Fast Food Nation: Gender, Sex and Food

Fast Food Nation is meant to deliver a message about the problems of our current food system, particularly the major food chains that focus on cost over quality. However, the film also delivers a heaping helping of hints at other problems such as illegal immigration and gender issues. The film is sure to cover a range of female personalities and problems, as displayed by the sisters Sylvia and Coco. Both are employed at some point by the UNP plant, and both end up sleeping with the supervisor, Mike. These two characteristics are used to show just how different the sisters are. When examining gender in this film it is essential to put less emphasis on the action and more on the motives behind the action.

The UNP plant serves as a backdrop for much of the action in Fast Food Nation, mostly because the location demonstrates a clear chain of command with a very strict set of rules. Even the shockingly white surroundings and clothing bear down on the characters in an oppressive way, and the jobs appear to be assigned based on gender. The majority of the female employees are at working cutting meat while the males are shown operating machinery and using power washers. Here, Mike serves as a god who enforces the rules and pushes production along at a painfully fast rate while verbally and sexually harassing each of the female employees.

The relationship between Coco and Mike is confusingly fast paced and based entirely on lust, but even in the scene where she threatens to kill him it is clear that he is in complete control of the relationship. In the sex scene that ensues Mike promises to find a better job for his lover and provides her with cocaine, but also tells her that who he sleeps with is none of her business. Coco gets into an argument with her sister about her drug usage and “boyfriend” where she says, “Let's see who's doing better in six months.” This implies that sex is her strategy for getting ahead, and that she has little intention of working for a living.

In stark contrast, Sylvia works for love and only sleeps with the supervisor in order to get a job so that she can support her husband who has been injured. Even after compromising her own integrity she only manages to get a spot on the “kill floor” where the work is the most brutal and gruesome. Outside of work, she has taken up the role of home maker. In the scene where she argues with her sister, Sylvia is pictured with a sponge in her hand while never leaving the kitchen.

The other women in the film have their own struggles. As a young woman with dreams and aspirations, Amber has her sights set on college and hopes to become an astronaut. Her uncle, on the other hand, just wants her to make it to 21 years old without getting pregnant. Through the course of the movie viewers watch her move from the rigid rules of her job at Mickey's where she was forced to serve with a fake smile so that she could earn extra money to the college organization where she could think and plan for herself in order to stand up for her own ideals. She manages to get to the cattle farm and cut the fence, but does not succeed in freeing the cows. It does not matter though, because the fact that she was able to try for something she actually believed in is the only thing that mattered.

Amber's mother Cindy does not play an important role in the film, but she does represent Amber's future if she were to give up. Cindy does not believe in politics and claims that all politicians are corrupt, and she is also shown working a job that is not much better than the one Amber has now. This representation of a woman who did not chase her dreams serves as a challenge to Amber, in hopes that she will not be dragged into a gender based role. The end of the film leaves her future open and uncertain, which is better than any of the other women in the story can say. The rest of them are left to pay off debts or support their husbands, while the youngest female is left to decide her own fate.