back when tinned fish was “hot girl food”
I mean, I guess you can call Bella Hadid....
In 2021 I kept getting triggered. It wasn’t Equinox/green juice/cottage cheese keto meals. Those were obvious orthorexic flexes. This also wasn’t the supermodel slurping spaghetti and eating a Carl’s Jr burger with grease dripping down her hands type of flex, either. This aesthetic seemed more insidious and quietly pro-ana, almost to the extent where I felt crazy trying to call it out. There was a value system that this sort of image represented that unsettled me. I would not call myself “helpless” to the images of the Internet, but certainly I was sensitive. You can’t curate a less harmful online world until you nail down what bothers you. My goal is to articulate this feeling, however moralistic and unsympathetic, because my gut tells me that I’m not the only one who felt that way.
This is my perspective from 2021, edited and fortified in 2024.
At first I thought I was just overly-sensitive to eating disorder dog whistles and scrolled too many times through dasha's food twitter.
This whole "hot girls eat tinned fish" thing got under my skin a little bit. Because I know it's not all bad. Tinned fish became popular over the past couple of years for a number of reasons:
the need for nutritious packaged foods because people were minimizing trips to the grocery store
supply chain issues likely created a shortage of tinned fish—making it more "in demand"
viral recipes that required tinned fish, like Alison Roman's shallot pasta
it's always been popular and it's a food people have been eating normally
The Alison Roman shallot pasta side of the Internet embraces the "hot girl" mentality in many ways—whether it's eating hot dogs or having IBS (PCOS has been shockingly missing from the viral tweets). They are much more interested in the playful "hot girl" moniker as a means of manufactured empowerment. Its purpose is to undercut what would be an "expected" sense of insecurity "by society." It's like when the girl who normally says "it has pockets!" in response to a compliment on her dress decides to lean in and accept the compliment, going so far as to say "yeah I look really good in it!" That's the Fishwife mentality.
But from my observations, confirmed by other Internet users informally as well, there is a dark undercurrent to the trend. It serves as a bit of a humblebrag, often from the same people who tweets about how breakfast consists of either black coffee or diet coke and an antidepressant. Wellbutrin is the non-fattening one, right? It has connotations of waifishness and delicateness and finding indulgence aesthetically disgusting.
Calling tinned fish "hot girl food" can be the culinary equivalent of subtly flexing that your wardrobe is mostly Brandy Melville. It's a signaling device.
It's not the same as posting about eating a bagel with peanut butter or a high volume meal of roast chicken with buttery garlic bread and vegetables. To them, that would not function as a "hot girl food." Maybe a little square of bread with a bunny1 imprint on it would be acceptable and a dainty square of chocolate on the side. Nothing hearty, midwestern, or otherwise decadent.
Tinned fish falls more into the category of a "safe food" for those experiencing disordered eating. It's low in calories, high in nutrients, and ultimately an efficient way of delaying death. Tinned fish is small, salty, and smelly, probably signifying some degree of a sophisticated palette and a seagull-like appetite. Having an eating disorder is a brain-rotting experience. The behavior that such a disease inspires can be alienating, not-endearing, and sometimes downright spiteful. The intellectualization of anorexia, the idea that anorexia is somehow tasteful and worthy of pride, the contagion and competition should all be quite shameful. I resort to hand-wringing and pearl-clutching because that is how I resist its call.
I don't really know what modern waifishness is supposed to connote. Perhaps that you're above the juvenile pedestrian impulses of "boozy milkshakes" and that you spend your calories reading Sartre in bed because you don't need a "real job" and that you're actually the ultimate model of feminine virtue and intelligence through restriction.
I suspect it has something to do with Pauline Kael’s roast of Joan Didion,
“The ultimate princess fantasy is to be so glamorously sensitive and beautiful that you have to be taken care of…you see the truth, and so you suffer more than ordinary people and can’t function.”
The hyperproductive orthorexic cyclist with the green juice is an archetype I understand. There lies a story and the stereotype about “the pressure to be perfect.” Yeah yeah yeah, neoliberal society expects you to pick yourselves up by the bootstraps and work your way into success and purity. This is an aesthetic driven by the Protestant work ethic, something familiar to me. The languid self-superiority of the waifish ideals feels foreign and miserable. It can be hard to have compassion for them. It’s even worse when they’re the deerposting aggressors masquerading as victims.
The one person who might have been able to end their culture was Anna Khachiyan in 2019, had she made a cruel and cutting remark shaming their ilk before her mind succumbed to right wing sewage. Theirs is a form of self-superiority rooted in truly nothing but would somehow deem me a failure for what? Wearing vanity sized mall clothes and enjoying CheezIts? Oh sorry, my Prayingg‘s at the cleaners along with my Simone Weil and my fuck-you cigs you pretentious douchebag!
It’s always a bunny with them, “baby bunnie” or something like that. Never a rabbit.
omg i screamed at DEERPOSTING. your writing itches my brain in the best way!!!
absolutely obsessed with this, articulated that feeling of insanity when you read between the lines on proana posts/behaviour. it’s so sneaky, it’s right in the mainstream at the moment too, so blatant that it feels like you’re making it up because no one else is calling it out.