Girl, If You Want a Burger, Eat a Burger!

Girl, If You Want a Burger, Eat a Burger!

As I strolled through McElroy Dining hall I smelled the aroma of a juicy hamburger and crispy onion rings. I walked past the tables and observed the different people and foods they were eating.  I passed a group of girls who were all eating salad, while on the other side of the table the guys scarfed down burgers, pizza, and onion rings.  I continued strolling, gazing at the tables trying not to be creepy.   I noticed the next table over, there was a group of students, half boys half girls. Again, the girls were eating salad and grilled chicken, while the guys were downing greasy meals.  But, something caught my eye.  There was one girl in the group who was eating a burger.  In the large group of girls and guys, she was the one female who was eating something that all her other girl friends were not eating.  We are born with the notion that guys are supposed to be “meat-eaters” and females should eat vegetables and salad.  We are born with this notion because society has said men are supposed to be stronger and more powerful than women.  This leaves me wondering what do gendered attitudes about veganism show us about gender inequality and the state of feminism?

Before we get into the stereotypes that vegans, specifically males, face on an everyday basis we must delve deeper into why stereotypes are relevant in society, and why do people stereotype?  A stereotype “is a cognitive snap judgment based on an immediately visible characteristic such as gender, race, or age”(AAUW). We cannot control the fact that we stereotype as it is something our brain does subconsciously. However, what we can help is how we choose to pursue the stereotype and if we let the stereotypes affect our actions.  When stereotypes do affect our actions this can result in something called “stereotype threat.” A renowned psychologist Shaun Harper describes stereotype threat as “the social-psychological threat that arises when one is in a situation or doing something for which a negative stereotype about one’s group applies. This predicament threatens one with being negatively stereotyped, with being judged or treated stereotypically, or with the prospect of conforming to the stereotype” (Harper, Shaun). In order to avoid the stereotype threat, many will act in a way that goes against that specific group stereotype in order to prove that they do not conform to that societal perspective.  Essentially, this means that when someone is stereotyped a certain way based on gender, race, sexuality, etc., they tend to act the opposite of that stereotype.  For example, if a male decides to live a vegan lifestyle, he may involve himself in other masculine activities in order to prove that he is indeed “manly”.  For example, he may participate in boxing, or other sports that society views as masculine.

Men have been seen as superior to women for centuries.  They are seen as the dominant gender due to their strength and physical abilities.  There are a million stereotypes associated with gender: men are stronger and more intelligent than women, they are “meat-eaters”, they have to be masculine, among others.  If a man decides to live a vegan lifestyle, he is putting himself in a place where he could get criticized by society due to the pre-conceived notion that being vegan means being feminine. A dietitian, Andy De Santis, explores why being vegan is less appealing to men and he says, “Beer, meat, and sports are examples of perennial and deep-seated icons of male masculinity in modern culture.  I believed this point is hard to refute, and it is one that is hammered home by media and industry from a young age” (Santis, Andy).  Because we grow up with this idea of what a girl should look like and what a guy should look like, society criticizes male vegans because they do not conform to the stereotype that all men need to protrude a sense of masculinity.  It is this weird idea that eating meat means you are masculine and therefore are not seen as “above” or stronger than a woman. However, when females are vegan they do not get any scrutiny for it because they are supposed to be viewed as inferior to males, thus living a vegan lifestyle is no big deal.

Viewing males as dominant to females dates back to hundreds of years ago.  The perspective that many has is meat is a product of hunting, which falls into the male domain due to cultural and historical facts that hunting has always been done by men due to their physical abilities and strength. In addition, physical strength requires an abundance of nutrition and meat is often seen as the food with the most protein allowing you to become stronger. A researcher, Paul Rozin, observes that “men and women ‘do gender’ by consuming gender-appropriate foods. Meat, and especially red meat, is an archetypical masculine food. Men often emphasize meat, and women often minimize meat, in displaying gender as individuals” (Rozin, Paul). This is a gender stereotype that society has.  Women eat fruits and vegetables while the man orders a fat steak.  But what if I want to eat a big steak, a hamburger, some bacon, why would that be viewed in a negative light?  It would be viewed negatively because that is not what society is used to.  Society is used to women eating things that show they are not as strong as a man; it is the issue of feminism.

