The girl dinner phenomenon has taken over TikTok, with 2.3 Billion views under the hashtag and over 430k videos under its most popular sound. On its surface, “girl dinner” is a fun trend for women to share their weird and low maintenance meals online, but the more popular the trend became, the more out of control it got. Girl dinner went from a bowl of plain pasta to a diet coke and a string cheese stick.
The trend is meant to be silly and harmless, but I think it’s worth considering how the things we post might impact people and amplify harmful societal norms. The term seems to imply that “girl” means smaller. “Girl dinner” is not a real meal. This trend is normalizing and adding to an already misinformed diet culture. It normalizes girls eating less, or at the very least, creates a spectacle out of women eating.
For anyone thinking that a TikTok trend is not that serious, “girl dinner” has become more than just a trend on TikTok. There’s a girl dinner filter that features food items like shredded cheese, hamburger bun, and pickle juice, which obviously isn’t real food. It’s been talked about on nearly every news outlet, celebrities are participating in the trend, and even Popeyes created a “girl dinner” menu that’s made up of just sides.
So is “girl dinner” just a cute label for disordered eating? Does the term make eating small and unconventional portions of food trendy? Maybe not, but I’m still happy the “girl dinner” trend is dying, because any trend that involves not eating enough is not a trend I want to participate in.
