Girl Dinner

2023

Date: May 2023 · Place: TikTok · Figures: Olivia Maher, originator · Karina Polanco, viral expander · The medieval peasant plate · Tags: Food, Aesthetic, Format 01. Bread, Cheese, Grapes Olivia Maher posts a TikTok on 11 May 2023 calling her snack-plate dinner a 'girl dinner.' The plate is bread, cheese, butter, grapes, gherkins. Maher invokes a medieval-peasant association. The format is the meme. Within six weeks the hashtag has 1.6 billion views. Karina Polanco's follow-up Girl Dinner song goes platinum on TikTok by August. The aesthetic licenses snack-plate dinners as a complete category. 02. The Discourse Argues With Itself Wellness Twitter and disordered-eating activists argue Girl Dinner romanticizes restriction. Defenders argue it normalizes not cooking. The Atlantic, Vox, and the BBC all publish takes. The meme outlasts the discourse. By winter 'girl dinner' is colloquial English in a way 'sea shanty TikTok' never managed to be. Sources • Olivia Maher, original Girl Dinner upload (TikTok, 11 May 2023) • The New York Times, 'Girl Dinner, Explained' (5 August 2023) • The Atlantic, 'The Trouble With Girl Dinner' (28 July 2023)