Posing with shawarma<\/p>\n
Source<\/em>:\u00a0https:\/\/vk.com\/donergirls<\/p>\n The group\u2019s popularity recalls numerous discussions and developments within the recent politics of Russia\u2019s food industry. Their site mimics government language citing that the group has been opened with \u201cWith Support from the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation\u201d (\u201cKrasivye devushki i shaurma: Pri podderzhke ministerstva zdravookhraneniia RF\u201d). One British online publication,\u00a0Express<\/em>, took the parody quite literally, when they wrote that \u201cBeautiful Girls and Shawarma\u201d is a campaign directly from Putin\u2019s government.<\/p>\n The site also plays with controversies over the nationalization of fast food in Russia, which has undergone transformations in the past year. Most notably, the Russian state\u2019s attack on western fast food companies such as McDonalds showed that Russia was ready to dump the chain, despite it being a staple of everyday dining since the first queues appeared outside of the first Moscow McDonalds in the winter of 1990.[1]<\/a>\u00a0At the same time, the state has been unsuccessfully promoting its own newly funded national chains, such as \u201cWe Eat at Home\u201d (Edim Doma\u201d), while the stalwarts of Russian fast food, such as Teremok, are professionalizing their service practices in order to keep up with the Whopper and Big Mac. Paralleling this movement, the Russian state has sought to minimize small kiosks throughout Moscow, at times aggressively targeting the ethnic food staple \u2013 the shawarma. The health inspection agency ROSKOM closed down numerous vendors, echoing past threats to close down the majority of shawarma selling kiosks in the mid 2000s under the claim that these stands were covered in fecal matter.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n While the cold war of fast food chains and ethnic cleansing of kiosks heated up in the summer of 2015, I am more interested in how citizens of the Russian Federation cultivate both culinary taste and middle class taste vis-\u00e0-vis fast food chains and street food vendors. Russians\u2019 frequenting to fast food chains has always been a sign of affluence since the 1990s, and with Russia\u2019s growth in wealth over the past decade, it is apparent that chains are becoming more luxurious in order to suit their clientele.<\/p>\n The once cheap meal o the shawarma can also give us useful insight into Russia\u2019s middle class. \u201cBeautiful Girls and Shawarma\u201d is yet another example of the middle class and its preoccupation with digital self-representation. People taking selfies with shawarma shows us how digital media has become central to the middle class experience, extending well into unglamorous moments of everyday life in order to present it beautifully and in digitally filtered \u201cInstagram\u201d color. This moment gives us a historical picture, as it meshes the past of the dingy 1990s kiosk street meat, with the trendy digital creativity of the late 2000s and present day.<\/p>\n Russian citizens\u2019 current attitude to street food is also emblematic of a larger trend in hipster gentrification. Today, many kiosks are giving way to more upscale branded shawarma caf\u00e9s, which offer a clean eating environment and supposedly better chance against food poisoning. On the site TripAdvisor, one user comments on the advantage of the caf\u00e9 in their revue of Shawarma Republic, writing \u201cThis is the place where you can eat a tasty shawarma without any worries [of quality].\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Question: Which wine pairs well with shawarma?<\/p>\n Source<\/em>:\u00a0https:\/\/vk.com\/donergirls<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s hipster gentrification of food culture encroaches upon lower class urban spaces, directly mirroring what has happened in the United States. In the last ten years in the US, the working class construction-site food truck vendor, which largely originated from Latin American roots, transformed into entrepreneurial, social networking hipsters who now serve blue collar workers haut cuisine. Russia\u2019s once \u201cunsanitary\u201d street food options are being given facelifts, expanding the once barren shawarma menu to include cheese-infused lavash bread and vegetarian alternatives. People once joked about the source of shawarma meat, remarking that despite Moscow\u2019s large stray cat population, there were never any around the kiosks themselves. Now, thanks to evolving high-class tastes, your shawarma might not even come with meat inside of it.<\/p>\n June 2015<\/p>\n [1]<\/a>\u00a0In August of 2014, the health industry shut down McDonalds in Moscow over sanitation violations, in retaliation for the American chain\u2019s stance on closing its own stores in recently annexed Crimea.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a>\u00a0Kiosks serving traditional Russian food such as Teremok and Kroshka-Kartoshka were not targeted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Andrew Chapman,\u00a0The College of William and Mary In June of 2015, social media promoters Roma Bordunov and Aleksei Novikov launched the VK.com group \u201cBeautiful Girls and Shawarma\u201d (https:\/\/vk.com\/donergirls). The webpage features women, posing (often provocatively) with one of Russia\u2019s beloved street food snacks. The site immediately gained in popularity, with hundreds of uploaded photos and … Continue reading Shawarma<\/span> ![\"shawarma](\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitaldomostroi\/files\/2015\/12\/shawarma-girl-300x220.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"clean\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitaldomostroi\/files\/2015\/12\/clean-300x168.png\")
<\/a>Source<\/em>:\u00a0TripAdvisor<\/em><\/p>\n![\"wine\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitaldomostroi\/files\/2015\/12\/wine-300x293.png\")
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