On aesthetic and its antithesis
The dangers of anti-aesthetic beyond Instagram
Exactly a year (and a month) ago, I decided to start small with food reels, thinking I should try to project a different aesthetic to get more work. So I tried my hand at creating (and recreating) recipes, and making reels for a start.
Alicia Kennedy writes about how food writers have to be multi-hyphenates for her newsletter, wondering whether to show real life as is or sell a lifestyle: “I’ve been attempting to separate myself from my own ‘content creation’ for social media, because I am increasingly confused about what I or anyone else gets out of it… It’s hard to deviate from what is understood as ‘good’ food imagery. For a while now, the visual culture of Instagram has defined the visual culture of food, but that’s changing.”
I still struggle with what my aesthetic is both online and offline. On Instagram, I’ve somewhat found a groove with food: whether that’s my published work, newsletter scraps, occasional pictures of vegetables and fruits, and what I’ve cooked and eaten. I find I can express myself better through the meals I eat, which constantly bring me unbridled joy. But not all meals make it to the grid, mostly because I’m too hungry and tired (and let’s face it — sweaty) to capture and post them to the grid. Plus, my ulcers and low blood sugar often get the better of me, so most meals require a quick turnaround and I, more often than not, try to enjoy a snack before eating whatever is available.
So I decided to lean into the anti-aesthetic: my daily, imperfect meals cooked and served in nondescript stainless steel plates captured under bright white lights, creating unappealing shadows. But not intentionally frumpy that it’s a hat tip to Instagram’s ugly era. This is me embracing a more natural, messy aesthetic. As Ruby Tandoh writes in Eat Up!, “Food shouldn’t be a bad boyfriend, dragging you down or holding you to ransom… In fact, part of making peace with your appetite is acknowledging that it’s not always pretty... Not every meal will be in some sunlight-dappled orange grove; sometimes what you need is a pasty by the side of the M4, and there’s no harm in that.”
After all, food is sustenance, aesthetics are secondary. I’ve written previously about pleasure and resistance, about how eating for pleasure can be a path of resistance, and what the former frequently ignores is systems of labour in favour of industrial agriculture that has significant social dimensions whether that’s changes in property ownership, organisation of labour, or unethical and inhumane farming practices (that affect both humans and animals).
Eating, and by extension cooking, is an agricultural act, as Wendell Berry1 reminds us, and it requires not just imagining a connection between what we eat and where it comes from, but an active participation in knowing where our food is from. This conscious knowledge of what we put into our bodies, of accepting responsibility for our part in the food system, cannot be carried out in solitude. It starts in small steps: from planting in small measures; preparing food; interacting with producers; learning where your food comes from; and why we eat what we eat. Almost two years ago, this came to a head when the country’s farmers swarmed the capital2 to protest laws that aimed to destroy their livelihoods.
Today, Chennai faces a similar situation. Marina Beach, the world’s second longest beach that also happens to be home to some of the city’s fishing community, is facing forced aestheticisation. The Madras High Court has ruled to clear and evict fish stalls on the Marina Loop Road citing encroachment and traffic congestion. Marina has undergone many projects from clean-up drives and beautification campaigns while erasing the livelihood of the fishing community. Development schemes have constantly benefitted the privileged and the rich while seeking to relocate the poor far away from their homes and livelihoods. The Loop Road did not exist until the 60s, but the four villages surrounding the beachfront have existed before that. Moreover, the cooperative society through which fish sales are carried out has been in existence before Indian independence.
The mainstream aesthetic of Marina on social media has always tilted towards hot bajjis, grilled corn, colourful merry-go-rounds, sun-kissed selfies, towering lighthouse pictures, and frolicking on the sand (which I too have been guilty of). Very seldom is it fried fish, heaps of prawns and crabs sold by the fisherfolk. Simply put, the former aesthetic is classist and casteist, one that proudly proclaims that Chennai is a pongal-vadai-sambar-filter-coffee city, ignoring its coastal history when talk turns to seafood. This same aesthetic asserts that open air fish selling is unhygienic and odoriferous, considering it an antithesis to Singara Chennai3. An aesthetic that is entrenched in the notions of ‘uncleanliness’, which in turn clings to a narrative of discrimination. Sanitising the way a city smells and looks is not new — it is rooted in the hierarchy of food, in homogenising local culinary cultures, and in the materialisation of social distinction (here class and caste).
As much as food is sustenance, identity, and tradition, it is also a sensory experience. The open air fish market in Marina (just one of the many examples found in this city), a contested airspace, is deemed anti-aesthetic because it isn’t considered pleasant by both the legal powers and oppressive upper caste aesthetics that dictate that the ‘undesirable other’ be both out of sight and odourless4. Smell as an aesthetic — beyond fragrant notes in a perfume — is code for class, caste, religion, race, and ethnicity. Sensorial experiences are as much excluding as they can be including, and this dual distinction isn't new. Chennai isn't a city whose smellscape only comprises sambrani and agarbatthi5, pongal-vadai-sambar, jasmine and rose garlands, or filter coffee. It is also salty air and fish, and the people whose lives depend on it.
In the essay, The Pleasures of Eating, published in 1990.
The centre repealed the proposed bills in November 2021, while farmer unions continued with the demand for minimum support prices.
Beautiful Chennai, an ongoing project to beautify the city.
Lisa Law explores the concept of a contested airspace in her 2001 essay on the experiences of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong, who were prohibited from gathering onto the streets, eating, hawking, and even squatting.
Incense cones and sticks, respectively.