Can’t We Just Eat? Girl Dinner

By now you’ve probably heard all about “girl dinner”. My friend sent me a link to the NYT article  a few weeks ago about this new trend.  For those of you living under a rock, it’s essentially grabbing some food, putting it on a plate, singing about it (?????), posting it on: TikTok, Twitter, Thread, Instagram, Facebook or whatever and getting 300 million views.

A “girl dinner” can be an elaborately styled plate (eaten in front of the TV) or as simple as a mostly eaten ice cream bar or anything in between, but the food is generally not cooked or fussed over.

We ate “girl dinners” twice last week with baguettes, cheeses, olives and ham–after a big lunch that’s all you need. When I came home from the firemen’s ball (and a few Apérol spritzes), I put a roast chicken leg and some tabouli in a bowl and called it dinner. Just dinner. I didn’t sing about it. I didn’t post it on TikTok, or any social media. I just ate it.

Maybe there’s no irony left in the world, or maybe these “girls” are serious, but now there’s outrage at some girl dinners being a can of corn, a plate of pickles, or a glass of diet soda (shouldn’t that be a “Girl Glass”?). Body issues. Diet issues. “The food choices are mostly highly processed, not nutritionally balanced, they are gender biased, lack credibility and have the potential to insight disordered eating patterns in this young demographic,” she said.

Potential to insight??? That’s giving me a reading disorder.

Do you think that a “guy dinner” would be a bag of chips and a beer? No dishes to wash. And it would still qualify as “highly processed, gender biased” etc.

Don’t confuse whatever-gender dinners with tapas, meze or apéros. Girl dinners are consumed solo, while the whole idea behind tapas, meze or apéros is to be out with friends. So, while I’ve always embraced the idea of arranging some food on a plate and noshing in front of the TV, why does it have to be something? Can’t it just be delicious?