My initial inspiration in becoming a vegetarian was simple: eating animals is not essential to living a healthy life, and I would prefer to avoid forming a discordant relationship with nonhuman animals and nature world. Up until that point I had been an avid and indiscriminate consumer of nonhuman animals, often outfitted in leather shoes and annually wrapped in my winter wool. Thereafter, the family anticipated and feared my demanding dietary requests and imagined the emaciated shell of a once-healthy son toiling on paltry tasks. Friends teased me with skewers and sushi. Others kept a close eye on my behavior lest I step on an insect or inadvertently ingest carnal victuals. Although I remained largely unfazed by such trivial adversity, I was perplexed by a former acquaintance's zealous affront: "Eat your vegetables, you hippie fagot!" Similarly, a colleague once jokingly remarked that my abstention from sharing part of a chicken with him made me a sissy. The revelation that not only did others find my vegetarianism amusing but also indicative of my sexuality and subordinate masculinity was disturbing. The feminization of dominant culture and the concomitant derision of vegetarian men became all too clear to me after watching an episode of South Park at the behest of a friend. In "Fun With Veal," Trey Parker and Matt Stone portray Mrs. Choksondik's fourth-grade class on a field. journey to a “concentrated animal production operation.” Much to the children's dismay, they discover that the slaughtered veal is anemic, “little cow” (“Fun With Veal”). Moved by compassion, Stan, Kyle, Butters and Cartman decide to save the calves from the impending massacre and provide refuge in Stan's bedroom. The press soon becomes aware of the boys' audacity... in the middle of the paper... features a number of Hardee's and Burger King commercials advocating animal consumption as indicative of broader cultural anxiety arising from ideals increasingly broad masculine. highlighted by the popularization of metrosexual masculinity in recent years: the use of beef consumption as an evocation of a retrograde masculinity, which celebrates masculine norms challenged by metrosexuality and domestic participation, speaks to the vitality of existing cultural beliefs about meat as appropriate male food that achieves its virility through the exclusion of women. (Buerkle 88). Buerkle argues that growing gender egalitarianism threatens “men's privileges and produces anxiety for some men when their status changes. […] Allusions to a retrograde masculinity [in hamburger ads] reinforce men's sense of self in the midst of masculinities that fluctuate more rapidly than before” (Buerkle 89).