This Twitter Thread Sums Up Our Feelings About Anthropologie’s Food Styling

Jelisa Castrodale
Jelisa Castrodale
Jelisa is a freelance writer who has covered food and travel, sports and pop culture for numerous publications. When she's not on deadline, she enjoys getting new passport stamps, collecting records and shouting at her beloved Liverpool Football Club.
published Jan 5, 2018
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Earlier today I realized that all of my bowls were either unwashed and stacked in the dishwasher or unwashed and piled in the sink. Instead of rinsing one like a well-adjusted adult, I poured my cereal into a ginormous measuring cup and ate it with the plastic spoon that came with last weekend’s takeout. So I’m not exactly Anthropologie’s target market is what I’m saying.

As Racked senior editor Alanna Okun recently pointed out, Anthropologie’s always expensive kitchen goods are less about being, well, kitchen goods than they are about being part of the greater narrative that the retailer sells beside its $24 dish towels. (And that narrative is “I live in provincial France with two enchanted mice and a $24 dish towel.”)

In one of the best Twitter threads of 2018 so far, Okun confessed that Anthropologie’s food styling was “making [her] blind with rage.” In a series of nine tweets, she pointed out the absurdity of the site’s own product shots, including the tendency to show plates and silverware close to (but not touching) food, or to fill bowls and cups with things that read as either fanciful or infuriating, depending on your thoughts about artful zoodle spirals.

I mean, she’s not wrong. Hate-scroll through Anthro’s Kitchen & Dining section and you’ll start to wonder if you’ve been doing everything wrong. Should you use your measuring spoons to determine how many spices you should dump directly on your countertop? ABSOLUTELY! Can you count three raspberries without using a delicate stoneware cup? WHO AM I, THAT MUPPET WHO COUNTS THINGS? Are cheese boards for round fruits that will roll onto the floor if you blink aggressively at them? THEY CERTAINLY ARE.

I know Anthropologie has an aesthetic, but after scrolling through pages of spilled marshmallows and countertop spice piles, that aesthetic seems to be somewhere between full-frontal whimsy and “Are you sure Aunt Susan should still live alone?”

Either way, I feel a lot better about my measuring cup cereal bowl.