Social Constructions of Masculinity and Meat Consumption

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Introduction

The food industry is certainly not exempt from gearing their products specifically towards men or women. The “Hungry-Man” frozen dinner line, which embraces large portion sizes using the slogan “Eat Like a Man,” is a prime example of male-oriented marketing. One Facebook post depicts a smiling man looking at his phone, with a “Hungry-Man” dinner to his right accompanied by the caption, “Why Guys Love Our Food #28: Fajita Chicken would never go through your texts. Meat can’t read”[1] (“Hungry-Man,” 2016). There is a substantial amount of literature which highlights the link between meat consumption and masculinity particularly in Western societies, otherwise known as the meat-as masculinity discourse (see: Mycek[1], 2015; Nath[2], 2010; Rogers[3], 2008; Rothgerber[4], 2012; Sobal[5], 2015; Sumpter[6], 2015). Sumpter[6](2015) remarks how gender becomes salient when it comes to the consumption of meat, wherein “eating meat allows one to be seen as masculine, and the avoidance of meat permits one to be viewed as feminine” (p. 104). Thus, existing examinations of the masculinization of meat have demonstrated just how pervasive this association has become within Western socio-cultural understandings of gender. Beyond this, the significance of meat within the realm of masculinity provides insight as to how these socially constructed gendered norms and expectations can be unnecessarily constraining for the diets and well-being of men.

“Double-bind of Masculinity”

Norman’s[7] (2011) poststructural framework highlights the “double-bind of masculinity.” In brief, the double-bind of masculinity posits a contradiction in which men are expected to both transform their bodies into culturally specific representations of ‘nice,’ fit physiques while remaining aloof about their appearance at the same time (Norman[7], 2011). Particularly, Norman’s[7] (2011) research focuses on how young men “actively negotiate the double-bind of masculinity” (p. 423) by employing culturally significant discourses. These discourses of masculinity are also referred to as “practices of disembodiment” (p. 436), through which men articulate concerns for their bodies while at the same time ensuring that they retain a disinterested relationship to their masculine body (Norman[7], 2011). In other words, masculinity can be conceptualized not as inherent or innate, but as constructed through engagement with available discourses and resources.

Mainstream Media, Masculinity and Meat

Rogers[3] (2008) identifies how television advertisements from brands such as Burger King, Hummer, and Quiznos, perpetually link meat, specifically beef, directly to masculinity and manliness. He found that such advertisements are often framed to be in opposition to feminized “environmental and animal rights movements” (p. 282) which tend to emphasize less meat-centred diets (Rogers[3], 2008). This is significant in that within media messages, it becomes apparent how norms regarding what constitutes ‘appropriate’ diet choices are often premised upon socially constructed notions of gender.

Furthermore, as Norman[7] (2011) contends, consumer culture can offer a platform for discursive resources to emerge; men may draw on symbols of masculinity presented through media depictions in order to align themselves as “males of particular types” (p. 433). As such, the media can be seen as a prominent structural resource in which the linkage between meat and masculinity is produced and reproduced. Engaging in practices of consumerism are merely one form through which men have been found to reshape their bodies in order to maintain the status-quo of masculinity, alongside diet and exercise, and plastic surgery (Norman[7], 2011). These cultural standards and expectations of masculinity include having a body consistent with the “lean, muscular [and] sculpted” (p. 431) representations of men presented throughout the dominant media and reinforced through everyday social interactions (Mycek[1], 2015; Norman[7], 2011). At the same time, in adhering to the double-bind of masculinity, research has shown how men work to distance themselves “from their bodies as sites of commodification, beautification, and transformation,” by attaining “social, as opposed to medical, fitness” (Norman[7], 2011, p. 431). Consequently, the link between masculinity and meat in advertisements—often in stark opposition to ‘women’s’ food, vegetables, and tofu—can be reflexive of this double-bind of masculinity (Norman[7], 2011; Rogers[3], 2008). Men are being exposed to particular media messages regarding what constitutes ‘real’ manhood, which in food advertisements is often defined “by the rejection of small portions, bourgeois aesthetics, quiche, and tofu, as well as by eating meat and performing acts of physical strength” (Rogers[3], 2008, p. 295).

Health, Masculinity and Meat

Through Norman’s[7] (2011) presentation of the double-bind of masculinity, it becomes apparent how the strong association between masculinity and meat consumption, and especially red meat, may not bode well to the healthy eating practices generally required to achieve the ideal masculine body. In comparison to females, men have been generally found to be more susceptible to obesity, hypertension, and cancer, as well as to engage in less health-promoting behaviours (Newcombe, McCarthy, Cronin and McCarthy[8], 2012). In consideration of this, there are a number of documented environmental and health problems brought on by meat production and consumption, including significant global warming and the increase of food-borne infection (Rothgerber[4], 2012). Concurrently, research on the meat-as-masculinity discourse alongside the negative personal health consequences a meat-dominant diet may produce indicates how “masculinity, in many cases, can be harmful to one’s health” (Rothgerber[4], 2012, p. 9). The double-bind of masculinity, therefore, emerges in that while men are expected remain ‘masculine’ by having a healthy and fit body, they must also not actively engaged in ‘feminine’ means of achieving this body. Explicitly, Sobal[5] (2005) offers that meat is used as a resource to create a clear binary, or “culinary counterpoint” (p. 140) between genders: eating meat is considered masculine and not eating meat is considered feminine. Premised upon Norman’s[7] (2011) presentation of masculinity, the link between manliness and the consumption of meat becomes crucial when considering more largely how social constructions of gender may greatly affect food choices and as a result, health and well-being.

