Kitchen Porn: Of Consumerist Fantasies and Desires

The essay works from the understanding that pornography is more than sexually explicit content; it is a literary form that responds to insecurities with fantasies of desire and abundance. Looking at home-goods advertising by Food52, this study considers how the online store mimics pornography’s form to meet class and gender insecurities with narratives and images that perform classist and postcolonial sensibilities of whiteness. As a neoliberal rhetoric, Food52 sells its wares by connecting the purchase of its products to shoppers’ needs for affection, class approval, and recognition as cosmopolitan. The result is a consumerist pornography, promising that anxiety about class standing and domestic correctness can be assuaged through consumption. This pornography—like all pornography—offers fantasies that can never truly be realized, piquing desires and playing on insecurities to encourage consumers to make purchases in hopes of capturing elusive satisfaction.