Chocolate & Yogurt: Sarah Haskins on “Lady Food”
Sunday, June 28th, 2009
As much as I love me some Sarah Haskins, sometimes it’s weeks before I remember to check for a new installment of her Target Women series. I’d blame it on my scatterbrain, except I’m usually organized to a fault. There are just too many distractions on the interwebs to keep track of, dammit.
Anyhow, I had ample time to catch up this week, since I haven’t been feeling all that well. (Stomach bug, food poisoning, who knows.) Though she rarely covers “animal issues” per se, a number of her skits do indirectly touch upon animal exploitation, as we saw with her take on the Carl’s Jr. franchise. So it is with her discussions of “lady food” – namely, chocolate and yogurt.
There are a number of feminine corollaries to the tired old “meat = masculinity” meme. For example, women eat “like birds” (and sundry other adorable-but-harmless wildlife), daintily pecking at fruit, vegetables and (one would assume) scattered nuts and seeds, our weak lil’ bodies having little need for muscle-building protein. (Protein is only found in the rotting flesh of animal corpses, dontchaknow!?)
Additionally, whereas men crave meat (and heart disease), women literally lust after sugary highs – especially if they come coated in chocolate. What better foodstuff for already hysterical, irrational and moody beings, no? Plus, consuming the milk of our enslaved sisters is the perfect night cap to a shitty blind date.
The marketing of yogurt – specifically, probiotic-rich yogurt – is a newer trend. (Or at least “new” in the retro sense of the word; I’ve no idea what the picture was like in the ’70s, but the Mr. swears that he remembers similar gynocentric yogurt advertising in his youth.) Whether you want to attribute it to IBS, yeast infections or diet fads, yogurt most definitely falls into the “lady food” category.
As much as I love me some Sarah Haskins, sometimes it’s weeks before I remember to check for a new installment of her Target Women series. I’d blame it on my scatterbrain, except I’m usually organized to a fault. There are just too many distractions on the interwebs to keep track of, dammit.
Anyhow, I had ample time to catch up this week, since I haven’t been feeling all that well. (Stomach bug, food poisoning, who knows.) Though she rarely covers “animal issues” per se, a number of her skits do indirectly touch upon animal exploitation, as we saw with her take on the Carl’s Jr. franchise. So it is with her discussions of “lady food” – namely, chocolate and yogurt.
There are a number of feminine corollaries to the tired old “meat = masculinity” meme. For example, women eat “like birds” (and sundry other adorable-but-harmless wildlife), daintily pecking at fruit, vegetables and (one would assume) scattered nuts and seeds, our weak lil’ bodies having little need for muscle-building protein. (Protein is only found in the rotting flesh of animal corpses, dontchaknow!?)
Additionally, whereas men crave meat (and heart disease), women literally lust after sugary highs – especially if they come coated in chocolate. What better foodstuff for already hysterical, irrational and moody beings, no? Plus, consuming the milk of our enslaved sisters is the perfect night cap to a shitty blind date.
The marketing of yogurt – specifically, probiotic-rich yogurt – is a newer trend. (Or at least “new” in the retro sense of the word; I’ve no idea what the picture was like in the ’70s, but the Mr. swears that he remembers similar gynocentric yogurt advertising in his youth.) Whether you want to attribute it to IBS, yeast infections or diet fads, yogurt most definitely falls into the “lady food” category.
