Cleanliness, tidiness shown by 'pantry porn' trend is racist claims white Loyola professor

A Loyola University professor has claimed that cleanliness and tidiness, tied to the latest "pantry porn" trend on social media is connected to racism, as well as classism and sexism.

Loyola associate professor of marketing Dr. Jenna Drenten made the claims in a Tuesday piece for The Conversation, titled "'Pantry porn' on TikTok and Instagram makes obsessively organized kitchens a new status symbol."

The so-called "pantry porn" trend sees users post to social media their kitchens neatly organized, many times in various glass containers complete with labels.

Drenten wrote that this "new minimalism" movement "means more is more," an excuse to buy more products, from containers, to labels and more storage space.

"Storing spices in coordinated glass jars and color-coordinating dozens of sprinkles containers may seem trivial. But tidiness is tangled up with status, and messiness is loaded with assumptions about personal responsibility and respectability," she wrote

"Cleanliness has historically been used as a cultural gatekeeping mechanism to reinforce status distinctions based on a vague understanding of ‘niceness’: nice people, with nice yards, in nice houses, make for nice neighborhoods," she went on.

"What lies beneath the surface of this anti-messiness, pro-niceness stance is a history of classist, racist, and sexist social structures," she added.

Denten stated that pantries as a status symbol emerged in the late 1800s, noting that 85 percent of newly built homes in America over 3,500 square feet feature a walk-in pantry, and credited celebrities like the Kardashian-Jenner family for its prominence.

Drenten wrote that most of the influencers she saw posting such pantry productions were white women "who demonstrate what it looks like to maintain a 'nice' home by creating a new status symbol: the perfectly organized, fully stocked pantry."

The professor also tied the rise of pantry porn to the Covid-19 pandemic, writing that "Keeping stuff on hand became a symbol of resilience for those with the money and space to do so."

The work of upkeeping a stocked pantry "often falls to women in the household," she wrote, later concluding, "Pantry porn, as a status symbol, relies on the promise of making daily domestic work easier. But if women are largely responsible for the work required to maintain the perfectly organized pantry, it’s critical to ask: easier for whom?"