According to Fox News, food shopping isn’t manly.
In a recent segment, Fox News host Jesse Watters blasted Doug Harris for going to the grocery store with his wife Kamala Harris. “What kind of husband goes grocery shopping with his wife?” ranted Watters. The internet’s response: “A supportive and normal one.”
“How can anyone be that ridiculous? It’s embarrassing,” said political commentator Brain Krassenstein of Watters’s comment. Watters doubled down later in the segment, telling men “You don’t need to go grocery shopping with your wife, you should be able to exert price control from afar.”
“Exert price control from afar” is an ick-inducing phrase that would make any woman choose the bear, yet Watters’s calls for control over women are directly in line with a greater conservative political agenda. The Republican Party has sought to erode women’s autonomy long before Trump became president, and has fought to roll back women’s choice over their own bodies for decades. The GOP won a victory in its battle over women’s bodies in 2022 when the Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1972 ruling that granted women the right to abortion. Since the law’s overturning, nearly half the states in America have rolled back abortion rights for women, sometimes with tragically fatal consequences.
Watters’s comments about men’s grocery shopping are also in line with the strict gender roles that the Republican Party has called for in American society. Donald Trump recently attempted to codify gender roles into law, issuing an executive order that the federal government only recognizes two sexes in an attempt to erase the trans/non-binary community. Gender fundamentalism has served as a rallying cry for MAGA, and the Trump administration has used transphobia to rally its base against political rivals. In the lead-up to the 2024 election, the Trump campaign spent millions on anti-trans ads alone. Conservative thinkers like Jesse Watters don’t want to conceptualize a world without strict gender roles. If trans people exist, whose job is it to go grocery shopping?
Instead of worrying about the gender of the grocery shopper, perhaps Watters should be concerned with actual grocery prices. Donald Trump promised to bring grocery prices “way down” in the lead-up to his time in office but has since walked back his promise, saying that it would be “very hard” to do. Economists agree that Trump’s trade policies will likely drive up the price of food and numerous other goods such as cars and electronics. Maybe Watters should be worried about the president’s ability to “exert price control from afar” over the American people instead.
Published: Jan 25, 2025 08:59 am