You Are What You (M)eat: Explorations of Meat- eating, Masculinity and Masquerade
2014; Bridgewater State University; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1539-8706
Autores Tópico(s)Media, Gender, and Advertising
ResumoIntroduction Much emphasis has been placed on the symbolic significance of what we consume. 'Food is a system of communication, a collection of images, and a cultural set of conventions for usages, situations and behavior' (Willard, 2002:105). According to Deborah Lupton, the link between food, identity and selfhood is vital as: '[f]ood structures what counts as a person in our culture' (in Blichfeldt et al., 2012:67). As this suggests, an individual's consumption directly affects how they are perceived. Elspeth Probyn (2000:11) asks insightful questions regarding the linkages between consumption and identity, which I ask in relation to Man V. Food: 'in eating, do we confirm our identities, or are our identities reforged, and refracted by what and how we eat?' Man V. Food promotes meat, extending the significance of consumption to the construction and confirmation of masculine identity. The consumption of meat entails the power and domination of the nonhuman animal. Over the centuries, the image of man and meat has prevailed through the paradigm of 'man as hunter'. Philosopher Michael Allen-Fox (1999:25) notes that '[t]his and related forms of self-definition not only identified the entire species with the male half, but also elevated the concept of humans as aggressive, warlike, and predatory'. Thus, meat-eating can be seen to feed into the patriarchal structure of human-male supremacy, celebrating a primitive masculinity and normalising aggressive characteristics by tying them to male, gendered ('natural'), behaviours. 'Eating meat is an activity loaded in symbolism' (Birke, 1994:21), which involves the establishment of a power structure with human-(male)-animals as dominant, nonhuman(female/feminised)-animals as subordinate. Rhetoric saturated with connotations of the 'natural' and 'normal', deems meat-eating socially acceptable, thus evading critique, and avoiding moral and ethical arguments contesting it. Carol Adams' pioneering work in the field of critical feminist-vegetarian/vegan studies has highlighted the semiotics of meat-eating, demonstrating meat's affiliations with patriarchy, virility and power (2010a, 2010b), and by extension, the cultural connotations of meat are bequeathed upon the devourer of flesh. This article explores the intersections of masculinity and meat, and the treatment of nonhumans and of women. It undertakes this analysis whilst exploring how Man V. Food can be understood as post-feminist, and as a response to notions of masculinity in crisis. Here, crisis is understood as a response to civil rights, gay rights, women's rights and anti-war movements in the 60s and 70s, which can all be seen to challenge hegemonic masculinity through destabilising once unquestioned dominance (Rogers, 2009:297). The emphasis on meat as an important element of the human-male diet highlights the conflation of dominance, meat, masculinity and Western culture: 'Meat is not just central to contemporary Western meals, it is privileged and celebrated as the essence of a meal' (Sobal, 2006:142). This focus on meat resonates with established binary oppositions: man/woman, meat/vegetable, West/East. Therefore, to eat meat is also to consume, and thus embody, dominance. Meat is thereby linked to power, and 'flesh [consequently] provides perhaps the ultimate authentication of human superiority over the rest of nature' (Fiddes in Fox, 1999:26). Meat, masculinity and the West are thus identified with power: consuming meat, becomes linked to becoming masculine, and to embodying power, while alternative dietary practices are marginalised, mocked and maligned. Meat serves as a solution to a perceived masculine crisis (Rogers, 2009), enabling a reversion to more primitive masculine performances through conceptualisations of 'man as hunter'. Meat production and consumption are implicated in large scale damage to the environment, with deforestation and the destruction of nonhuman animal's natural habitats continually increasing, for the purpose of producing grain to feed livestock (Goodland, 1997). …
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