Meatless meals and masculinity: How veg^* men explain their plant-based diets

ABSTRACT

Scholars have found that assumed connections between meat eating and performances of masculinity are perpetuated across the American public sphere. However, food expectations and choices are constantly shifting and evolving over time. Recent cultural shifts in the middle and upper-middle class American foodscape that moralize “good” eating as choosing local, organic, and eco-conscious foods, prompts the questioning of their social effects for vegetarian and vegan men, who hold a previously-stigmatized consumption identity. This article analyzes qualitative interviews conducted with twenty vegan and vegetarian men in a semi-urban area of the southeastern United States to better understand how they conceptualize and explain their food consumption identities in relation to their broader identity practices. I find their performances of masculinity often defy the conventional feminization of meatless diets, while also upholding gendered binaries of emotion/rationality and current tropes of white, middle-class masculinity.

KEYWORDS:

• culinary capital
• gender binary
• masculinity
• veganism
• vegetarianism

Notes

1 I focus on white, middle-class men because this is the sample I had access to. Others have looked more explicitly at race and other aspects of identity in relation to vegan diets (Brady and Ventresca; Witt; Harper)

2 The “Brave Gentleman” clothing line sells men's (vegan) shoes for approximately $280 a pair.

3 Detailed on the recruitment materials, eligibility for the study required that participants self-identify as a vegan or vegetarian man. When interviews started and I asked more specific questions about their diets, it became clear that self-identification as a vegan or vegetarian was very subjective, and their understanding of what vegan and vegetarian diets consist of varied. I allowed participation for any man who self-identified as a vegan or vegetarian, rather than restricting participation in the study to my own or others’ definitions of these diets. Additionally, when I was recruiting for this study in 2014, it was difficult to find men in the recruitment area who were willing to be interviewed. I recruited for both vegetarians and vegans in hopes of a larger and more diverse sample. I understand some may find issue with this, and that there are meaningful differences between the two diets, but I believe that because my research questions were specifically about the rejection of meat in a diet, both vegetarians and vegans were reasonable participants for the study.

4 It is important to acknowledge that veg^* diets alone are not necessarily a privileged diet and not inherently expensive (See Greenebaum, “Vegan Privilege” for a further discussion on this topic). Ultimately, the privilege these men experience revolves around the ability to buy and consume the food that they want and food that is healthy. Other aspects of their identity would likely allow them to enjoy privileged diets regardless of whether they decided to be veg^* or not. By that, I mean they are not living in food deserts or living in poverty and do not face any structural constraints in their ability to obtain food.