Girl Dinner, and How We Officially Lost the Plot

If low-effort meals are a popularity contest, one viral TikTok trend has emerged victorious. Driven by permission to eat without rules or meal prep, “girl dinner” hysteria has reached an all time high. The trend, with well over 30 million views on social media, started out empowering but seems to have morphed into another cultural Rorschach test for how we view women’s eating habits.

Picture this, it’s dark by the time you get home at 6PM, you’re too seasonally depressed and exhausted from a long day of work to even think about preparing a meal. Luckily you’re home by yourself for the night—no partners, no roommates, no kids—which means you can eat whatever you want for dinner without having to consider the preferences or nutrition needs of others. You grab half a baguette, some cubed cheese, a bowl of popcorn, a hunk of chocolate and a glass of wine. You head to the couch and settle in for a night of snacking and watching your favorite TV show. Can you imagine anything better? Welcome to “girl dinner.”

While “girl dinner” started out as a fun, even socially acceptable excuse to avoid preparing a full meal, it slowly started to pull the curtain back on body discourse, a “what I eat in a day” comparison point and, most concerningly, a way to aestheticize restriction. Of course there are busy days when preparing a full meal really isn’t an option, but normalizing, even celebrating, sparse plates as a whimsical, silly girl vibe brings us back to a familiar place: Celebrating undereating as empowerment.

The truth is that we’ve been here before. Every few years, diet culture just rebrands itself in ways that will be more widely accepted, even sought after. “Girl dinner” may wear an anti-diet aesthetic, but it still plays into the same old narrative: That women’s meals should be small. And by the way, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a plate of cheese and crackers—I should know, I consider cheese to be its own food group. In fact, cheese and crackers can fit beautifully into a balanced, satisfying day of eating. But when we glorify the image of minimalism, as silly as the trend seems, we risk reinforcing the idea that less is better. And that’s where the plot got lost.

However, the trend grew in popularity so quickly because it struck a nerve. Most women are tired. Tired of thinking about meal prepping. Tired of cooking after long days. Tired of cleaning up the various utensils needed to make a “quick and easy” recipe. Tired of trying to make every meal check every nutrient box. “Girl dinner”—and its social acceptance—gave permission to just eat what sounded good—no recipes, no rules, no performance.

But what began as a whimsical sense of freedom and liberation quickly blurred into a performance of its own. Try scrolling through the hashtag now on TikTok or Instagram. What you’ll find are aesthetically pleasing snack plates, micro-portions and comments debating whether each “girl dinner” has too much food or too little food. Somehow, even our attempt to rebel against diet culture became another thing to aestheticize for social media and scrutinize in the comment section.

Let’s talk about where we can bring “girl dinner” back to reality—rediscover the plot, if I may. As a dietitian, I love the idea of taking the pressure off meals. Dinner doesn’t have to mean a perfectly prepared, balanced macronutrient plate every night. In reality, sometimes dinner is a snack board, sometimes it’s leftovers, sometimes it’s toast and eggs. What matters most is fueling yourself through consistency and satisfaction so that your body feels nourished and your mind feels calm. If we allow “girl dinner” to evolve past the trend it’s become and into that philosophy—eating simply, intuitively and without guilt—maybe we can actually reclaim the joy it was meant to represent.

In its prime and at its core, “girl dinner” was never really about the food—it was about a feeling. The relief of letting yourself off the hook. The joy and satisfaction that came from eating something you actually want, on your own terms. Maybe that’s the real takeaway here: Not that we need to abandon nutrition altogether, but that we deserve to eat without apology, even when it’s simple.

So go ahead—embrace girl dinner. If bread, cheese and wine are your go-to items, try adding in some deli meat or sliced veggies. Balancing out your “girl dinner” with representation from all three macronutrient groups (carbohydrates, protein, fat) will likely keep you feeling satiated and nourished.

The bottom line is that fed is best. If you’re eating something for dinner, you’re already succeeding. There are absolutely ways to make “girl dinners” more balanced and nutritious, but sometimes a bowl of mac and cheese and a brownie does just the trick.