The “Mad Men” of Nutrition: The Drinking Man’s Diet and Mid-Twentieth-Century American Masculinity

ABSTRACT

In 1964, a diet presented itself that would not only allow American men to recapture their fading youth and health through trimmer bodies, but would also permit them to reclaim their disappearing post-war social power through a reassertion of heteronormative hegemonic masculinity. Called The Drinking Man’s Diet: How to Lose Weight with a Minimum of Willpower, it was a statement against the changes that were occurring in American society, conveyed within the framework of dietary advice: a homosocial tool that allowed men to recuperate their lost masculinity through food – That is, what they did, and did not, eat and drink.

KEYWORDS:

• Masculinity
• diet
• alcohol
• Cold War America

Notes

1. Hegemonic masculinity is based on the assumed “right and natural” superiority and domination of white, heterosexual, middle and upper class men, especially over women, non-heteronormative men, and transgendered individuals. Hegemonic masculinity is undergirded by a hierarchy of gender and masculinities, with “ideal manhood” on top. During the early Cold War (late 1940s–mid 1960s), the ideal man was expected to be aggressive (or at least assertive), emotionally stoic, athletic, fit, brave, vigorous, adventurous, and a master of self-realization. This gender role also included economic and political dimensions such as being the head of the household (the family provider) and staunchly anti-Communist, for Communism implied a top-down, state-imposed equality and non-competitiveness, which was incompatible with American democracy, capitalism, and social order. For more on hegemonic masculinity, see Connell.

2. Jameson and Williams, The Drinking Man’s Diet, 7–8, 11–2.

3. Nicholson, “‘Shocking’ Masculinity,” 241.

4. Cuordileone, “‘Politics in an Age of Anxiety’,” 516.

5. Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit; Whyte, The Organization Man; and Matheson, The Shrinking Man.

6. Kimmel, Manhood in America, 173–4.

7. Reisman, The Lonely Crowd.

8. Mills, White Collar.

9. Nicholson, “‘Shocking’ Masculinity,” 247.

10. Packard, The Status Seekers.

11. Horowitz, American Social Classes in the 1950s, 15–8.

12. Schlesinger, “The Crisis in American Masculinity,” 12–8.

13. Nicholson, “‘Shocking’ Masculinity,” 248.

14. Berrett, “Feeding the Organization Man,” 808.

15. “Are We Becoming ‘Soft’?,” 35–6.

16. “Exercise – What It’s doing for Ike,” 50–4, 56, 59.

17. Vester, A Taste of Power, 66–7.

18. Hollows, “The Bachelor Dinner,” 146; and Inness, Dinner Roles, 19.

19. “Ike Grilling Outside the Sun Room,” ca. 1955.

20. Tunc, “Eating in Survival Town,” 198.

21. Dean, “Masculinity as Ideology,” 29–30.

22. Ibid., 31.

23. Ibid., 46.

24. Kennedy, “The Soft American,” 16.

25. Montez de Oca, “The ‘Muscle Gap’,” 123.

26. Osgerby, Playboys in Paradise, 75.

27. Ibid., 8.

28. Kimmel, Manhood in America, 190.

29. Osgerby, Playboys in Paradise, 4.

30. Ibid., 4.

31. Ibid., 5.

32. Ibid., 155.

33. Ibid., 156–7.

34. Kimmel, Manhood in America, 183.

35. Osgerby, Playboys in Paradise, 156.

36. “Meet the Playboy Reader,” 63.

37. Vester, A Taste of Power, 3.

38. Hollows, “The Bachelor Dinner,” 143.

39. Vester, A Taste of Power, 68.

40. Inness, Dinner Roles, 17; and Vester, A Taste of Power, 117.

41. Mario, “By Juniper,” 37.

42. Hollows, “The Bachelor Dinner,” 149.

43. Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men, 68–87.

44. Hollows, “The Bachelor Dinner,” 149.

45. Berrett, “Feeding the Organization Man,” 811.

46. Ibid., 816; and Kimmel, Manhood in America, 181.

47. Luciano, Looking Good, 50.

48. Yager, The Hundred Year Diet, 116.

49. Jameson and Williams, The Drinking Man’s Diet, 4.

50. Ibid., 4.

51. Ibid., 5.

52. The pseudonym Jeffrey W. Roberts is also associated with the diet.

53. Farnham, “The Drinking Man’s Diet”.

54. Jameson and Williams, The Drinking Man’s Diet, 5; and “Electus & Barracuda,” 1886.

55. Mad Men was a popular American drama series that aired on the cable network AMC between 2007 and 2015. Set in the 1960s, it depicted the hard-drinking, womanizing, masculine world of Madison Avenue advertising executives, with its main protagonist, Don Draper, epitomizing the swinging, cool, well-heeled masculine archetype of this era.

56. Jameson and Williams, The Drinking Man’s Diet, 7.

57. Ibid., 7–8.

58. Vester, A Taste of Power, 116.

59. Jameson and Williams, The Drinking Man’s Diet, 9.

60. Deutsch, “A History of Drinker’s Diets”.

61. Jameson and Williams, The Drinking Man’s Diet, 11.

62. Ibid., 12.

63. Ibid., 12–3.

64. Ibid., 14.

65. Ibid., 21–2.

66. Farnham, “The Drinking Man’s Diet”.

67. Jameson and Williams, The Drinking Man’s Diet, 23–4.

68. Wernick, “I Wrote the Drinking Man’s Diet,” 85.

69. Wernick, Life Begins at Ninety, 50–1.

70. “Drinking Man’s Diet Linked to Quackery,” 370.

71. “The Drinking Man’s Danger,” 80.

72. Yager, The Hundred Year Diet, 117.

73. Ibid., 117; and Farnham, “The Drinking Man’s Diet”.

74. Farnham, “The Drinking Man’s Diet”.

75. Yager, The Hundred Year Diet, 117.

76. The transnational impact of The Drinking Man’s Diet, and its relationship to masculinity abroad, is a subject worthy of study, but one that falls outside the scope of this article, which is focused on the social and cultural role of the diet in the United States.

77. Sherman, “The Drinking Man’s Diet”.

78. Ibid.

79. Board Game Geek, “Diet: The Cheating Man’s Game”.

80. Deutsch, “A History of Drinker’s Diets”.

81. For more on masculinity and the Atkins diet, see Bentley.

82. Taylor, Elizabeth Takes Off, 140.

83. Burton, Richard Burton Diaries, 173.

84. Ibid., 252.

85. Low Carb Luxury, The Drinking Man’s Diet Cookbook.

86. Apple iBooks sells The Drinking Man’s Diet as an e-book, and iTunes sells The Drinking Man’s Diet Cookbook app.

87. Inness, Dinner Roles, 145–62.

88. Wheat Foods Council, “Setting the Record Straight,” 4.

89. “Electus & Barracuda,” 1886.