Real men don’t eat quiche, do they?: Food, fitness and masculinity crisis in 1980s America

Abstract

Written for laughs in 1982, Bruce Feirstein’s Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche: A Guidebook to All that Is Truly Masculine hit a real and raw nerve among American men. Beneath its jokes, the book documented a moment of 1980s gender crisis that pitted older constellations of masculinity against ‘the new man’. This article analyses how Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche and its cookbook sequel communicated this gender anxiety through food and the body specifically, considering the context of the Cold War, notable transitions in nutrition science and policy, and period food and fitness trends. Although many readers today may not know the origin of Feirstein’s book’s titular phrase, notions of ‘real men’ and gendered food still have cultural endurance, often deployed as a shorthand for hegemonic gender norms that pose destructive consequences 40 years later.