Mukbangs, Semaglutide & Sexism: Women’s Growing Anxiety Around Food

Around 14 years old, when I first started feeling the pangs of adult consciousness without the freedoms or the frontal lobe of actual adulthood, I would watch YouTube videos that were little more than poorly edited slideshows of sickly thin women (or girls, probably more accurately). I envied these stick figures, but not because I thought they looked particularly good; rather, I was inspired by the control they seemed to have over their own bodies, apparently shaping themselves like clay.

To my adolescent mind, these women were wielding a power—albeit a small, sad one—over their lives, over their bodies. I wanted that power too, so I would skip breakfast and refuse lunch, weaseling out of dinner when I felt it wouldn’t raise too much suspicion. But after a few missed meals, my body would cry out in hunger, and I’d be forced to listen, finally caving to a package of Chips Ahoy or the steaming plate of spaghetti my mom placed in front of me at the dinner table.

My fascination with hyper-thinness ended, more or less, when I gained some autonomy over my life. I got a job, moved into my own apartment, had friends and lovers and weekend plans. Food became a pleasure, or a necessity, but it lost its grip in my mind as a way to exert control over my own life.

My patterns of thought around food and sustenance did not occur in a vacuum, though; there were—and continue to be—greater forces shaping and warping women’s perceptions of eating (or not eating). And like the pro-ana content of the younger internet, the memes of mukbangs and semaglutide are an understandable response to the realities of our current sociopolitical era.

The Rise and Fall of Early-2000s Skinniness and Sexism

In a piece for Vox, Constance Grady writes about the toxic “postfeminism” of the early 2000s. Girls could do anything boys could do! Sure, women might be relentlessly sexually harassed and denigrated at work, but at least they had a place in the boardroom, and that was supposed to be good enough. To be a “cool girl” in the early 2000s meant to be complicit in your own dehumanization, to laugh at the sexist, degrading jokes thrown your way, to “not be so sensitive” even when your bodily autonomy or dignity was at stake. This was also a time when many female celebrities were infamously thin, often appearing, if not openly admitting, to be suffering from restrictive eating disorders.

The culture then began to correct itself. The fascination with ultra-thinness began to wane as Tumblr-era thinspo dried up thanks to widespread criticism of social media’s apparent promotion of disordered eating. A fuller (although still problematically unattainable for many) body type started to trend. #MeToo happened. Intersectional feminism gained ground. The body positive movement condemned size-based discrimination. The particular brand of sexism and obsession with skinniness characteristic of the early 2000s had been replaced and ostensibly relegated to the past. We were in a new era, a better era. Right?

The Concurrent Rise of Anti-Woman Political Backlash and Semaglutide

According to all the polls, Hillary Clinton, perhaps the icon of girlboss feminism, was a shoo-in for the 2016 presidential election. Then Donald Trump won. Although his victory in 2016 was partially attributed to the support of suburban white women, the demographics of Trump voters has shifted precipitously in the past eight years. In 2024, the political divide is very much gendered, with a majority of young men supporting Republicans while young women are siding with Democrats—unsurprisingly so, after a 2022 decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, which gave women the federal right to abortion in 1973.

Both Trump and his vice presidential candidate J. D. Vance have captured American men’s growing anxiety that they are being left behind culturally. Men are struggling, lagging behind women in many arenas, with women now outpacing men in higher education and more and more men ending up alone in their love lives. In response, some conservative men have jumped on the “tradwife” bandwagon, encouraging women to be “submissive” to their husbands. And one way to be submissive is to maintain the kind of body that men claim to find desirable.

Enter semaglutide, a drug originally intended to treat diabetes but that has been increasingly prescribed to aid in weight loss by suppressing appetite. Suddenly, celebrities started dropping pounds rapidly. Thin is officially back in.

Is it a coincidence that a renewed obsession with thinness is taking hold at the same time that many men fantasize about women’s submission to them? No, I’d argue that it makes perfect sense. This type of man wants women to eat less, to be less, to take up less space, both literally and figuratively. They want women to be small physically, yes, but also small mentally, to turn their focus to the size of their bodies instead of exerting the control over politics and culture women have rightfully earned. And many women, still aching for the depreciating value of male validation, are unfortunately obliging.

Mukbangs and the Fantasy of Losing Control

The rise of mukbang videos online seems to me to be another facet of American culture’s changing relationship with thinness and gender politics. While so many women are seeking the skinniness that has once again risen to popularity, we find ourselves fascinated by videos of people stuffing themselves with stomach-wrenching amounts of (often unhealthy) food. What would it feel like to let ourselves lose control around food like that? To eschew medically assisted restriction and fully embrace the hedonism of extreme overeating? Perhaps some women, in lieu of eating like this themselves, can find a kind of vicarious pleasure through the consumption of mukbang content.

Ultimately, the rise of both semaglutide and mukbang content in the midst of growing antifeminist rhetoric points to a cultural anxiety around food, particularly for women. Do we think we can find comfort in controlling our appetites and our food intake? Can we find relief in being controlled by men who purport to “protect and provide” but in reality rarely do? Can we seek a sense of relaxation in watching videos that depict the loss of control we so desperately fear but also secretly crave? I don’t know. Maybe none of us do.

I am no longer 14, and it’s no longer 2008. The sickly thin it girls of today are embracing the “clean girl” aesthetic as opposed to the heroin chic look I was programmed to emulate as a teenager. But American culture has yet to slough off the sexism that has resulted in women’s persistent anxiety around weight and body image. But a preoccupation with women’s body size continues to be what it’s always been: a mirage of control to distract women from what actually gives us power.

Samantha Maxwell is a food writer and editor based in Boston. Follow her on Twitter at @samseating.