Super Size Me: A Sexist Tale of Murder by Neglectful Mothers
Two decades later, there are much better discourses on food and gender--like the Japanese novel Butter.
Morgan Spurlock's film Super Size Me purports to document a man's descent into depression and poor health when he leaves his girlfriend for a couple of weeks and fills his body with cheap and shitty fast food.
When Super Size Me came out, it was treated as a righteous attack on the food industry. Later, researchers failed to replicate the results of Spurlock's self-study, and Spurlock revealed that he had been dishonest about his history of drinking. Then, the film that launched Spurlock's career was viewed as a sham, the scenes parsed over for their inadvertent comedic value after the fact.
One angle of Super Size Me that has inspired less discussion is its treatment of women as homemakers and cooks who must be held responsible for the obesity crisis proliferating in America. Since Spurlock's passing on May 23, I went back and watched most of the film. I was struck by a sequence at the beginning in which Spurlock's narration goes over the rising obesity statistics before putting the blame on mothers not cooking at home like they used to.
Over a montage of photos of his mother in the kitchen, Spurlock narrated:
"When I was growing up, my mother cooked dinner every single day. Almost all my memories of her are in the kitchen. And we never ate out. Only on those few, rare special occasions."
That scene stuck with me because I was reading Butter by Asako Yuzuki at the time. The 2017 novel tells the story of a female journalist based in Tokyo investigating the case of a serial killer convicted of manipulating and murdering men she found on dating websites. Her modus operandi shares some characteristics with the real-life killer Kanae Kijima, whom I wrote about in The Film Student episode #34.
The older men she toyed with were easily taken advantage of because they were so lonely and completely unable to take care of themselves. The fictional killer, Kajii, bought into the viewpoint that it is a woman's role to care for men no matter how demanding and lacking in gratitude they are. (The novel's most-quoted line summarizes Kajii's views: "There are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine.")
In contrast to Kajii, who cooked and cleaned for men until she tired of them, other women in the novel learn to cook for themselves and distance themselves from men in their lives who were causing them emotional abuse. The men, including journalist Rika's father, who had been separated from his wife, fall into poor health as they are too lazy or incompetent to cook healthy meals for themselves or find meaning in their lonely lives.
"I guess for someone of your age, you're on the careful side. It's weird, isn't it? Why is it that with nobody to watch over them, men can't stop themselves from falling into disrepair?" Rika said to a male friend who was doing relatively better for a single man.
It is telling that it would take a novel written by a woman and translated by a woman to speak to male problems like loneliness and self-care. Men are usually not able to be vulnerable enough to discuss such issues. When they do, they often blame women for causing male loneliness. They claim women have too high standards, that women are not doing enough to make it easy for men to date.
But is expecting men to contribute to the housework too high of a standard? Is it too much to ask men to respect their girlfriends and wives and not demand they take the subservient role? Instead of women being told to change, why don't men try harder to make themselves more appealing to women--or be able to take care of themselves better without a woman?
Men's problems--those caused by men and those affecting men--typically become women's problems when men make it a problem. Either women are told to solve it or forced to deal with it when the aggrieved men respond with violence.
When Rika's mother divorced her father after suffering years of his criticism over her cooking and her manner of taking care of the home and everything, other neighborhood women asked why she hadn't done more to make the marriage work out.
The men in the book whine and complain when the food of their wives doesn't match the memories of their mothers. Even Kajii would eventually get sick of serving the men in her life. She described their faces as "the faces of people who thought nothing of making endless demands, of being constantly given things ... [sitting] at the table simply waiting to be served."
Before Morgan Spurlock set out on his road trip to eat at McDonalds' across the country, his then-girlfriend, a professional vegan chief, cooked him an elaborate meal with fresh-looking ingredients. It was a multi-course affair with each dish involving elaborate preparations. His girlfriend provided nutritious food to the man, as did his mother. Suddenly, he's on his own, and he's eating trash and making himself puke for the camera.
Later, Spurlock takes a trip to a school cafeteria. The problem, he explains, is not just one fast food brand, and it's not just fast food in general. The whole American dining ecosystem is cheap and unhealthy. The villain is not just the big corporations pushing fatty foods on the public; the villain is also revealed to be the women staffing the cafeterias who are just too damn lazy to cook fresh meals for the nation's children.
Talking to a cafeteria employee, Spurlock said:
"Whatever happened to cooks actually cooking?"
"Let's look at the things that are actually cooked. ... You're only cooking six out of thirty-six meals."
The reverence he places on the "cooking" of meals is an emotional appeal to nostalgia. It seems something in a woman's touch should make the food itself healthier and more nourishing. Would a bacon and cheese hamburger be better for the heart if it was made with buns a mother baked herself and fresh vegetables she'd bought that morning at the farmer's market?
In his real life, Spurlock also treated women poorly. He admitted on his blog to cheating on all of his wives and girlfriends and to demeaning his secretary by calling her "sex pants."
So it is in Super Size Me, the children of America are growing up to die of heart disease, diabetes, and other diseases linked to obesity--killed by mothers and wives who have neglected their womanly duties. In Butter, the old men of the world (Japan, in this case) died after the women who had worked their whole lives to take care of them eventually sought their own desires and neglected cooking for them.
The female protagonist of Butter faces some of the same problems that the single, divorced, and lonely men are facing. She worries about whether she will be alone forever and whether she will be able to take care of herself. There is a solution for men or women who face such problems.
"These days you could even find healthy choices at convenience stores and diners and late-night restaurants. Even someone incapable of cooking could still, by applying themselves a little, live a passably healthy lifestyle," Rika said.
She learned to cook and built a support group amongst her friends and colleagues.
Frequency of women and men cooking at home. Source A Global Analysis of
Cooking Around the World, A Report by Gallup & Cookpad.
In real life, men are doing more cooking and self-care than before. Things might not be changing fast enough. Some men might not be keeping up with a changing society. But all men have the capacity in them to try and learn.
Books and Movies Mentioned in This Essay
Butter (2017) by Asako Yuzuki
Ari’s Review: 4.5 stars. The novel explores interesting concepts relating to gender and social expectations—more than just those that I touched on in this essay. It is poetically written, and the author does an excellent job of describing foods and dining experiences. It seems, at times, a bit long—it depends how much you enjoy scenes exploring social connections and inner emotional journeys.
Super Size Me (2004) by Morgan Spurlock
Ari’s Review: 2.5 stars. It’s old. You’ve probably already seen it or have no need to see it. The simplified premise—that eating fast food too often is bad for you—was as obvious at the time as it is today. Spurlock attempted to use Michael Moore’s confrontational tactics to make the film more dramatic, but there’s not much exciting or dramatic about a guy eating food every day.