Everybody Does It!

Part 1

Why is it that frozen meals – TV Dinners, if you will – are the 21st century equivalent of what we used to delicately call “self-abuse?” Yes, I’m talking about the M word, indeed.

Here’s what I find confusing: since 1998, the amount of money spent by Americans on frozen, prepared foods has skyrocketed, vaulting an amazing 58% in a mere 7 years. Based upon figures like that, you would think that everyone you know is eating TV dinners, right? Try to find one person who will tell you what frozen dinners he likes, or what prepared meals she feeds her kids. Everyone does it…and no one will admit it, just like M.

What’s the issue? Is it the psychological leftovers and detritus from the 1950’s, when TV dinners were truly dreadful? Or is it some type of urban mythology sprung full-grown from movie and television images of blowsy women (replete with unfiltered cigarettes hanging from their lips), plopping down the signature aluminum tray on a flyspecked table in front of a dirty loutish husband that gives us the shudders when we consider “TV Dinners?” We seem to be beset by a type of collective consciousness that believes that while frozen vegetables are good for you, frozen prepared foods are slatternly.

We don’t just consider TV dinners as “bad,” in a sense of merely taste or nutrition; we seem to consider them “bad” in a moral sense, as something reprehensible or evil. Heck, if you don’t believe that TV Dinners are socially stigmatized, just ask Carla Gugino. In her new TV series, Threshold, her character is shown in the first episode as an ingenious worst-case-scenario expert who dines alone on prepared dinners. They might as well have branded a gigantic “L” across her forehead to complete her identification as the unloved Loser. No wonder the show was canceled.



Next Wednesday: Part 2 of Everybody Does It!