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January 15, 2012 12:17 PM

A quote from a recent NYT article about American-invented Chinese takeout boxes states, "The structure has come to represent the idea of Eastern cuisine in Western society even though this packaging is not used for food containment in Chinese culture." Is there a term for these kinds of cultural placeholders, objects which end up symbolizing another culture, while not actually having anything to do with that culture in reality? Are there other examples of this?
posted by Blazecock Pileon to writing & language (67 answers total)

I'm not sure there's an established name. As another example, consider the exclamation "ooh la la," which is the essence of coy, lascivious Frenchness in English, but has a rather different sense in actual French.
posted by Nomyte at 12:23 PM on January 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

See also the Oriental Riff
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:26 PM on January 15, 2012 [3 favorites]

Foster's Lager sells itself as an Australian beer, much to the dismay of many actual Australians.
posted by davey_darling at 12:28 PM on January 15, 2012 [5 favorites]

Fortune cookies.
posted by strixus at 12:29 PM on January 15, 2012

IIRC, "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles" talks about this in its chapter on Chinese takeout boxes.
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:31 PM on January 15, 2012

Depending on which version of the story you believe, the tune popularly associated with snake charmers/exotic dancing (aka "There's a Place in France") was written in 1893 for the Columbian Exposition.
posted by scody at 12:34 PM on January 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

The Statue of Liberty was a French gift that symbolized a Roman goddess.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:36 PM on January 15, 2012

Uncle Sam is derived from Brother Jonathan and Yankee Doodle, which were originally derogatory symbols created by the British to mock American colonists.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:41 PM on January 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

Mongolian barbecue is not eaten in Mongolia; it's instead a clever way to market Chinese-style stir-fry.
posted by scrambles at 12:44 PM on January 15, 2012

If I'm remembering my fussy lit crit college days correctly, simulacra comes awful close to the definition you're looking for. One way to define it is something along the lines of a copy for which there is no original.

One example I remember is Taco Bell restaurants - they're designed in the vague style of Spanish missions without reference to any one mission and with no relationship to Spanish or Mexican history/culture.
posted by space_cookie at 12:49 PM on January 15, 2012 [5 favorites]

Tiki Pop art and drinks for actual Polynesian culture.
posted by bswinburn at 12:52 PM on January 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Germans call their mobile phones "Handys" and they think this is a direct loan word from English (it certainly isn't any kind of German word). Then they come to the UK and start talking about their Handys and wonder why we don't understand.
posted by emilyw at 12:52 PM on January 15, 2012 [8 favorites]

Sort of regional, but Italian beef sandwiches have very little to do with Italy. Although they are most often made in Italian eateries in Chicago, I doubt you can go to Rome and order one.

And if you did, I would wonder why?
posted by lampshade at 12:53 PM on January 15, 2012

Westerners are sometimes surprised to find that their version of sushi isn't common in Japan. Italian pizza is not much like the Ninja Turtles' pizza.
posted by Beardman at 12:55 PM on January 15, 2012

Oh and the Balti was invented in Birmingham.
posted by emilyw at 12:58 PM on January 15, 2012

The word 'simulacra' is close, but I don't think it is quite right. A simulacra is a copy of an existing and original cultural artifact, not a novel invention or repurposing of "native" (e.g., from the US) culture in the way the Chinese takeout box was once known as an oyster box.

For the Taco Bell restaurant to be an example similar to the takeout box, I think its style would have had to be a repurposing of US architecture, not something in the style of the "authentic" or "original" missions of Mexico or Spain.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:59 PM on January 15, 2012

Foster's Lager sells itself as an Australian beer, much to the dismay of many actual Australians

But it's actually made in Australia, no? It's not like Foster's is an "Australian-style" beer which has nothing to do with Australia. It's just less popular there than it is abroad, where it's heavily marketed as The Australian Beer.

Taco Bell is a great example, actually - everything about the place, from the design of the buildings to the food on the menu has little or no resemblance to anything one would ever find in Mexico.

On the fast food riff, what about, say, the entire concept of Indian McDonalds? IIRC, the only main course menu options that are present on a McDonalds menu anywhere else in the world are the McChicken and the Filet O Fish. And yet I'm pretty sure that the average urban Indian thinks they are eating American food when they go to McDonalds. (Would love insight on this, actually.)

The crab rangoon bears mentioning.
posted by Sara C. at 1:00 PM on January 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was also going to say simulacra. You might be interested in reading Umberto Eco's Travels in Hyperreality,
posted by bradbane at 1:02 PM on January 15, 2012

Taco Bell is a great example, actually - everything about the place, from the design of the buildings to the food on the menu has little or no resemblance to anything one would ever find in Mexico.

