The Mid-Century Origins of Food Pornography

When I was flipping hotcakes at a Sambo's Pancake House back in the mid-century era my manager (I'm looking at you Leon) sometimes tried to impart restaurant food wisdom to my foggy mind. One of his firmly held beliefs was that we were first and foremost "Selling the Sizzle" rather than the actual food we served. A 1938 New Yorker article attributes that bit of sublime wordsmanship to a Mr. Elmer Wheeler: "In the 1930's Mr. Wheeler adopted the profession of seducing people in the mass with words including Wheelerpoint No. 1: 'Don’t Sell the Steak—Sell the Sizzle! ....the sizzle has sold more steaks than the cow ever has, although the cow is, of course, mighty important."

Up to that point cookbooks were created with the intent to produce a meal of some reliability and variety. However, around the mid-century a whole new kind of cookbook started popping up that was made for Looking, rather than Cooking! This nascent industry was first documented by Alexander Cockburn in 1979: "True Gastro Porn heightens the excitement and also the sense of unattainability by proffering colored photographs of various completed recipes." Cockburn defined Gastro Porn as a glamorized presentation of food using forms of photography and styling that presents food provocatively, similar to pornographic photography. More importantly he noted that the photographs in this genre "always repress the production process of the meal and  are always beautifully lit and touched up." Soon the market was flooded with this new style of cookbook featuring glamor shots of gleaming meals for an audience of eaters who coincidentally seemed to no longer have the time, or desire, to actually cook. This was a generational shift which eventually led to the current norm for younger generations to routinely post visually appealing videos and photos of food and drink across social media: Food Porn was Born and Normalized. 

Most of what we have in our Vintage Food Porn section is the early-on-mid-century work of professional pornographers. Better Homes and Gardens was a major contributor to this trend (whether they knew it or not) and we have a constant supply of their myriad iterations of this work along with many other examples. So, pull down the shades, take the phone off the hook, and find a comfortable nook to stretch out in while you browse along with us: https://www.ebay.com/str/portlandpandemonium/Vintage-Food-Porn/_i.html?store_cat=38704219017

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