When pondering the perfect male fantasy (as we often do on eyeball-freezing winter afternoons), our mind touches on bronzed blondes lining Caribbean beaches or, more unrealistically, finding a rent-stabilized apartment. Watching Adam Richman, the husky host of the Travel Channel’s gluttonous Man v. Food, stuff his maw with 72-ounce steaks or Brick Lane Curry House’s incendiary p’haal curry? Hardly daydream material. Not so, says the Double X’s Greg Beato. According to him, American males are entering a new era of self-control and portion control. Cheesesteaks are out! Salads are in! It’s time to be thin, thin, thin! And Richman is a sexy salmon swimming upstream. “Richman sins to save us — or at least give us voyeuristic reprieve — from the virtuous restraint men are now expected to impose upon their desires,” Beato writes.
Richman, Beato posits, is mankind’s culinary porn star, contorting his gullet for the pleasure of Master Cleansing males. Poppycock, we say. We don’t tune in to Man v. Food or gaze upon eating contests to consume calories vicariously. Rather, we watch these gluttonous displays for the disaster factor: Who will first toss their cookies (or Nathan’s hot dogs)? It’s the same reason that folks attend NASCAR races — it’s the wrecks that elicit the loudest “oohs” and applause. Now, if you’ll excuse us, there’s an unlimited chicken-and-beer deal we have to hit.
Food Porn for Men [Double X]
