Consumer-based, American culture has created a ‘hunger’ for masculinity, and men are struggling with ways to prove themselves. Eating mass-produced steaks, American men ingest growth hormones that can alter their physical traits, making them more feminine, thus creating greater insecurities, and greater need to prove themselves. These growth hormones are a part of “the story of meat” told within Ruth Ozeki’s novel, My Year of Meats. Many men seek reassurance through certain “masculine activities,” like eating meat. The belief that “meat is manly” is a dominant discourse, which I hope to reveal as fragile and easily destroyed.

     Feminist-vegetarian theorist, Carol J. Adams, says, “the story of meat follows the narrative structure of story-telling” in her book, The Sexual Politics of Meat. Ozeki utilizes the narrative structure of meat-inflected story telling through crucial scenes involving characters Joichi “John” Ueno, John Dunn and Gale Dunn. These characters aid in both the support of and the destruction of the dominant discourse that “meat is manly.” I will point out that this dominant discourse contains the seed of its own destruction, in the form of a step in its own “story,” when female growth hormones are added, therefore showing its fragility, and providing a way for readers to begin to question any dominant discourse. After all, if eating the big manly steaks cause men to become more feminine, should it still be viewed as a “manly” practice?