Hegemonic Masculinity and Meat

According to many scholars, however, meat does not just function to retain boundaries of appropriate constructions of masculinity, but to perpetuate hegemonic masculinity (Mycek[1], 2015; Nath[2], 2010; Rogers[3], 2008; Rothgerber[4], 2012; Sobal[5], 2005; Sumpter[6], 2015). Hegemonic masculinity is to be most fundamentally understood as “a narrow version of the idealized man, including qualities such as authority, rationality, [and] physical strength” (Sumpter[6], 2015, p. 105). Newcombe et al.[8] (2012) situate hegemonic masculinity as the ‘masculine ideal,’ which tends to subordinate femininity and other forms of masculinity. Additionally, Newcombe et al.[8] (2012) expand upon this definition by adding that part of hegemonic masculinity includes being “positioned by society as strong and resistant to disease while a concern for health is typically looked upon as feminine behaviour” (p. 392). Although Norman[7] (2011) does not employ the term hegemonic to position masculinity in his research, there are allusions that the discourses of normalcy, healthy active living, heterosexuality and individualism all employed by the young men in his research, at least, fall within the range of maintaining a masculinity which is aligned as ideal and dominant. In particular, Norman[7] (2011) cites Connell (2005) who explains how sports, for example, can be socially positioned as a cultural site “for the production and reproduction of hegemonic masculinity” (p. 445).

As Rogers[3] (2008) has found, the link between meat consumption and masculinity in advertisements is not merely coded as a masculine activity, but as a “means of restoring hegemonic masculinity in the face of threats to its continued dominance” (p. 282). He also identifies how advertisements which symbolically link meat to masculinity are consistent with privileging men over women and in supporting “the abuse of animals and the degradation of ecosystems” (Rogers[3], 2008, p. 297). Therefore, the meat-as-masculinity discourse, particularly as presented in the media, can be seen as further perpetuating a socially constructed masculinity which often goes unchallenged by others and encourages an “authorized, aggressive, and unemotional man” (Sumpter[6], 2015). Meat may more broadly serve as a cultural symbol of hegemonic masculinity, which is seen to be largely premised on a disregard and detachment from the unethical and unsustainable status now often associated with meat. Similarly, in Norman’s[7] (2011) presentation of the double-bind of masculinity, it becomes apparent how the young men positioned themselves within the realm of masculinity through “confidence [and] assertiveness,” (p. 440) but also through publicly displaying disinterest and distance to their bodies. It is not surprising then, that similarly to how these young men utilize particular discourses to maintain culturally appropriate forms of masculinity which often align with hegemonic values (e.g., dominance), male-oriented advertisements—whether food-related or not—draw upon meat as a resource to reinforce ideals and norms of manliness.

External Articles

How Years of Macho Food Marketing Is Killing Men

Food Advertising Is Still Feeding Gender Stereotypes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Mycek, M. K. (2015). Meatless Meals and Masculinity: An Examination of Men's Use of Rationality and Scientific Research to Explain Their Plant-based Diets. NCSU Libraries, 1-44.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Nath, J. (2011). Gendered fare? A qualitative investigation of alternative food and masculinities. Journal of Sociology, 47(3), 261-278.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Rogers, R. A. (2008). Beasts, Burgers, and Hummers: Meat and the Crisis of Masculinity in Contemporary Television Advertisements. Environmental Communication, 2(3), 281-301.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Rothgerber, H. (2013). Real Men Don’t Eat (Vegetable) Quiche: Masculinity and the Justification of Meat Consumption. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 14(4), 363.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Sobal, J. (2005). Men, Meat, and Marriage: Models of Masculinity. Food and Foodways, 13(1-2), 135-158.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Sumpter, K. C. (2015). Masculinity and Meat Consumption: An Analysis Through the Theoretical Lens of Hegemonic Masculinity and Alternative Masculinity Theories. Sociology Compass, 9(2), 104-114.
  7. ↑ 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 7.10 7.11 7.12 7.13 Norman, M. E. (2011). Embodying the Double-bind of Masculinity: Young Men and Discourses of Normalcy, Health, Heterosexuality, and Individualism. Men and Masculinities, 14(4), 430-449.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Newcombe, M. A., McCarthy, M. B., Cronin, J. M., & McCarthy, S. N. (2012). “Eat like a man”. A social constructionist analysis of the role of food in men’s lives. Appetite, 59(2), 391-398.
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