Friday, January 13, 2012

The male stereotype in the media

A couple of days ago, a feminist site posted a quick little rant that used Erwan Le Corre as a segue to talk about how this whole "paleo" trend was promoting some hyper-patriarchal masculine past, comparing it to the modern Republican conservatism. It was pretty clear that the author didn't know much about the Paleolithic (her citation to how bad the Paleolithic was for women linked to the author of The Clan of the Cave Bear, which is fiction) and after significant negative feedback, the piece was pulled (but lives on thanks to the internet).

I commented that I really don't think that the Paleolithic diet/lifestyle thing is a man thing. But I think it seems that way to outsiders because that's how the media portrays it. It's the media that's selling the caveman hunter-barbarian stereotype, not the movement.

I've experienced this first hand, but I really haven't said much about it because it brings up so many personal insecurities. After the NYtimes article I was featured in, the NY Paleo Meetup and I interacted with a large number of media outlets, both television and print. We even managed two glorious comped dinners at Takashi that were filmed for various TV programs in the US and Europe. Overall, I probably spent hours and hours talking to reporters and being filmed or photographed. But I honestly don't have much to show for it except the original article. I was cut out of almost all of the things I was involved with.
Funny that Erwan Le Corre attacks the media's steoreotypical portrayal of the Paleo movement, while thinking it is the Paleo movement that is at fault.

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