The Gag Factor
I was eight years old when I watched my first food eating contest. My friend, Madeline, and I sat down with her mother to watch a television show about epic food contesters. I was excited to watch it because I had never saw one before. The first challenge began and the contesters stepped up to their plates. The lights dimmed and the contest began. They started chowing down on huge mounds of butter. Their hands were slippery because they were shoving pounds of butter into their faces. I walked out of the room because I could not sit down and watch it. I just wanted to gag.
Whenever there is a food contest going on, I will watch people eat their food rapidly but in the back of my mind I have to tell myself that I cannot throw up. This has happened to me when I stumbled across this Youtube channel called EpicMealTime. It is about this group of men who cook high calorie fast food in bacon and smother it with Jack Daniels. I just watched the Tequila Taco Time and I really don’t feel like eating dinner.
This video has about 5 million hits on Youtube and it’s because of the gross factor. Even though EpicMealTime is a joke, I cannot laugh during it because I am astonished by how much food they have. I am disgusted the most when they pat the food down with their hands and when they shove the food in their mouths. It makes me gag to see the food dripping out of their mouths, the stains all around their faces and the extremely messy hands.
The leaders of the group are men, but they are playing to the stereotype that only real men can handle chanllege foods and their liquor. They also have women eating too but the male dominance really plays out in this performance.
I know that EpicMealTime is a parody of cooking shows and food eating contests, but I still think it’s really gross to watch. I even found out there are many such as VeganEpicMealTime, but I found that to be even more disgusting.
EpicMealTime- Tequila Taco Night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYxO3Y-wOrM&feature=related
Vegan Meal Time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbBCWZue57M
This would make an interesting psychological study, I think. I wonder, in fact, if anyone has done a study of male-pattern "challenge" eating. How does this bolster masculinity? Is it some reach-back to a time when food was scarce--and this was a signal that a man was the ultimate provider?
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