No but seriously girl dinner is a reflection of the way pressure to diet pushes women to treat hors d'oeuvres and small snacks as a full meal, the inconvenience of cooking on a modern schedule, the near-universal experience of depression and exhaustion and being broke in the TikTok viewership, and just a smidge of self-aware self-deprecation. It’s usually a small selection of easily available pre-prepared ingredients to add up to something approximating a real meal.
Meanwhile autism dinner highlights meals comprised basically of just one or two safe foods. These are usually easy to prepare, uniform in texture, and typically a bit bland. As such they’re often meals one typically thinks of as for children, but are embraced here as a similarly mildly self deprecating but universalized experience shared by adults.
Both exist a shared experiences recognized by pretty much everyone who partakes, but with room to express oneself within that experience. So “girl dinner” might be some string cheese and crackers and a third of a pack of pre-sliced pepperoni and a Diet Coke, or it might mean EL Fudge cookies and beef jerky and a hunk of cream cheese and tea. Meanwhile, “autism dinner” could look more like a big bowl of nothing but Mac and Cheese or a plate of dino nuggies artfully arranged or a vat of noodles and butter or a tray of 20 plain cheese pizza rolls. Girl dinner tends to be cold to room temperature - as if one just grabbed what was at hand in the pantry or fridge at the end of a trying day. Autism dinner is typically warm, as a pleasant/comforting sensory experience is very much part of the point. On the other hand, girl dinner tends to have a variety of flavors and textures that autism dinner (by design!) is lacking. Superficially they may both just look like meals for depressed people, but I assure you they are quite different in both their construction and intent.
… I need to stop being depressed and play a game to start directing my idle thoughts to because I am losing my goddamned mind wasting away on TikTok and YouTube.
