Pantry porn is a mashup of infotainment, how-to, lifestyle content and ASMR, a form of sound-driven content intended to relax viewers. Coupling social media content with the “porn” descriptor acts as shorthand for desirability, gratification and gawking. This dynamic of watching and being watched is a hallmark of modern digital consumer culture where nonsexual things are linguistically tethered to porn: food porn, travel porn, book porn, real estate porn. Consumers armed with camera phones could suddenly fetishize meals for the voyeuristic pleasure of their friends and followers. New technology did not invent food porn, but it did catalyze it in new ways. The so-called “ camera eats first” phenomenon introduced user-generated images of cooking, eating and staging food.Ĭonsumers’ controversial obsession with food photography resulted in some restaurants banning smartphone photography while other businesses created veritable wonderlands for food-inspired selfies such as the Museum of Ice Cream and The Egg House. Throughout the 2010s, food porn dominated social media.
Move over food porn – make way for pantry porn This design shift paved the way for many modern American pantries to feature sweeping floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall cabinetry and walk-in storage spaces. As open floor plans became popular in the 1950s, kitchens emerged into plain view. Throughout the next century, pantries started being built in middle-class homes. This small space, tucked between the kitchen and dining room, was a marker of status – an area to hide both the food and the people who prepared it. In the late 1800s, the butler’s pantry emerged as an architectural trend among high society. It was purely functional, not a place to show off to others. The pantry – derived from the Latin word for bread, “panis” – was originally a hidden space for storing food. How did the perfectly organized pantry become so ubiquitous in the digital age? And what does it say about the expectations of being a good homemaker? When pantries became pretty
As someone who studies digital consumer culture, I’ve noticed an uptick in glamorized, stylized and fully stocked pantries on TikTok and Instagram, giving rise to a content genre I dub “pantry porn.”
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