TikTok's 'Boy Dinner' Trend Highlights A Hilarious Lack Of Vegetables
If you've following TikTok meal trends, you've probably come across the "girl dinner" phenomenon. It essentially means a meal made up of bits and pieces from one's kitchen which are pieced together to create a semi-presentable plate. There are many different iterations of girl dinner, and some people even have other names for it, like "French girl meal" and "picky bits." At its most developed, it can look remarkably like a charcuterie board (which, in our honest opinion, kind of defeats the purpose). But girl dinner has just met its match, and it's quite... different.
As TikToker Bryan Lee explained, "If you want to know what Boy Dinner is, go to your local supermarket at 6:30 and stand behind a single man and see what's inside of his basket." Spoiler: while there's lots of variety, vegetables are not represented. Precooked sausage, boxed mac & cheese, frozen pizza and potato chips are on the menu; salad and other labor-intensive items are not.
Boy dinner isn't limited to boys, either. TikToker Elsa posted a video on the topic, and explained that she herself was eating (enjoying would be too strong a word) a boy dinner, which she rated a 5/10. What was it? "A chicken breast on a fork. Nothing else. Is it dry? A little bit. Am I going to cut it? [Cue the eye roll] No."
Different shades of lazy
If the essence of TikTok's #girldinner is avoiding food waste by turning scraps of cheese, bread, veggies, and the like into easy yet presentable meals, the point of #boydinner seems to be another sort of waste avoidance: wasted time and effort in getting the job done. TikTok's Catherineannechiang summed it nicely by showing her own Girl Dinner and comparing it to the images of dinner her boyfriend had kindly shared with her. Her own food was an assortment prettily-presented leftovers. Her boyfriend's meal?
His entire dinner was made up of a single, large steak. With some unpeeled garlic cloves on top.
@catherineannechiang my thesis on girl vs. boy dinner #girldinner #boydinner
Cat, in reflecting on the distinction, suggested that the difference lies in the fact that Girl Dinner — while it does involve minimal effort — is like a "curated little experience" whereas boy dinner is "how can I get the requisite number of calories into my body in as simple a form as possible." This just goes to show that even in laziness, variety is the spice of life, and there are many ways of putting minimal effort into your meals.