The odd intersection of meat and masculinity

“I eat beef and salt and water — that’s it — and I never cheat. Ever. Not even a little bit. Nothing,” media personality Jordan Peterson proclaimed four years ago on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. In the years that he and his daughter, Mikhaila Peterson, have followed this strict diet and made tall claims about its health benefits, many memes poking fun at the regimen’s intensity have surfaced. At the same time, many have followed in the footsteps of the Petersons, adopting a meat-heavy diet. This is as online influencers like the Liver King promote adopting a “primal” way of living by “dropping processed foods” and “incorporating whole foods” like liver, bone marrow and heart. 

As plant-based diets have increased in popularity over recent years, reactionary carnivorous and meat-heavy diets have risen, standing athwart the gastronomical habits of effete urban elites. Just as conservatives fume over the abandonment of traditional male fashion, claiming a dress-clad Harry Styles to be the downfall of Western civilization and calling for us to “bring back manly men,” a similar name-calling of “soy boys” has emerged to refer to men who prefer milk alternatives or, more generally, men who don’t uphold traditional conceptions of masculinity. 

This isn’t without some basis in reality. An all-American cheeseburger or perhaps a 16-ounce rare steak is a beacon of masculinity, of strength. After all, vegetarians, while considered more moral by omnivores, are also considered weaker, and women across Western societies are more likely to be vegan or vegetarian than men.

This association of meat and masculinity can be traced back to hunter-gatherer societies in which men filled the role of hunter. From then to now, meat continues to be a symbol of power and social status, as it’s a costly product that requires the domination of another animal. 

The connection between meat and masculinity has thus been carried from the past and onto the internet via Jordan Peterson or the Liver King, but even in our everyday lives, we can see how our diets affect our perception of gender.

LSA senior Riley Noble instructed this semester’s Honors minicourse on sustainable food, culture and the environment. When asked how this association between meat and masculinity is emphasized today, Noble said, “There’s been this not necessarily false but misinformed thing where the more meat we get, the more protein we get, which is just not necessarily true. I think culture as well — how men are portrayed in movies as big and strong and having to be the hero — plays a role in that and so I think a lot of men are really pushed to eat more and more meat because they think they’re going to fill the role of the big and strong guy.”

Through the media’s expectation for men to be strong, viewers are expected to follow in both appearance and behavior, to have the muscles obtained through eating meat and to demonstrate the ability to hunt and provide. According to Amy Calvert, eating meat as an activity “involves the establishment of a power structure with human-(male)-animals as dominant, nonhuman-(female/feminised)-animals as subordinate.” In the existing system, the feminine are the hunted subordinates and the masculine are hunting dominators; to not consume lots of meat means falling to the hunted, feminine side of this binary.

As more and more people adopt plant-based diets for the sake of the environment and health and as these dietary options become more affordable and accessible, breaking this association of masculinity and meat is crucial to making the individual changes that make up the greater whole of a healthier, more compassionate planet. Even for people who don’t see vegetarianism or veganism as a working part of their lifestyles, ending masculinity’s reliance on something as arbitrary as eating meat is a worthwhile endeavor. 

As Noble explained, “I just didn’t really think it was possible (to switch to a more plant-based diet) but after doing it I realized it was very easy and I think giving those examples of what you can eat as a vegetarian is very helpful . . . Grocery stores having options such as Impossible Meat or high protein meat alternatives is really important to help the shift for people because, yes, while I thought it was relatively easy, I also had those options in grocery stores.” The fortune of living now is that protein exists in many forms beyond meat; even if the aesthetics of an all-American burger or hot dog remain more appealing than lentils or tofu, they remain available in environmentally friendly, meat-free forms in grocery stores across the country.

Meat and masculinity are simply not one and the same, as illustrated by the rise in plant-based diets from professional athletes like NFL player Tom Brady or NBA player Chris Paul. To be healthy, we don’t need to strip down our diets to only beef, water and salt or return to an antiquated and “primal” way of life in order to feel secure in an identity. To base gender expression on what men eat, be it steak or soy, is regressive and undermines the good, important qualities we consider as traditionally masculine: strength and courage. In harnessing traits such as these to move past the regressive association between meat and masculinity, we also move past a hindrance that keeps us from a more sustainable world for all.

Audra Woehle is an Opinion Columnist & can be reached at awoehle@umich.edu.