Mediating Gender Norms Through the ‘Foodies’ Culture as Romantic Emotions

This study explores how intimacy is shaped through mobile-mediated dating, which is seasoned with culinary preferences and gendered conventions. Drawing on the sociological concept of mediated intimacy and attending to emotionalised culinary experiences and gendered individualism, this study asks three questions. First, how is intimacy represented by dining-dating apps? Second, how do these dining-dating apps approach ‘being single’? Third, what gender relations and what contradictions between romance and consumerism can be identified in dating that is managed by an app and that trades in intimate commodities? By analysing the advertising text, testimonials, and reviews posted online, I demonstrate that individuals are not only invited to manage their intimate life through cultural consumption but are also compelled to adopt accelerated and mediated ways of engaging. I reveal that the limited and regulated access to communicative exchanges and the extended follow-up dinner dates in dining-dating apps is related to concerns about personal and relational investment. Furthermore, I argue that dining-dating apps participate in the mediation of emotions and gender relations by introducing intimate commodities that blur the borders between individualist aspiration and gendered and classed ways of experiencing intimacy. Together, these findings provide a particularly interesting context and open up new avenues for studying intimacy, gender, and cultural consumption in sociology and media studies.