Diners, Dudes, and Diets

The phrase dude food likely brings to mind a range of images: burgers stacked impossibly high with an assortment of toppings that were themselves once considered a meal; crazed sports fans demolishing plates of radioactively hot wings; barbecued or bacon-wrapped . . . anything. But there is much more to the phenomenon of dude food than what's on the plate. Emily J. H. Contois's provocative book begins with the dude himself--a man who retains a degree of masculine privilege but doesn't meet traditional standards of economic and social success or manly self-control. In the Great Recession's aftermath, dude masculinity collided with food producers and marketers desperate to find new customers. The result was a wave of new diet sodas and yogurts marketed with dude-friendly stereotypes, a transformation of food media, and weight loss programs just for guys.

In a work brimming with fresh insights about contemporary American food media and culture, Contois shows how the gendered world of food production and consumption has influenced the way we eat and how food itself is central to the contest over our identities.

"In Diner, dudes, and diets, Emily Contois examines contemporary food culture and a variety of its consumer products to reveal how the food, marketing, and media industries sought to create new markets by catering to men through the idea of 'the dude.' Contois identifies today's 'dude masculinity' as arising from a late twentieth-century crisis in traditional gender roles at a time of major social, cultural, and economic change. Though the term 'dude' originated in the late nineteenth century as a term for dandyish men overly concerned with fashionable appearance, Contois defines today's dude as a man who doesn't meet traditional standards of economic and social success or manly self-control but nevertheless retains a degree of masculine privilege. As Contois shows, food culture has been on the front lines of producing and deploying this dude masculinity. Her study uses methods from history, media studies, and gender studies, and she draws on a broad popular culture archive that includes print media, television, social media, and sports talk radio"--
Emily J. H. Contois is assistant professor of media studies at the University of Tulsa.
A fascinating work of cultural studies that makes evident the continued power and threat of explicitly gendered food production and consumption in the 21st century. Recommended broadly for students and scholars of fields related to gender, culture, and consumption.--Library Journal