From hilarious to harmful: On the menu, we have girl dinner

Mika Perez, Contributing Writer

When you think about a girl’s night, you revert to classic movies of women in silk robes sipping on wine and enjoying a platter of cheeses and prosciutto. 

It’s very romanticized to lounge around and enjoy these delicacies.

The recent trend of “girl dinner” has shed light on slightly weird yet relatable food combinations that aren’t actual meals. This trend has allowed women all over the world to show off their random dish of snacks. However, does this trend further damage young girls’ relationships with food? This phrase was invented by a woman named Olivia Maher who posted a video on TikTok.

In her video, Olivia mentioned how her ideal meal is what peasants ate in medieval times. The  meal she showed consisted of just grapes, cheese, bread and butter. She then called this meal her girl dinner and the comments were filled with women relating to her meal and commenting their own food combinations, such as jerky and berries or grapes and of ham. 

The joke quickly took off on the app with #girldinner having 2.1 billion views. Many fast food chains and snack companies also hopped on the trend, like Popeyes having an actual girl dinner on their menu. This meal consisted of small containers of different items like coleslaw, fries, mac and cheese and a biscuit.

Many times we get too lazy to prepare full, nutrient-dense meals. Instead, we find things in our pantries and fridges and make a plate of whatever is most accessible. 

Girl dinner also adds a catchy way to describe something we never could fully pinpoint. I’ve had many nights of eating a hot pocket with a side of peanut butter cups and calling it dinner. 

Yet, as the trend took off, many people started noticing a change in what people were showing. 

Users following the trend went from showing plates of mac and cheese and gummy bears to ice water with three olives or coffee and an e-cigarette. As the videos progressively started getting worse many TikTok creators and news sites brought up whether girl dinner was normalizing disordered eating. 

This shifted the perspective of girl dinner and many women started looking at full-course meals negatively. The whole point of girl dinner wasn’t to constantly eat poorly but to show that we aren’t always perfect and we will occasionally eat something unhealthy as dinner.

Showing these extremely small portions of food claiming to be girl dinner can negatively impact younger girls who are still growing and need nutrition. Some of these videos of plates showed less and less food and in some cases, women went to sleep without eating and called it girl dinner. 

The growing mind is easily influenced by social media and since this trend is geared towards women, many young girls believe that’s how they should be eating. Many people can be affected by this differently, some thinking it’s just a fun trend and others using it to glorify diet culture. 

I don’t necessarily think that these videos or creators were purposefully promoting disordered eating, but rather embracing the beauty of not caring. In the world of meal prepping and Emily Mariko’s fabulous home cooked meals, we often view cooking and eating in an unrealistic way. There are many nights when you don’t have the energy to boil pasta but it doesn’t mean you are lazy or not independent. The destigmatization that came with the idea of girl dinner shed light on how very common it is to just have a dinner of easy-to-make foods.