We see gendering within the vegan culture through advertising and marketing all the time which is how stereotypes within society begin to form. Often we see men advertising steak restaurants while women advertise the new salad shop that is opening around the corner. A superb example of this is Arby’s fast food.  Their slogan is, “Arby’s we have the meat.”  But it is not the slogan that stands out, but instead, it is the man’s excessively deep voice articulating this advertisement.  Arby’s would never have me, a female, advertising their company, and better yet, they would not have a man with a high-pitch voice say “we have the meats” either.  They want their audience to be “strong” men, thus they have a very masculine sounding man saying the slogan. In addition, magazines often minimize men in the vegan and health sector as many marketers feel that women should take on that role.  In a Men’s Health magazine published in 2000, this was stated, “Vegetables are for girls…if your instincts tell you a vegetarian diet isn’t manly, you’re right” ( Black, Megan). How is this okay? If we teach our kids from a young age this idea that men are generalized into this category of only eating meat, they will grow up feeling this way and nothing will change.   This goes back to the “stereotype threat” that I talked about.  If men grow up believing that it is not okay for them to be vegan, then they will conceal their true identity much of there lives and it could be detrimental to them mentally.

My best friend, Alexa, is a vegan. She has not consumed an animal product for over six years and she can’t remember a time where she ate meat.  The reason for this change of diet at the mere age of twelve was due to the scarring video Food Inc. Food Inc. is a film that displays the food industry in a way in which consumers do not see.  It shows the environmental harm and abuse towards animals, the unhealthy ingredients that go into the food, and it examines important policy in regards to farming and food.  When I asked her if she had ever felt pressure from society because of her diet she said no.  Specifically, when I asked her to talk about her high-school years and how her veganism affected her friendships and what people thought of her she said, “I never felt pressure from any girls at school because most of them were eating salads for lunch anyway” (Alexa Interview). I interviewed Alexa’s boyfriend next because after meeting their sophomore year he became vegan as well!  When I asked him why he felt a sudden want to change his diet he said, “I’ve always wanted to be vegan, but I don’t think I thought I had the means to fully do it until I met Alexa. I was nervous to tell my parents and nervous to face society because ever since I was little I knew it was against the norm for a man to be vegan” (Andrew Interview) When I later asked Andrew how his friends acted towards him after coming out as a vegan he said, “I knew that my friends were going to give me shit for it, and I was right, they would make comments every day about it.  It hurt, I knew they were going to joke around with it but to the extent they did was horrible. I would stop eating lunch with them and I would stop going out to dinner with them” (Andrew Interview) He later explained that although his friends would give him a hard time about it, he felt more relieved because he finally could stand up for animal rights and cruelty.  This is a realistic example of how differently society views a female and male in regards to veganism and diet.

Every day women fight for equal rights. Whether we fight for equal pay, equal treatment, or equal respect, it is crucial that our society starts to make a change.  As an 18-year old girl trying to figure out my life, I see day to day how women are treated differently than men in society and instead of being looked at as strong and powerful we are looked at as weak and incapable.  A great example is this: this weekend I was hanging out with a group of people, and this guy who I had never met before turns to me and says, “hey you little slut.”  I was in utter shock when I heard these words come out of his mouth.  Yes, he was intoxicated, and yes he probably did not mean it, but he still said it. Men need to be taught at a young age that women CAN be just as powerful and strong, and they should not feel threatened by it.  That boy had NO idea who I was, we had just met, and his first instinct was to call me a slut?  This shows he did not have any respect for me as a female.  This shows he felt like his “power” was being threatened so in order to make himself feel like the bigger person he decided to call me a name that he knew would hurt me, and it did.  I left the room in tears.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Alexa Interview. 19 April 2018

Andrew Interview. 19 April 2018

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Harper, Shaun R. “Black Male College Achievers and Resistant Responses to Racist Stereotypes at Predominantly White Colleges and Universities.” Harvard Educational Review, vol. 85, no. 4, 2015, pp. 646–674., doi:10.17763/0017-8055.85.4.646.

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Rozin, Paul, et al. “Is Meat Male? A Quantitative Multimethod Framework to Establish Metaphoric Relationships.” Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 39, no. 3, Jan. 2012, pp.629–643

“Social Pressure ‘Hardest Part’ of Veganism.” Vegan Trade Journal, 20 July 2017, http://www.vegantradejournal.com/social-pressure-hardest-part-veganism/.

Thomas, Margaret A. “Are Vegans the Same as Vegetarians? The Effect of Diet on Perceptions of Masculinity.” Appetite, vol. 97, 2016, pp. 79–86

Thompson, Paul B. From Field to Fork:Food Ethics for Everyone. Oxford UP, 2015. Print.

“Vegan Demographics 2017 – USA, and the World.” Vegan Bits, 23 May 2017,veganbits.com/vegan-demographics-2017/.

“Why Stereotypes Are Bad and What You Can Do About Them.” AAUW: Empowering Women Since 1881, http://www.aauw.org/2014/08/13/why-stereotypes-are-bad/.

Wright, Laura. The Vegan Studies Project : Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror. Athens: U of Georgia, 2015. Print