If the "I love food and Ryan Gosling" Somee card that went viral last week is any indication, women really enjoy eating.
For many of us, our social lives are built around lunch breaks at work, mimosa-optional brunches and potluck dinner parties. We cook to de-stress, eat out to get a little bit pampered and order in when we just want to watch Netflix streaming in our beds (or perhaps that's just me). Food is undeniably cause for celebration and joy. Yet as women, many of us have complex and often negative relationships with food.
Our Women's editor, Margaret Wheeler Johnson, remembers a former colleague returning from a lunch date with an ex-boyfriend eating lunch at her desk right after. Her explanation? She had to look lady-like during the meet-up, which in her mind involved picking at her food. Unfortunately, that story isn't an unfamiliar one. How many of us have heard some woman in our lives recite, "You should always leave half the food on your plate." And some of us aren't as self-conscious about how much we eat as we are about how we eat. On several first dates I've tried to take as few bites as possible to avoid revealing that I have the hand-eye coordination of a 5-year-old.
It's not all that surprising that we feel the need to be dainty with our meals when you look at the images of women eating we're bombarded with each day ... or rather, the lack thereof. How often have you watched a television show or a movie where the female characters always seem to be eating, but really they're just sitting near food, sometimes holding a fork, perhaps putting one grape in their mouths? (Serena Van Der Woodsen, I'm looking at you.) In the stock photos we see in magazines and online, we see lots of women smiling near a mound of iceberg lettuce, and while eating is often implied in these photos, you rarely see the subject actually putting the food in her mouth. (For a visual representation of this, check out The Hairpin's brilliant round-up of "Women Laughing Alone With Salad.")
Here at HuffPost Women, we've observed that women eat, and we think eating should be celebrated and documented. Let's face it -- women look pretty awesome enjoying food. We started by gathering photos of some of HuffPost's editorial staff doing just that, but we want to see yours! Email us a photo of yourself eating -- no implied eating, only full-on food-in-mouth action -- to women@huffingtonpost.com.
LOOK: Photos Of Women Eating
Follow Emma Gray on Twitter: www.twitter.com/emmaladyrose
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