Article
Serving Hot Cakes and Hashtags: How Two Resort Towns Entice LGBTQ+ Tourists with Food and Drink on Social Media
Food, Culture, and Society: An International and Multidisciplinary Journal
(2023)
Abstract
As the study of food culture has expanded, researchers have taken to examining the relationality of eating practices and social identities in media contexts. Employing an integrative approach to study social media, this research brings into focus the eating habits of a segment of the world’s population that has been studied infrequently: people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (or LGBTQ+). Connecting acts of tourism to social media and queer experience, the following examination illuminates how the eating experiences shown in social media marketing have parallels with earlier acts of politically charged commensalism among LGBTQ+ people. As such, this study speaks to the way that groups, businesses, and individuals have enacted culinary tourism by building upon queer discourses of food in the context of two American resort towns: Provincetown, Massachusetts and Palm Springs, California. Attending to the values created by food-related aesthetics, language, and social spaces, this article shows how social media postings construct and imagine the ideal tourism experiences of queer peoples. Consideration likewise is given to the cultural diversity of LGBTQ+ travelers including how resort towns have been putting forth efforts to create more inclusive culinary environs.
Keywords
- LGBT,
- Cultural History,
- Food,
- Sexual Orientation,
- Gender
Disciplines
- Arts and Humanities,
- American Studies,
- Digital Humanities,
- Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies,
- Business,
- Advertising and Promotion Management,
- Hospitality Administration and Management,
- Food and Beverage Management,
- International Business,
- Tourism and Travel,
- Social and Behavioral Sciences,
- Communication,
- Critical and Cultural Studies,
- Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication,
- Mass Communication,
- Social Media,
- Leisure Studies,
- Food Studies and
- Social Justice
Publication Date
December, 2023
Citation Information
Edward A Chamberlain. "Serving Hot Cakes and Hashtags: How Two Resort Towns Entice LGBTQ+ Tourists with Food and Drink on Social Media" Food, Culture, and Society: An International and Multidisciplinary Journal (2023) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ed_chamberlain/28/