Beefsteak Musings

Reading this article and learning about beefsteaks, something about which I had no knowledge prior to reading about it now, left me thinking about several different things.  I was very surprised to hear that the beefsteaks was a popular thing so long ago--very early in the 20th century, and possibly even before that.  This was so hard for me to believe because it seemed to me that the whole beefsteaks concept was very modern.  We’ve talked a lot in this class about the American extremist food culture, and we’ve always addressed it as a relatively recent development.  However, reading this article shed a new light on the situation.  The beefsteak dinners were very similar to these kinds of extremist food contests, but seemed to exist a hundred years before their time.  The guests gorged themselves on as much steak and beer as they could possibly eat; the combination of red meat with alcohol was reminiscent of “Epic Meal Time” in my mind.  It was so interesting to see this kind of thing has been around for much longer than I had realized.

One thing from this article that made me a little upset to read, on the other hand, was the parts where it talked about how “women ruined beefsteaks.”  I found this very insulting and sexist, and it made me upset to read.  I realize that the changes in beefsteak protocol happened around the same time that women began to attend them, but it seemed very generalizing and offensive to blame all of this on women.  If men had not wanted these changes to have been made, why did they have to go along with them?  I’m not sure whether the author was trying to represent an anti-female mindset of the times or whether it was his genuine opinion that women have a habit of messing things up in this way, but I was insulted by it and unhappy to read about it during this part of the article.

When I reached the end of the reading, I was in for a big surprise.  The article was written in 1939!  I’d had a feeling that it might be old, but I was imagining a date somewhere in the 1960’s, as was the case with some of the other articles we had read.  I’d never imagined that I was reading something so historic!  Looking back on the article with this context in mind, some of the things that took me by surprise are even more surprising than they had been, and some are less so.  The concept of a beefsteak still manages to amaze me, and I am still very interested to see that extreme eating was a trend much before I assumed it had emerged.  The anti-feminine undertones of the text seem more appropriate to me knowing that it was written roughly 75 years ago.  All-in-all, this article was one of the most interesting ones we read, in my opinion, and it definitely served its purpose of opening my eyes to an experience that I had previously not been knowledgable of.