Thoughts After Dinner at Wendy's

At Wendy's they are advertising a new sandwich; it is called 'The Baconator' and is essentially a double cheeseburger garnished with a mound of bacon. The tagline for this sandwich is "Careful, it can sense fear." The audience for the sandwich, obviously, is the young male. I did not partake, but it did cause me to wonder, what does it say about a society that masculinity is asserted by eating a certain sort of sandwich. Wendy's' advertising tactics have even taken this idea to a new place. For it was not long ago, if I remember correctly, that a similar sandwich at Burger King was advertised merely as "Meat and cheese, cheese and meat," a satisfying chiasmus that cut straight to the point, as it seemed. But Wendy's has gone further, and, even more than presenting its sandwich as a challenge to masculinity, as is also often done, has portrayed it a beast of sorts to be hunted. In eating this sandwich, says Wendy's, a man has not only asserted his masculinity by showing he consumes something with the proper cultural resonances, but has ritually acted out a sort of hunt and struggle, and emerged triumphant on his strength, the original man, the pure man of the jungle.

This all led me to wonder at what point in history masculinity in our culture began to be asserted in the sort of food one eats (one could also ask what has elevated the sort of animalistic baseness described above to masculinity, but that is probably a far far more complicated question). Food has always been linked to culture, of course: only a barbarian would drink beer and use butter where a civilized man would had his wine and olive oil in the ancient world. It is also probably true that, as men are on the whole larger and stronger than women, it is a cross-cultural phenomenon that men generally eat more than women. Yet Wendy's is not appealing to biology, but rather to a sense of masculinity that recommends a sort of primal force and vigor; furthermore the man who eats the sandwich has no more to do than eat it. He pays for it, it is prepared for him, he consumes it. Somewhere there he has become more manly, and nowhere there has he done much of anything.

It seems to me this all comes quite easily down to the capitalistic system; many things do. After all, the man is spending his money to construct his identity. He does not participate in civic ritual to gain it, he does not come into it by right of birth, does not create it in action, neither forms it under tutelage; he buys it. 'The Baconator' is one of those things that practically screams commodity fetish. However, I have not taken the time to research this fully; it would be interesting to see how the eating of meat, or of other things, for that matter, has been viewed in other cultures as an indicator of masculinity.

In any case, I just wanted to make your next fast food experience that much more complicated.

Enjoy.