Pantry porn: why the obsession with perfect kitchens has to stop
Name: Pantry porn. Age: Newish. Appearance: Nice and tidy, just the way you like it. Finally! I have been a subscriber to pantryporn.com for ages now, so I’m thrilled that it has finally broken through to the mainstream. This is awkward. You do know that pantry porn isn’t actual porn, right?
What? Then what is it? It’s basically just tidying up.
Oh God. Forget every single thing I’ve said up to this point, please. Sure thing, pervert. In actual fact, pantry porn comes from CleanTok.
Which is? The name given to the community of TikTok users who like tidying up.
Well, that all sounds very wholesome. You’re wrong! It isn’t! It’s bad and problematic!
Tidying up is bad and problematic? When it’s done purely for the benefit of social media, yes. Instagram and TikTok are being overrun by neatness influencers whose stock in trade is hyperorganisation.
I don’t know what that means. It means perfectly ordered fridges and cupboards; hundreds of identical containers filled with products and produce, all in neat little rows, all with the labels facing front. It basically means that your kitchen looks like a Wes Anderson set.
That sounds pathological. As someone who just accidentally put their hand into a pile of month-old blueberry sludge trying to get the milk, I’d agree. But it’s worse than that.
It is? You bet. Jenna Drenten, an associate professor of marketing at Loyola University Chicago, has written an essay calling pantry porn “yet another status symbol of the rich”.
Oh, this is going to be good. Drenten writes: “What lies beneath the surface of this anti-messiness, pro-niceness stance is a history of classist, racist and sexist social structures. In my research, influencers who produce pantry porn are predominantly white women who demonstrate what it looks like to maintain a ‘nice’ home by creating a new status symbol: the perfectly organised, fully stocked pantry.”
Aha, so it’s all just a flex. Of course it is. Social media is all about showing the world how superior you are, so it makes sense that this would eventually spread to our kitchens.
My kitchen looks nothing like that. Here’s the thing: nobody’s kitchen does. My guess is that people who have perfectly organised kitchens full of neatly labelled glass jars don’t ever use their kitchens.
Right! Yes! A kitchen is the soul of a house. It should be a little ramshackle and higgledy-piggledy. That’s a sign of use, which is a sign of love. Embrace the mess!
You should probably clear up that blueberry sludge though. Oh shut up, The Patriarchy.
Do say: “It isn’t healthy to Marie Kondo your kitchen cupboards.”
Don’t say: “Wait, does this tin of pilchards that expired in 2018 spark joy?”