io9 is proud to present fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Eat, Prey, Love: A Modest Proposal for Ensuring Gender Equality Through Selective Dietary Practices; or, a Geriatric Millennial’s Guide to #GirlDinner” by Jilly Dreadful. Enjoy!
Eat, Prey, Love: A Modest Proposal for Ensuring Gender Equality Through Selective Dietary Practices; or, a Geriatric Millennial’s Guide to #GirlDinner
by Jilly Dreadful
On “Young women aren’t inherently cannibalistic,” says Dr. McGowan, a leading expert in digital anthropology. “It’s just the algorithm that can make them this way.”
The earliest videos went something like this: disembodied female voices singing strange intonations of the words “girl dinner” in a voice-over effect as the visuals of the video featured dozens of increasingly strange combinations of food. A handful of Cheez-It crackers, grapes, and a stick of string cheese with a line of sriracha along the top? Girl dinner. A tin of anchovies, a couple gummy worms, and a sliced up kiwi: girl dinner. As the trend gained popularity, however, Michele in Michigan posted a video of sautéed onions and mushrooms with what appeared to be a human ear. Kira in Pennsylvania made herself a bowl of ramen, and in the description of the video wrote, “Is that a soft boiled egg or my narcissistic ex-husband’s eyeball in my bowl? ≧◡≦ Who can say?” Although social media sites scrubbed their platforms clean of the more graphic content that came later, the true ingredients of the earliest videos were never substantiated.
Some channels attribute the digital siren song to a social media algorithm influenced by the sun static reported by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. Talking heads on other outlets produced soliloquies lamenting Gen Z’s lack of patriarchal respect. But whether it was due to space weather heretofore unseen since 1859’s Carrington Event, or a topic trending amongst an increasingly radicalized audience, only one thing was certain: Young women from all over the United States suddenly started to target men known to exhibit traits of toxic masculinity for literal #girldinner. It was as if the collective consciousness of womankind had decided to take “you are what you eat” to its logical, if gruesome, conclusion.
In Ojai, California, Kathy Griffin hosted one of her infamous dinner salons where the main course was controversial male influencer Jake Paul. Attendees posted videos to their Instagram Stories slow-panning around what appeared to be a pit-roasted provocateur on a spit: a self-styled alpha male reduced to spectacle, complete with an apple in his mouth. “It’s the fifteenth anniversary of Jennifer’s Body, and hell is eating locally sourced dudebro,” quipped Diablo Cody. Her Instagram story garnered not only millions of views, but thousands of comments challenging the validity of the video as a publicity stunt—because, although she wasn’t tagged directly, eagle-eyed followers spotted Oscar-award winning special FX makeup artist Ve Neill also in attendance. A meme shared more than 1.8 million times, captions the scene with, “Dudes really would rather be spit-roasted than go to therapy.” The women’s expressions in the footage carried that same electric anticipation visible on Anthony Joshua’s face right before he knocked Jake Paul unconscious in their infamous boxing match: joy mixed with certainty, the look of someone who knows exactly what’s about to happen. Months after this #girldinner, Jake Paul still hasn’t surfaced. He also hasn’t been reported missing, further fueling speculation on whether this was all staged. Another viral comparison paired the dinner footage with clips from Paul’s boxing match against Anthony Joshua: split screens showing the women’s gleeful expressions matched perfectly with Joshua’s famous smile right before the knockout.
“Same energy,” the captions read. Was it just another outrageous stunt from YouTube’s notorious chaos merchant, or was it the ultimate alpha male stunt taken to its horrifying real life conclusion?
After that #girldinner, the phenomenon spread faster than a TikTok dance challenge, leaving authorities baffled and men freshly dosed with red pills quaking in their “designer suits, nice watches, good belts, and dress shirts.” Hashtags like #EatThePatriarchy and #ThisisWhatFeminismTastesLike also began trending.
As the madness peaked, a new cuisine emerged, playfully named, “Toxic Masculini.” Every street corner had a sidewalk chalkboard with decorative script advertising their limited time menus featuring “ethically sourced man meat.” Yelp reviewers raved about the “rich flavor profile of entitlement,” the “tender texture of fragility,” and the “sweet, sweet saltiness of male tears. It’s fat-free and full of irony, my favorite flavor!”
But like all trends, as this one began to wane, it finally reached the hallowed halls of academia. At Dartmouth, a Ph.D. candidate submitted her dissertation on “The Gastronomic Applications of Toxic Masculinity in the Post-Digital Age.” Her dissertation is still currently under consideration by the ethics board of The Graduate School.
Perhaps it was the shortage of suitable ingredients, or maybe the novelty simply wore off. Whatever the reason, women across the nation gradually returned to more conventional dining habits. In the aftermath, sociologists, psychologists, and data scientists scrambled to make sense of what had transpired. Was it mass hysteria? A glitch in the collective unconscious? Or simply the logical endpoint of years of pent-up frustration?
Dr. McGowan proposed a novel theory in her TEDx Talk: “What we witnessed was the birth of a new form of digital folklore. Just as our ancestors used stories of wendigos and vampires to process their fears and desires, we created the ‘girl dinner’ phenomenon to confront the very real monsters in our midst.” Her words resonated with millions, sparking a global conversation about gender dynamics, online radicalization, and the power of memes to shape reality.
As the dust settled, a new equilibrium emerged. Men who once scoffed at the idea of emotional intelligence now flocked to workshops on empathy and active listening. Dating apps introduced “toxicity scores” alongside height and job titles. And, in conference rooms across the country, men eyed their female colleagues with a newfound respect, tinged with just a respectable hint of fear.
But in the darkest corners of the internet, whispers persisted. Anonymous forums buzzed with rumors of underground supper clubs where the “girl dinner” tradition lived on. Urban legends spoke of a secret society of women who had tasted power and refused to give it up.
Now that the feast of #girldinner has ended, the hard truths we’ve swallowed sit heavy in our collective gut, demanding to be processed. “A new language emerged,” concluded Dr. McGowan, “spoken in the dialect of hunger and satiation, of power consumed and power shared. For the first time, we all became predator and prey, forever changed by the meal we made of ourselves.” After having sampled toxic masculinity, is it ever possible to eliminate our deeply ingrained biases, or are we destined to simply purge and go back to the way things were? Are we finally full, or has our taste of power only intensified our hunger for lasting change?
About the Author
Jilly Dreadful writes feminist science fiction about cyborgs, mermaids, and the strange places where bodies and technology collide. Her first book, Cosmobiological: Stories, a hopepunk collection of short fiction, won the Sundress Publications Prose Manuscript Contest in 2020. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, longlisted by Ellen Datlow for Best Horror of the Year, and received honorable mentions for Best Science Fiction of the Year. She has a Ph.D. from University of Southern California (you could call her Dr. Dreadful, but she’s not that kind of doctor) and is a member of SFWA. When she’s not writing fiction, she creates digital ghost stories, publishes dark humor at TheMorbs.net, hosts The Ophelia Frequencies podcast, and is rebooting The Brainery: Online Speculative Fiction Workshops for summer 2026.
Please visit Lightspeed Magazine to read more great science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared in the March 2026 issue, which also features short fiction by Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe, Jennifer Hudak, Matthew Kressel, Vanessa Fogg, JT Petty, Sara S. Messenger, Patrick Hurley, and more. You can wait for this month’s contents to be serialized online, or you can buy the whole issue right now in convenient ebook format for just $4.99 or subscribe to the ebook edition here.
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