Girl Dinner is for the Gay Girls

The lesbians are hungry

This is the Sunday Edition of Paging Dr. Lesbian. If you like this type of thing, subscribe, and share it with your friends. Upgrade your subscription for more, including weekly dispatches from the lesbian internet and monthly playlists. You can also buy PDL stickers.

Before the kickoff of Hot Strike Summer, we saw the advent of an internet trend that highlights the daily pleasures of living as a mere peasant. The phrase “Girl Dinner” was coined by Olivia Maher, who posted a Tik Tok video of her dinner – which consisted of wine, cheese, bread, grapes, and pickles – in May. The video has since been viewed over a million times, and many other interpretations of the meal have followed.

As the trend gained popularity, think pieces and explainer articles have begun to crop up. Ali Francis of Bon Appétit wrote that while the idea of a Girl Dinner initially refered to a cheese or snack plate, “any assemblage of foods intended to be a full meal can be a girl dinner.” The New York Times described it as “an aesthetically pleasing Lunchable,” while Nigella Lawson – who became a meme herself due to her amusing pronunciation of microwave – noted that Brits call this type of meal “Picky Bits.” 

Maher – a showrunner’s assistant who is out of work due to the strike – has a pleasantly philosophical take on the concept. “Girl dinner can look like many things,” she told the New York Times. “But what matters is the feeling it evokes. Giddiness often goes along with it, because it’s what you want. It satisfies you.” Maher revealed that the idea of Girl Dinner came to her while she was on a “hot girl walk,” another internet term used to describe the previously unsexy act of taking a stroll. 

via The Guardian.

While some onlookers worry the trend is normalizing disordered eating, most internet users have taken the concept in good fun. But like many contemporary forms of memetic language, the term has expanded far past its original meaning as its descriptive scope broadens. Instead of referring to a particular meal or snack, the term is now used to describe people as well, utilizing a figurative definition of hunger rather than a literal one. 

In some cases, Girl Dinner is used in a Straight context, describing the sex appeal of a wide variety of men. Cillian Murphy is Girl Dinner, and so are Pete Wentz in a mesh shirt and Anakin Skywalker. Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter fanfic, a horny brand of “queerness” favored by some straight women, is also Girl Dinner. The implication here is that Girl Dinner is not just about literal food, but about something that is nourishing or hunger-inducing in another manner. People who are romantically or sexually interested in someone else are often described as “thirsty,” while a hot individual might be called a “snack” (or, if they are particularly delicious, as an entire meal). Consumption has become a common way to express desirous feelings. As Maher notes, satisfaction is key.

Unsurprisingly, this trend has made its way to the lesbian side of the internet as well. The Twitter (or X) account sapphicslike, which has over 420,000 followers, started posting Girl Dinner memes in relation to lesbian characters or content. Girl Dinner now describes Angelina Jolie, the cast of the movie Bottoms, Keke Palmer’s character in Nope lesbian-spreading, Korra and Asami from The Legend of Korra, several characters from the A League of Their Own series, and Ellie from The Last of Us video game, to name a few. The popular Instagram meme account Godimsuchadyke posted a Girl Dinner meme depicting Charlize Theron and Sofia Boutella’s characters making out in Atomic Blonde. 

Like the Straight memes, these Girl Dinner posts indicate a thirst for the actors or characters in question. But the term takes on a cheekier, more complicated meaning when deployed in a lesbian or queer context. In some cases, such as when the phrase is used to caption two women kissing, the implication is that these two characters are dining on one another – they are each other’s girl dinner, so to speak. The viewer of such an image may also take a thirsty or hungry pleasure in viewing the scene, adding another dimension of lust to the conversation. 

This idea of consumption and hunger has long defined popular images of lesbians. Think of the lesbian vampire trope, which was a popular topic of sexploitation films in the 1970s, or the predatory, dangerous lesbians depicted in lesbian pulps of the 1950s. The lesbian has long been associated with a voracious, pathological hunger because her desires are defined as dangerously outside of the norm and potentially corrupting influences. We have since reclaimed these images, and forthright displays of lesbian desire like these Girl Dinner memes illustrate a newfound sense of comfort when it comes to sexual appetite. 

Tangled up in this trend is the notion of objectification, a concept that has long been deployed in bad – or at least misunderstood – faith. (The confusion surrounding the meaning of the male gaze is likely to blame for these misapprehensions.) Sexual objectification always produces a different dynamic when it's queer in nature. In a lesbian context, desire is sometimes distilled down to a single body part, whether it be a collarbone, a jawline, or a pair of hands. There is a sexual focus here, but also a sense of reverence and aspiration. Queer folks tend to be quite aware of power dynamics, and sensuality is baked into discussions of submission or dominance. 

Though it may not appear so at first, Girl Dinner’s prominence in the lesbian digisphere – and the straight one, to be fair – recalls the sometimes violent language of (horny) stan culture. Think of the trend of fans pleading for celebrities to run them over, step on them, or otherwise cause them bodily harm. There is often a queer dimension to this desire for obliteration, especially when it involves middle-aged actresses (colloquially known as MILFs). Lesbian Girl Dinner reverses these usual dynamics. Instead of wanting to be dominated by someone hot, the phrase illustrates a desire to consume another, or in some cases indicates the pleasure of watching two people enact such consumption.

via @godimsuchadyke

It’s not surprising that the meme has been co-opted by the lesbian internet. “Gay Twitter” (or Gay X, as it were) is often the origin of popular internet memes, jokes, and trends that later become widespread. Lesbian Twitter and Instagram are a part of this digital architecture, but are rarely valorized as such. For lesbians and sapphics, meme accounts act as meaning-makers and spaces of belonging. As Girl Dinner illustrates, any meme can be lesbian-ified in order to make followers feel seen, or perhaps just have a laugh. The popularity of lesbian Girl Dinner indicates where we are in terms of lesbian expression. The idea that one can feel comfortable expressing lesbian desire (read: hunger) publicly – albeit in a digital, somewhat anonymized space – is heartening. 

The growth of the Girl Dinner trend more broadly reflects how we define cultural expression in online (and offline) spaces. Phrases like “girl” and “dude” are not necessarily tied to gender essentialism – anyone can be a girl if the title is bequeathed to them. This kind of gender play – at least in terms of language – is common online, though perhaps less so in the world at large. The meaning of internet terminology is expansive, and context hugely affects linguistic connotations. It would be impossible to make the connection between a photo of Angelina Jolie in Gia and a Tik Tok of a young woman eating grapes and cheese for dinner without these digital breadcrumbs.

Internet lingo is elastic and amorphous, transforming to fit the needs of the communities that use it. It goes without saying that we’ve lost the plot, but did it ever exist to begin with? Anything can be Girl Dinner if you’re hungry enough, and it looks like our stomachs are grumbling.