Nicole Allen marvels at the dark side of food porn:
"[G]ross food," as Gourmet.com termed it, or "grotesque food," as I prefer, has taken hold strongly and suddenly. When thisiswhyyourefat.com, the Tumblr blog that is home to the Fat Bitch, launched in February, it went from zero to 2 million pageviews in 48 hours. Supersizedmeals.com also took off, and today the fried butter ball or deep-fried cupcake on a stick can be found on your average food, gossip, or city blog.
[…] Consider the bacon beer mug, which is pretty much what it sounds like. For whatever reasons, beer and bacon form the core of a heavily marketed vision of the American male. This is a man who goes camping in his Ford pickup, swilling Bud by the fire and flipping bacon in the morning. His masculinity is calm, assured, innate. But what kind of man downs beer from a mug made of bacon? Surely one who is mocking this he-man image. But I would guess that beneath the satire, he lacks the carefree masculinity whose symbols he regurgitates.
