Medical Herstory · Follow
6 min read · Mar 6, 2024
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“This is my meal, I call this girl dinner,” a voice says over small plates and miniscule portions of miscellaneous snacks, or even just a beverage such as an iced coffee, energy drink, or ice water. Videos like this have infiltrated what feels like every corner of the internet. Early Spring 2023, the ‘Girl Dinner’ trend took off on TikTok. Plates of raw vegetables, handfuls of trail mix, and bread with butter were posted with the sound, initially with the intention of communicating the universal exhaustion that comes with preparing meals every day. Girl Dinner videos generated more than a billion views and multiple filters and promptly spread to other social media platforms, all while subconsciously promoting dangerous eating habits and disordered eating.
Its intended purpose was to shine light on the time and energy it takes to purchase ingredients and prepare recipes… Why not organize meals the way one grabs a snack? Quick, easy, convenient, right? As the New York Times puts it, “women have long been programmed to see food as the enemy, but the girl dinner trend is about embracing the simple joy of snacks as meals” (Roy, 2023). Even some nutritionists have endorsed it, explaining that in their eyes, “it’s a pleasant departure from diet culture, and from all these rigid expectations of what food should be” (Roy 2023). In a way, it has created a space for women to relate to one another about the unspoken reality of needing to prepare ‘proper’ meals. What’s not to like?
The ‘Girl Dinner’ trend targets those who identify as women and girls by capitalizing on the gendered burdens placed upon them in patriarchal societies. The stereotype that ‘women belong in the kitchen,’ cooking and preparing meals each day, has unfortunately not been entirely debunked. The common desire to eat intuitively, satisfy cravings, leave the aesthetic behind, and do so on a less rigid schedule are all valid wishes that are not conducive to this societal expectation. The trend “represents a conscious choice to opt out of the tyranny of cooking and doing the dishes,” and eliminates any cooking that usually needs to be done (Roy, 2023). However, just like most trends, it was quickly commandeered by diet culture and suddenly, baguette with cheese, fruits and nuts, and smorgasbords of you name it turned into ice cubes, glasses of wine, and even naps in place of meals.
While content alike is present on most social media platforms, the trend seemed to take over the feeds of TikTok users susceptible to the misinformation. TikTok’s algorithm works in a way that targets their most vulnerable populations as often as every 27 seconds (Yu, 2022). While TikTok responded to this report, sharing that content promoting disordered eating violates the app’s community guidelines and is removed once identified, it has become clear that trends such as this one, ‘what I eat in a day,’ and the hot girl walk obsession mask diet culture, promote disordered eating habits, and instill pressures on those being served the content to treat their bodies in the same manner as they are being conditioned to. Viewers are left feeling as though they are never good enough despite following trend after trend under the impression they will inherently ‘improve’ the way they feel about themselves. Each one feels like the same thing but a different shape: promotes the same dangerous tactics instead of encouraging people to do what is right for them. As we addressed in one of our previous articles, the app works with the goal of getting its’ consumers addicted and tends to “…lead young viewers down dangerous rabbit holes, in particular toward content that promotes…self-harm” (Smith, 2021). In fact, the app continuously serves this potentially detrimental content to some of the most vulnerable users, a practice known as microtargeting (Smith, 2021).
As a young individual who has fallen victim to the unavoidable diet culture in today’s society, I will share that growing up with social media, both readily accessible and not nearly as monitored as it should’ve been, has shaped the way I have learned to view, speak about, move, and fuel my body. Many years of recovery later, I still find myself getting micro-targeted by content such as this, and the recent rise in individuals struggling with disordered eating as well as body image is not a coincidence. Years of learning body neutrality and how to stop moralizing food among many other things are challenged each time I encounter trends alike, often making me second guess the progress I have made while tempting me to revert back to old mindsets and behaviors. Despite outrageous comments on girl dinner TikToks, including “I like to call this what put me in intensive outpatient” and “more like ana dinner,” alluding to what some users perceive to be representative of what someone with anorexia would eat, the videos persist. Trends such as this one truly do strengthen the pressures that women feel regarding their physical appearance, and as a result, increase the burden placed on the medical system. Celebrating the restriction and deprivation of others through likes, comments, and shares places immense pressure on women to do what far too many observe to be worthy of celebrating: restricting and depriving themselves of the fuel they need to function. If the medical system were equipped to adequately correct these harmful habits, rather than perpetuate them, perhaps the eating disorder epidemic would be less abundant. However, thin individuals are consistently treated with more respect, listened to, and taken seriously in the healthcare setting, while those who are in larger bodies and experiencing similar conditions are dismissed and being told to lose weight (Phelan et. al, 2015). The pervasive weight bias among health professionals fails patient after patient, and unfortunately, as demonstrated by the trend, this isn’t contained to to healthcare settings.
Addressing the root of these issues is crucial in combating the ever so prevalent diet culture plaguing society. The fast-paced nature of day-to-day life generates a tremendous amount of unnecessary stress while encouraging unhealthy eating and sleeping habits, as well as unsustainable exercise routines. All of this being prescribed by physicians and disguised as ‘healthy’ by influencers and companies (profiting off of peoples’ insecurities) has been ingrained in peoples’ minds. Ultimately, these ideals “serve to further the idea that women should forever be in the active pursuit of a smaller, thinner body [and] that with it comes personal happiness and social acceptance,” although we know that being thin does not inherently make one happy (Fargo, 2023). As America Ferrera put it in Greta Gerwig’s film, Barbie, women are expected ‘“…to be thin, but not too thin. And [they] can never say [they] want to be thin….’ The perceived pressure to conform to the thin ideal is suffocating” (Fargo, 2023).
We can totally agree that these social pressures are incredibly damaging and unnecessary. Engaging in conversations about these stigmas such as those initiated by us at Medical Herstory, naming them, and calling them out while celebrating all bodies are important steps in challenging diet culture and repairing the damage that is continuously being caused. Shifting our view of food as not calories but rather as something that nourishes, connects, and allows us to express ourselves would eliminate the widespread focus on restriction and foster healthier relationships with the food we eat, the people around us, and ourselves.
Written by Jackie Alford (Publishing Contributor at Medical Herstory)
Works Cited
Fargo, Morgan. “Girl Dinner Is Being Co-Opted to Promote Deeply Unhealthy Body Ideals.” Cosmopolitan, August 9, 2023. https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/body/diet-nutrition/a44760818/girl-dinner-tiktok-trend.
Phelan, S M et al. “Impact of weight bias and stigma on quality of care and outcomes for patients with obesity.” Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity vol. 16,4 (2015): 319–26, March 5, 2015. doi:10.1111/obr.12266
Roy, Jessica. “Is It a Meal? A Snack? No, It’s ‘Girl Dinner.’” The New York Times, July 8, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/style/girl-dinner.html.
Smith, Ben. “How TikTok Reads Your Mind.” The New York Times, December 6, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-algorithm.html.
Yu, Yi-Jin. “TikTok Pushes Harmful Content to Teens Every 39 Seconds, New Report Claims.” Good Morning America, December 16, 2022. https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/gma/story/tiktok-pushes-harmful-content-teens-39-seconds-new-95357982.
