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Feeding gender stereotypesWith products such as Little Black Dress wine, Skinny Pop popcorn and Hungry-Man microwave

dinners, food is marketed differently to men and women

KELSIE SCHRADER JUN 9, 2016

Photo by Alex Menz

Thick, juicy red steaks so rare they’re nearly raw. Heavy hamburgers teeming with so manypatties even an abnormally large mouth can’t take a bite. Bags of crispy fries, bottles of cold beerand boxes of greasy pizza.

All the good stuff. All men’s food.

Women get a salad with light dressing and maybe a low-fat yogurt on the side. If they’re stillhungry after that less-than-filling fare, they can seductively nibble piece after piece of chocolateuntil they can’t resist flashing their perfectly straight, indulgent smiles at onlookers.

Certain foods are regarded as masculine or feminine, a notion often reaffirmed by media,specifically advertisements. But this gendering of foods, which maintains the cultural ideal of thethin, beautiful woman, can have harmful consequences.

The concept of the ideal woman is just one of the many gender norms prescribed by society, andthis supposed appropriate role is reinforced and perpetuated from a young age. “The process ofgender norms being formed starts very early on, even before the birth of a child,” says SrirupaPrasad, an assistant professor in the departments of Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociologyat MU. “It’s easy to figure out the gender of a child, and it’s common to have color themes at babyshowers. As soon as a child is born, the process further intensifies.”

Media are partly at fault for bolstering these norms. Advertisements send a myriad of messagesabout how women and men should act, “telling us what it means to be a girl and what it means tobe a boy,” says Cynthia Frisby, a professor of Strategic Communication at MU’s School of

PHOTO BY ALEX MENZ

Journalism.

For women, this often means being pretty and looking fit. Gender norms dictate that to be awoman in today’s society is to have white teeth, clear skin, silky hair, long legs and a flat stomach,Frisby says.

Thousands of advertisements that feature this quintessential woman are displayed on screensand magazine pages daily. With the average American seeing 3,000 ads each day, their effect issubliminal, according to Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women. Adshave not only helped create the well-formed gender norm of women as healthy, fit and perfectindividuals but also continue to support this stereotype.

Men, too, are often categorized as being either overweight, lazy,beer-drinking football lovers orthe opposite: ridiculously fit individuals who only leave the gym for the few hours it takes to starin a Calvin Klein ad.

Not surprisingly, advertisers capitalize on these society-boosted ideals in their daily productpromotions and frame them specifically for a certain audience.

Food gendering naturally follows. “We are seeing how things as private and personal as meals,food and diet are becoming very explicitly gendered and publicly debated,” Prasad says. What wechoose to eat is a seemingly public spectacle.

Men, for the most part, get the beefy, hearty, unhealthy foods. The more steaks, nachos, beersand chips they consume in one sitting, the more macho they seem. Any meat is for men, saysMarilyn Morgan, director of the history and archives program at the University of MassachusettsBoston and a summer professor of Gender, Food and Culture in American History for theHarvard Summer School. Junk food is usually marketed toward men in commercials, she says.

Fast-food commercials are guilty of following the meat-is-for-men rule. Taco Bell’s “Girlfriend”ad from 2014 followed a man as he reluctantly shared his chicken wings, chili cheese fries andloaded nachos with his girlfriend.

With women, however, the stereotype of the perfect body dictates another cultural discourse onfood. This leads to strongly gendered advertisements, especially with items considered to behealthy eats, such as fruits, vegetables and yogurt.

“Advertisers have their design targets, and that

includes gender.” –Paul Bolls, associate director ofthe Center for Communication Research, professorat Texas Tech UniversityYoplait and Lean Cuisine are both guilty of continuing food gendering. One of the yogurt’s 2015ads stars a thin woman in a pink dress dancing around with her reduced-sugar, strawberryyogurt. She smiles widely when she takes a bite in her all-pink house. The frozen meal companyhas one from the year prior that features a woman ditching her boring, low-protein diet to enjoy ahealthy, microwaved meal while bouncing on her exercise ball — clearly a normal way to eat.

“Advertisers have their design targets, and that includes gender,” says Paul Bolls, the associatedirector of the Center for Communication Research and a professor at Texas Tech University,who studies the neuropsychological effects of media on consumers. “On a practical level, thatinfluences how they develop advertising appeals related to foods.”

