I thought the word “foodie” (that sneaky, silly word) was going where it should—into the grave. I hadn’t heard it in awhile. Hadn’t read it in awhile. Thought it was dead. Was glad.
But then, yesterday, I got an email that included the phrase: “… all my ‘foodie’ (god how I hate that word) friends.”
To which I replied: “I always thought ‘foodie’ was just a shame-faced way of saying ‘gourmand’—with both the epicurean connotations and the gluttonous, I-just-love-to-eat connotations.”
To which she replied: “For me, ‘foodies’ are those annoying, pretentious people who claim to LOVE food and know the subtleties of regional vinegar and six types of cinnamon but seem to only pull these random facts out to show just how much of a foodie they really are. One reason I find them obnoxious is that, often, I know better than they, and they’re talking rubbish.”
To which I didn’t reply: “Then stop using the goddamned word.”
But I did try a Lexis-Nexis search. That silly word is still everywhere. Within the last month, “foodie” has been used, without comment, in stories by CNN, NBC, New York Magazine, Willamette Week, the Cincinnati Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Globe and Mail, the New York Observer, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Australian, Boston Magazine, the Fresno Bee, the Jamaican Observer, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Glasgow Daily Record, the Los Angeles Times, the Montreal Gazette, the English edition of Agence France Presse, the Washington Post (which at least had the decency to clothe its naked ugliness in quotation marks), the South China Morning Post, the Utne motherfucking Reader, and Singapore’s Electric New Paper, whose name gives me the virtual creeps.
Foodies of the world: Just call yourselves gourmands. Don’t hide your aspiration under a fake-homey bushel. Fuck foodie. Figgity-fuck foodie. Forever.
And now, to cleanse the palate—for people who love bagel sandwiches, but don’t know how to keep them from getting smashed and soggy on the way to work: Bagelspindle!
Thanks, BoingBoing.
While I love the rant and agree with your position, the word's here to stay. Sorry.