‘Pantry porn’ trend rooted in racist, sexist behavior: Loyola professor
By Katherine Donlevy - New York Post
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If you ditched cereal boxes for uniform glass containers and opted for Plexiglas storage bins in your fridge, you may be engaging in classist, racist and sexist behaviors, one Chicago professor contends.
Dr. Jenna Drenten, an associate professor of marketing at Loyola University, argued Tuesday that the recent obsession with organizing kitchen and pantry spaces — a TikTok trend she dubbed “pantry porn” — is pushing societal standards that the average American cannot keep up with while tricking consumers into spending more money.
The “new minimalism” approach is just a thinly veiled excuse to entice people to buy more items — containers, labels and storage space — that give off the decluttered appearance of simple living, Drenten wrote for the Conversation.
“Storing spices in coordinated glass jars and color-coordinating dozens of sprinkles containers may seem trivial. But tidiness is tangled up with status, and messiness is loaded with assumptions about personal responsibility and respectability,” the professor stated.
“Cleanliness has historically been used as a cultural gatekeeping mechanism to reinforce status distinctions based on a vague understanding of ‘niceness’: nice people, with nice yards, in nice houses, make for nice neighborhoods.
“What lies beneath the surface of this anti-messiness, pro-niceness stance is a history of classist, racist and sexist social structures.”
According to Drenten’s research, the social media influencers who push pantry porn are “predominantly white women who demonstrate what it looks like to maintain a ‘nice’ home by creating a new status symbol: the perfectly organized, fully stocked pantry.”
Even celebrities have joined the trend, further peddling it.
Kim Kardashian showed off her massive walk-in fridge in 2020 — and two separate average-size others — that was peppered with glass jars filled with different condiments for frozen yogurt.
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Last year, sister Khloe Kardashian bragged about her extravagant pantry that is packed with items on floor-to-ceiling shelves. Photos show most of the items — pastas, Fig Newtons and Goldfish — are stored in glass containers while other plastic-wrapped foods are stowed in wicker baskets.
Drenten emphasizes that orderly pantries have been a status symbol since the late 1800s, when only the wealthy could afford the space to hide both the food and the people who prepared it.
In the centuries since, pantries have evolved to be part of the open floor plan. How well the homeowner maintained the pantry and organized the space served as a new status marker instead.
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She believes the recent trend of “pantry porn” was only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, when shortages in the supply chain surged: “Keeping stuff on hand became a symbol of resilience for those with the money and space to do so.”
The Kardashians and other “pantry porn” celebrities have set the societal standard for an ideal mother, wife or woman, Drenten argues, but the aspiration falls apart for those who can’t afford the money or time to maintain the upkeep.
“Pantry porn, as a status symbol, relies on the promise of making daily domestic work easier. But if women are largely responsible for the work required to maintain the perfectly organized pantry, it’s critical to ask: easier for whom?” Drenten said.
