the revolutionary power of girl dinner

and what foucault would have to say about it.

I’ve been trying to put into words why “girl dinner” just tastes better and I think I have the answer. It’s delicious because it contains nature’s favorite sugar and spice: feminism and foucault!

If you don’t spend every waking hour on the internet (honestly good for you) “girl dinner” is a trend celebrating the unique and peculiar way that women consume their last meal of the day, when no one else is around. After creator Olivia Maher shared a video of an assortment of cheeses and pickles and coined it “girl dinner,” women across the nation came out of the woodwork sharing their own hilarious, and at times psychotic, take on the new denomination. This trend also morphed into “girl math” where women have been posting about their singular approach to money and justifying certain expenses, like dividing the price of an outfit by the amount of times we wear it (a 500$ pair of shoes is only 5$ if we wear them 100 times) or that if you’re paying cash, it’s free.

On the surface, these trends seem trivial and absurd, but at their core, I believe they are nothing short of revolutionary.

First of all, I love anything that helps me relate to other women and name a collective experience. I can’t prove that every woman that I admire has had “girl dinner” before, but I feel like it’s true. I mean, given her busy schedule, Joan of Arc definitely had girl dinner the night before she ended the Hundred Years' War. Angela Davis did not cook herself full meals every night while she was leading the civil rights movement. And I know Hillary Clinton had multiple girl dinners on the 2016 campaign trail and now I just really want to know what they are! The greatest women that ever lived probably had girl dinners, just like you.

But whether it’s a female head of state somewhere eating a block of cheese and a bag of combos for dinner, or her assistant paying for a latte with cash so that it’s free, these trends point to something wonderful: a full throated celebration of womanhood that celebrates girlhood rather than rejects it. Women who are eating girl dinner or doing girl math aren’t immature or unkept— they’re free. These aren’t just fun trends, they’re a direct rebuttal to the patriarchal demands of womanhood that have been pushed on us for centuries. We talked about this on the latest episode of Synced (even though Monica and I somewhat disagree).

And before I get accused of exaggerating the meaning of these trends, let’s all remember that a mere two years ago, a woman went viral for posting a photo of a dinner that was made up of snacks, which is effectively the very definition of girl dinner. She got called “childish” and “uncultured” for the daring act of putting a mini-pizza, onion rings and some reheated canned beans on a plate. "If that’s what my wife makes me I’m getting a divorce," one super chill guy responded on twitter. And don’t get me started on the way that we’ve been relentlessly accused of being inherently bad at math. So yeah, we’ve come a long way baby.

Women willfully broadcasting publicly, what they’re so supposed to be embarrassed about privately, renders the patriarchy powerless in its ability to control them. Foucault and the feminist authors inspired by his school of thought, define the kind of self-surveillance that women are expected to exert as a form of disciplinary power that keeps them oppressed. It creates a panopticon where we don’t need anyone to make us conform to limiting ideals of femininity because we impose them on ourselves at all times, even when no one is watching. As gender studies scholar Sandra Bartky put it, “the disciplinary power that inscribes femininity in the female body is everywhere and it is nowhere; the disciplinarian is everyone and yet no one in particular.” But with women proudly disseminating their unruly girl dinners and eccentric girl math to the world, it robs that omnipresent supervision of its raison d’être. It’s giving Bella Throne releasing her own nudes to thwart her hacker’s power over her.

So as we enter “feral girl fall” let’s continue to rebuke the expectation of being manicured and presentable, by owning all those parts of ourselves. The shame was never ours.