Women aren’t supposed to like hamburgers.  Unless the woman is a goofy old lady demanding, “Where’s the Beef!?”  Or, more currently, if she is scantily clad and consuming the burger in a very suggestive fashion.  The newest hamburger vixen is Kate Upton I believe.  Ok, ok, so the target audience is 18-30 year-old males. Fine.  But it puts regular women like me in an awkward position.  I really like hamburgers, but when I eat one in public it feels like I’m on display.

Do a quick Google search–“Woman Eating a Hamburger.”  You will get stock images available for purchase. Ninety percent of the woman photographed fall into one of three categories.  First, “The Fat Burger Lady.”  An overweight woman devours a large hamburger.  Her eyes are big, and she is the quintessential food addict.  Second, “The Sexy Burger Lady.”  This is the Kate Upton burger-eater.  She is passionately in love with her burger.  And the third, “The Goofy Burger Girl.”  This girl is jokingly shoving large bites of burger in her mouth with a silly face like, “I’m eating a ton of food and acting like a fool!! Look at me!! Women don’t eat burgers, silly!! LOL!”

Here is my problem with this.  These messages say that if I am a woman and I am enjoying a hamburger, I must be fat, a slut, or a complete idiot.  I’m not any of those.  I just like hamburgers and I happen to be female.

Maybe it is not entirely “THEIR” fault (the proverbial “Their” referring to society, or advertising that has shaped this view of women and hamburgers.)  Because let me tell you a little secret if you didn’t know it already: when women are around men, they sometimes like to pretend they don’t eat anything.  When I spent time with female friends alone they would happily shovel junk food in her faces, then those SAME friends on a group date, would say, “Oh no, I’m not hungry.”  Like eating food is some huge secret that must happen for women behind closed doors.  “I have to eat in the bathroom stall because I don’t want that cute guy to think I’m a pig.”  It’s happened, I’ve seen it.

I didn’t buy into that.  I ordered a juicy burger and ate it.  If the dude thought it was gross, too bad for him.  He can date the salad-eater.  And when I ordered a burger, the girls would look at me like, “She’s doing that, NOW? In front of THEM!?”  Yes, and you are super hungry right now.

Maybe you’ve seen the news story about the Japanese restaurant that offers a special burger wrapper for women.  It literally shades the lady eating a hamburger. Maybe you think this is ridiculous.  But I think it is honest– it shows honesty about society and expectations for  gender.  It is faux pas for a woman to eat “manly” foods.  WE should have these in AMERICA, so girls don’t starve themselves on dates!!

Here’s the bottom line: women like burgers and they always have.  But it’s getting weird for us.  It is perfectly acceptable for a man to devour a hamburger, in fact, it is applauded.  Have you seen this  youtube video?  This man was so passionate about his hamburger, that his video got “Songified.” I’m passionate about burgers too, but that doesn’t make me a slob, a floozy, or a goofball.  It just makes me a woman who likes a really good hamburger.

You can read more of Christina’s humorous take on everything that makes life interesting at Laughing and Losing it.