, 2011 Permalink |
Oh but don’t you know? Only big fat disgusting smelly gross women take normal sized bites! Tiny thin pretty petite sexysexysexy girls take little tiny tiny bites. And then chew it for 42 hours like the chic in the granola bar commercial. Seriously, W. T. F. I mean, yes, you should chew your food well. You should. It’s how it was meant to be done. But I don’t think that it should take you the entire segment of a commercial to chew up what would be probably about 3 of those “whole grains” (yeah right, processed to within an inch of its life).
I refuse to watch commercials like that. Refuse. And I won’t buy the products. it’s going to get to the point that I’m not going to be able to buy anything eventually……
Mrs. Sprat 7:37 am on April 20, 2011 Permalink |
I’ve noticed this too. A lot of women on sitcoms pick up forks and then put them down again, just right so the don’t eat it at all. Now I’m sure some of this is a money thing, the more times they have to do the scene, they have to keep replacing the food if there is a huge bitemark, but I’m sure some of it is about looking lady-like. One actress who doesn’t do that is Sarah Jessica Parker. Say what you will about Sex and the City, but she eats a burger with gooey cheese coming out everywhere, takes HUGE bites of apples and really, truly eats and enjoys her food on the show. It’s a nice change.
notblueatall 2:43 pm on April 20, 2011 Permalink |
Yes! It’s so annoying. Either they over-sexualize food (it’s never sexy to me anyway) or they perpetuate the women-shouldn’t-eat thing. UGH!
Lisa 3:19 pm on April 20, 2011 Permalink |
I remember watching this advert for, I think, one of those breakfast drinks, aimed at both men and women. The men in the ads were shown drinking the stuff and working out whilst the women just worked out. So… women don’t eat now? Cause that’s like really healthy you know. Its ridiculous and makes me so angry.