Girl Din or Girl Win? Discussing the “Girl Dinner” Trend and its Implications

If you’re anything like me, your TikTok “For You” page has been flooded with the “Girl Dinner” trend since the summertime. Usually featuring @karmapilled’s sound, with a melodic sequence of “This is my meal. I call this girl dinner. Ohhhh Girl Dinner!,” the posts vary from snack plates to chicken nuggets to pasta to birthday cake to chips to fruits to cheeses to anything one’s heart desires. The purpose of the trend, which is theorized to have begun in May, is for people to share their favorite minimal-effort meal, and it has caused quite the debate online. The best way to fully comprehend the subject and all its sides is to explore it in terms of healthiness, gender norms, and organizational skills.

Users have traced the trend back to a post by @liviemaher, or Olivia Maher, stating, “A girl just came on here and said how like in medieval times, peasants had to eat nothing but bread and cheese and how awful that was, and she was like, ‘That’s my ideal meal.’ This is my dinner. I call this girl dinner.” While it may seem obvious that simply eating bread and cheese is not sustainable for an everyday diet, the popularity of this trend overlooks the lack of substance in these snacks. Food and social media writer Merlyn Miller recognized this issue, arguing the theme that unites the “girl dinner” trend is “an assemblage of ingredients so low effort, it might not be considered a proper or well-rounded meal.” The worry now is that there may be implications for the popularity and prevalence of promoting individual ingredients in place of a whole meal. A People article debating the trend highlighted that some TikTokers argue that exclusively eating snacks for dinner promotes disordered eating. Because the featured foods are usually low in protein, carbs, and fat, “Girl Dinners” do, in fact, mimic behaviors that, if perpetuated, can be associated with anorexia nervosa; anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder can be characterized “by the restriction of nutrient intake relative to requirements, which leads to significantly low body weight” according to health experts Christine A. Moore and Brooke R. Bokor. These videos construct the false reality that dinner is a time to minimize calories, while in reality, some TikTok users are just attempting to treat the trend as a lighthearted way to share the “meal” in front of them, maybe even generating some laughs, relatability, and followers. While this is not to say the trend cannot be hurtful for those who have or may be recovering from an eating disorder, the hope is that it can be recognized for what it is, a social media trend, something that appears “normal” and popular for the time being, but that quickly fades without any notable or lasting impressions.

Although the trend emphasizes snacks as a meal, there is not necessarily cause for immediate panic in terms of overall health perceptions. Alese M. Nelson and Raymond Fleming, psychological experts in dietary and sexuality fields, respectively, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, conducted a study to assess social media’s impact on food-related perceptions; they found that that men rated unhealthy foods as significantly healthier than women did, which suggests that women have a deeper, more severe, and somewhat more accurate understanding of what is unhealthy. So, with “girls” having this inherently more realistic perception of health, they will likely be able to comprehend that the trend is simply a meaningless TikTok trend that does not inherently suggest people eliminate nutrients from their nightly meals, but instead encourages girls to eat what they want, when they want, and however they want it.

This leads me into my next point of analysis on this trend, the “girl” part itself. This trend has the potential to be both empowering and extremely harmful for female gender norms. One perspective finds that “Girl Dinners” reverse the stereotypical portrayal that women belong in the kitchen, arguing women can make their own meals that are not reliant upon culinary skills or patriarchal standards. On the other hand, as Miller highlights in her article “Please Don’t Gender My Dinner,” the trend suggest that women can rely upon “dainty” snack meals, potentially even perpetuating the “women in the kitchen” stereotype by suggesting women do not have to make a robust meal without a man present to cook for. One’s own personal spin on this trend is entirely up to user discretion, and, while both points of view have merit in their lines of reasoning, I prefer to take the trend positively and see “Girl Din” as a “Girl Win,” where women are not placed into any box on their audience, their dietary choices, or their cooking skills.

For many, “Girl Dinners” are somewhat a reflection of the latter, a lacking ability to cook anything substantial, so people resort to simple, easy “meals” that they know how to combine. This brings me to my final piece of analysis on the trend, organizational skills, in both a culinary and a timely sense. First, the trend emphasizes that sometimes it is okay to not know how to make an advanced pasta dish, and sometimes Kraft mac & cheese and dinosaur nuggets will suffice as a date night craving. While it does not inherently encourage users to advance their cooking abilities, this trend might help people recognize their lacking skill set, thereby highlighting a character flaw that may be improved upon. Along the same lines, this trend normalizes the unplanned, maybe even spontaneous, nature of eating, which can assist Type A individuals in relaxing their habits and Type B individuals in identifying with others and feeling they are not alone in their impromptu meals. It may help the former group realize not every meal needs a recipe or plan, while it may suggest to the latter group that meals might need more-than-minimal effort to eliminate hunger. Again, this is a mere trend that doesn’t inherently instruct people on what they can or cannot do, but as with many social media trends, it can have implications beyond the 6 second clip it shows.

While it may seem that I just wrote a piece about a pointless trend whose impacts will slowly fade with time and new trends replacing it, this is just one example of how social media can perpetuate food, health, gender, and organizational norms that can have long-term impacts on users and their eating habits, their confidence, their biases, and so much more. I hope we take this “Girl Din” as a “Girl Win” and move on as more mature and understanding users that can be cognizant of our impacts in the social media space.