“Not Lower Class, Lazy Class”: Food Loathing as Class Abjection and Distinction via Instagram Comments on Mama J. Rae's Lunchbox‐Packing Video

ABSTRACT This article examines 4206 Instagram comments on a lunchbox‐packing video posted by Mama J. Rae, who self‐identifies as a “lower middle class wife.” Her excessive use of processed foods and sugary beverages provokes negative responses, many of which explicitly connect her lunchbox‐packing practices to class identity. Drawing from Kristeva’s concept of food loathing as “abjection,” Bourdieu's notion of class “distinction” in taste, and Gordon's framework of “Intertextuality 2.0,” I identify five intertextual linking strategies through which commenters express food loathing as (1) visceral disgust and horror, (2) policing, (3) advice giving, (4) stereotyping, and (5) class labeling. Making a multimodal intertextual tie between what is visually presented in the video and what is textually expressed in comments, these strategies produce a metadiscourse of abjection and distinction around Mama J. Rae's lower middle class identity. The article illuminates food loathing as a performance of everyday elitism.