Although some of this food gendering is subtle, much of the advertising people are exposed to isnot so covert. Dr. Pepper, for example, makes no attempt to hide the explicit gendering of Dr.Pepper TEN. The commercials proudly state, “It’s not for women!”

When it comes to salads, it’s clear who the intended consumers are, as well. The trend hasn’tgone unnoticed. Originally inspired by a story on TheHairpin.com, a popular Tumblr blog called“Women Laughing Alone with Salad” features a large collection of stock photos, magazine coversand depictions of women who seem to be overjoyed by the mere fact that they are holding a bowlof mixed greens.

Campbell’s soups are also heavily gendered, Morgan says. When Campbell’s Chunky soups firstcame out, they were directly targeted at men, and regular and low-fat soups were for women.Even now, Campbell’s website instructs readers to “man up” with the company’s many varietiesof Chunky soups, perfect for “NFL-sized appetites” listed below the slogan on the page.

Regardless of the food, female models in ads are usually classically beautiful. Women areexpected to look magnificent, but society doesn’t place men under the same amount of scrutiny astheir female counterparts; it’s there, but it’s not equal whatsoever. Look at the phenomenon thatis the dad bod.

“If you think about the whole debate around what food we should be having, it’s not so muchnutrition or wholesomeness that you should have,” Prasad says. “Quality is definitely a keyconcern, but as far as women are concerned, a lean body is definitely one of the most dominant

issues.”

The effects of this appearance-related stress are no secret.Eating disorders are far too common among young girlswho are repeatedly told they are only valuable if they are asbeautiful as the celebrities and models on TV and inmagazines.

Anorexia is the third most common chronic illness amongadolescents, according to the National Association ofAnorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD).Anywhere from 0.5 to 3.7 percent of women, or about 4 inevery 100, suffer from anorexia nervosa in their lifetimes.This illness is even more prominent among individualsbetween ages 12 and 25. Nearly 70 percent of girls in fifthto 12th grades reported that magazine photos influencedtheir ideal body sizes, according to ANAD. That’sequivalent to 21 girls in a 30-girl classroom.

Men are affected by anorexia nervosa, too. Men are 10 to15 of every 100 anorexia cases, according to a 1997 articlein the American Journal of Psychiatry, as reported by ANAD. This lower rate of men withanorexia compared to women suggests that women face more pronounced body image issues.Furthermore, the National Eating Disorder Association’s website cites a 2011 study’s statistic thatsays 20 million women and 10 million men will suffer from a clinically significant eating disorderin their lifetime.

"It's not what you eat; it's who you are." –SrirupaPrasad, assistant professor at MUThe implications extend beyond eating disorders. The constant portrayal of women eating light,healthy meals while men eat large, filling ones contributes to the antiquated yet prevailingperformance of gender roles, Morgan says.

“There was this big push in the early 1900s, late 1800s especially, that women were supposed toeat daintily,” she says. This trend contributed to the notion that women didn’t really need to eatas much because they didn’t do as much work as men. Their jobs were to cook and clean — aperception that still lingers today.

Men get hearty burgers and fries, whilewomen are served dainty strips of fruits andveggies. The stereotypes are reaffirmed bymedia representations.

PHOTO BY ALEX MENZ

A DV E RT I S E M E NT

TAGS FOOD GENDERING FOOD GENDER GENDER ROLES SEXISM STEREOTYPESANOREXIA NERVOSA TACO BELL BURGER KING ADVERTISEMENT GENDER IN ADVERTISEMENTTUMBLR THEHAIRPIN WOMEN LAUGHING ALONE WITH SALAD DR. PEPPER JEAN KILBOURNEKILLING US SOFTLY MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS MEDIA SRIRUPA PRASAD CYNTHIA FRISBY

This food gendering not only hurts those individuals who feel pressured to look like the women inthe advertisements, but it also harms women as a whole who continue to be seen as less thanmen.

“You are a particular person by what you eat, by the way you eat it, the amount you eat,” Prasadsays. “Therein lies the power of these cultural messages. It’s not what you eat; it’s who you are.”

Food Gendering