#10: The One Where We're All Fed (Up)

Food + family = the holidays create a different kind of recipe for a lot of us.

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10+ years ago (and prior to everyone sharing their lives on social media), it felt like we all believed that everyone else (but us) was truly experiencing what the holidays are supposed to be about: quality time with family, eating good food, and celebrating holiday cheer/traditions. Yet, we were all a little quieter about the realities of the what many of our experiences of the holidays actually looked like: messiness, tricky family dynamics, mental load and domestic labor inequalities, and overall jambalaya of emotions that come with being thrust into your childhood home with some dysfunctional familial patterns well past their due date, just like the spices in your parents cabinets.

This might just be the perspective of someone who is chronically online for her job, but while the online advice of 2020 post-oompa loompa times for the holidays with THAT uncle more closely aligned with, “ways to avoid or end uncomfortable dinner table topics,” this year’s slew of online advice and content seem to gear more towards, “how to take no shit and tell your racist and/or fatphobic aunt where she can put it.”