By Marina Douglas
It’s lunchtime. You’re sitting down to a home-made sandwich
and scrolling leisurely through Facebook when you see it: one of your friends
has gone out to eat and consequently shared a picture of their delicious meal.
It might be a huge burger, resplendent with accompanying chips. It might be a
sundae that’s dripping with chocolate, and you feel your mouth start to water
as you realise that there’s actual brownie under all that ice cream. Whatever
it is, your poor little sandwich suddenly seems meagre by comparison – a pitiful
creation that can’t live up to the glory of what everyone else is eating. But
you eat it anyway. And you keep scrolling.
Food plays a huge role in shaping self and community
identity on Facebook. Every day we are exposed to images of food in ads, pages,
shared posts, and the alarmingly frequent updates from those friends who
secretly think themselves connoisseurs. Atkins and Bowler (2001) touch on this,
stating that there is a “socially-derived desire for our consumption habits to
show us in the best possible light.” (p. 272). Indeed, food has the power to
change opinions about a person’s class – everything from the location of the
meal to the accompanying comments has an impact. It’s an expression of our
identity, and can be a source of shame or pride (Kuttainen, 2015).
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| Image from: cdn.images.express.co.uk Photographing food |
The presence of ads in media only drives us further to
present a desirable image, according to what the ad suggests. How is your self-identity
going to hold up with all these blatant social cues around? In his analysis of the
world’s current food problem, Patel (2007) points out that we have more food
than ever before yet there is both famine and obesity. As social beings, we
feel a need to avoid identifying with either of these things and this also
impacts on our choices of what to eat and who needs to know about it. This is
where Facebook comes in. Because at the end of the day, no matter what you eat,
there’s something immensely and unsettlingly satisfying about letting people
know about it, with that unsaid declaration of “This is my food and my life.
Look at it. Envy me. Love me.”
References
Atkins, P., & Bowler, I. (2001). The origins of taste. In
Food in society: Economy, culture,
geography (pp. 272-295). New York, NY: Oxford University Press Inc.
Freeman, B. (2014, October 17). Digital junk: Food and
beverage marketing on Facebook. The Conversation.
Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/digital-junk-food-and-beverage-marketing-on-facebook-32609
Kuttainen, V. (2015). BA1002:
Our space: Networks, narratives, and the making of place, lecture 8: Food
networks. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au
Patel, R. (2007). Stuffed
and starved: Markets, power and the hidden battle for the world food system.
Melbourne, Australia: Black Inc.
Image Credits
Gavin, A. (2014). Photographing
food [Image]. Retrieved from http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/1/590x/photographing-food-share-503694.jpg
It is so crazy how many food photos I see on Instagram and Facebook every day – it is almost becoming just as popular as the dominating ‘selfie’. ‘#food’ is one of the top trending hashtags on Instagram, with over 146 million photos.
ReplyDeleteBut I agree – what we see on these media platforms shapes our self and community identity. As Atkins and Bowler (2001) wrote so truthfully, we try to shape our identities, and in particular our social classes, by our taste for food and another commodities. In our world, all of this is uploaded in a simple photo online as an expression of our identity.
We are all attempting to be uncultured chefs, creating disasters in our kitchens to share with the world, in, as you wisely put it, unsettling satisfaction.
Atkins, P., & Bowler, I. (2001). The origins of taste. In Food in society: Economy, culture, geography (pp. 272-295). New York, NY: Oxford University Press Inc.
I definitely agree with you when you state that "food has the power to change opinions about a person’s class". From a young age we a taught to think that if you act, eat, dress or are educated a certain way you are either above or below some, basically determining your social status. I know that when I see a picture someone has posted of a McDonald's Hamburger and fries I immediately think how unhealthy they are. On the other hand, if a picture is posted of a fancy brunch at a high class cafe the first thought that comes to mind is how classy and healthy they are. This also supports what Atkins and Bowler say, "One factor in the origin and persistence of food ways is that they often represent an important expression of our identity, both as individuals and in reference to a broader ethnic, class or religious grouping".
ReplyDeleteAtKins, P. & Bowler, I. (2001). Food in society: Economy, culture, geography. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au