POINT OF DEPARTURE
EYE CANDY Food Instagrams and the politics of what we eat.
Instagram chile oil isn’t too spicy, Instagram birria is vegetarian, and Instagram paletas don’t melt. On the social media accounts of chefs, restaurants, and food magazines, food exists in a hyper-distilled form—smellless, taste-less, free, and in quantities greater than any person could ever eat at once. It can be consumed visually over and over again, with captions that evoke taste by flagrantly overusing adjectives: A scallion dressing is “scalliony,” pudding is “milky,” bread is “pillowy.” Bizarre combinations don’t sound too bad at all: a dense, floaty, chocolatey, cardamom-inflected stew. A snacky tangle of sugar-dusted cabbage and sweet-sour yogurt. The best food pictures are messy in a way that suggests abundance: overflowing sandwiches or tall scoops of ice cream dripping a little down the cone, but not enough to make your fingers sticky. You can eat breakfast and 4
lunch and dinner from five different restaurants, because you never get full when you’re eating on Instagram. Nonetheless, even in pictures, food carries a heavy cultural weight. The things we eat can’t be separated from their history and politics, even when stripped of their physical form.
The things we eat can’t be separated from their history and politics, even when stripped of their physical form.
As Annie Cheng ’20, who now works as a cook and researcher in upstate New York, pointed out, Instagram can be an important equalizer for new and small
businesses. “Instagram and social media has been a very democratic place for chefs, who don’t have investors, to have a voice,” she said. Not everyone can buy a multi-million dollar restaurant space, but a camera and some good lighting are pretty easy to come by, and new restaurants can advertise on social media for a fraction of the cost of a TV spot. Cheng also discussed additional pressures placed on chefs of color, including the implicit assumption that their food will be cheap, or will recreate some kind of photo-friendly street food experience. “People say their food should be two dollars,” she said. “White chefs don’t get docked for experimentation.” For better or worse, social media imposes a new kind of structure. Almost any food that makes it to the platform is palatable to the eyes, which generally means it’s been aesthetically flattened, placed in front of an art T HE NEW JOUR NAL
DESIGN BY ALLY SOONG
BY NOA ROSINPLOTZ