But it does have a resemblance (the original architecture was supposed to be evocative of Spanish Mission architecture; Mexican cuisine really does include tacos and burritos, etc.) -- it's just a very, very bad resemblance. It's ersatz Mexican, but this is different from what the OP is asking, I think; he's interested in faux-cultural artifacts that were wholly invented outside the culture they have come to represent.
posted by scody at 1:11 PM on January 15, 2012 [3 favorites]

How about Borat for Kazakhstan? When I mention that I work in that country, the first (and often only) response or question I receive from 90% of Americans is about Borat.
posted by scrambles at 1:12 PM on January 15, 2012

To settle the Fosters thing: it used to be an Australian manufactured beer and a genuinely Australian popular cultural icon but hasn't been sold domestically since the late 1980s. The brand is a strictly overseas thing though it is the umbrella name for the global corporation which owns CUB, the brewery that produces much of the actual beer drunk in Australia. Fosters where you get it overseas is generally produced under licence in the country of consumption. I don't think it really counts in the same category as the Oriental Riff.

The "Outback Steakhouses" Americans have are a much better example, which has nothing to do with Australia at all. (In fact they're opening here as pieces of kitsch Americana).
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 1:13 PM on January 15, 2012 [8 favorites]

Fosters where you get it overseas is generally produced under licence in the country of consumption.

Yeah, but, at least in the US, that's true of any import beer above the level of a microbrew or craft beer. Beer brewed abroad under license is a thousand times removed from the Oriental Riff.
posted by Sara C. at 1:18 PM on January 15, 2012

I vote Outback Steakhouse. I went there to celebrate Australia day last year as a bit of a laugh, and they didn't even know it was Australia Day, though they had Coopers Ale so I forgave them.
posted by wwax at 1:21 PM on January 15, 2012 [5 favorites]

It's ersatz Mexican, but this is different from what the OP is asking, I think; he's interested in faux-cultural artifacts that were wholly invented outside the culture they have come to represent.

Yes, this. The terms 'simulacra' and 'ersatz' need an original or authentic cultural artifact as a source, I think, which differentiates them from the novel Chinese takeout box/fortune cookie/etc.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:21 PM on January 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Green beer and leprechauns for Irish culture. Most Irishmen (and women) I know cringe inwardly at the thought that these things actually represent Ireland.

Did you know the official symbol of Ireland is a harp, and the official colour of the republic is blue?
posted by LN at 1:31 PM on January 15, 2012

You might be interested in following up on the notion of the "Invention of Tradition" - Hobsbawm's book, but taken for a run in Anthropology.

I think a key example are Scottish tartans, which were pretty much invented by an Englishman. But perhaps an important difference is they really are used in Scotland now - in contrast to your Chinese food takeout box.
posted by Rumple at 1:38 PM on January 15, 2012

Green beer and leprechauns for Irish culture.

But again: leprechauns have actually existed in Irish mythology and folklore for centuries, even though the substance of how they're represented in mythology is wildly different from how they're represented in popular culture.
posted by scody at 1:48 PM on January 15, 2012

Now that simulacra is mentioned, I think it's apt. IIRC, it was defined in its third stage as a simulation of something that has never actually existed.

For example, Disneyland's Main Street is a simulation of a turn-of-the-century small town's main street, but it's not actually a simulation of any specific place and time. It's a great big artistic impression of how such a place might have felt.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:02 PM on January 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

if we're talking about foreign branding, i remember hearing a podcast of an american traveling in germany, people offered him a candybar called "tiger bar" as if it was american and something he should be familiar with. of course he'd never heard of it. it's common to have faux-foreign products as a marketing scheme, i know Häagen-Dazs was a completely fabricated name, like it's a higher quality overseas item.
here's the wiki article for foreign branding, i'm sure the examples are innumerable.

if we dare to delve into racial epithets, i know the french used to (still do?) call the brits les rosbifs (the roast beefs), as far as i know a brit wouldn't know it's mean as an insult. correct me if i'm wrong here.
posted by camdan at 2:18 PM on January 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

In Japan, "American" coffee is a very weak brew of coffee, much worse than you would normally find in America. This is because, I think I read once, in the post-war period American GIs stationed in Japan had to stretch their coffee beans and so made very weak coffee. The name stuck, and all Japanese people think US coffee is very weak (to my great chagrin).
posted by zachawry at 2:19 PM on January 15, 2012

> In Japan, "American" coffee is a very weak brew of coffee, much worse than you would normally find in America. This is because, I think I read once, in the post-war period American GIs stationed in Japan had to stretch their coffee beans and so made very weak coffee. The name stuck, and all Japanese people think US coffee is very weak (to my great chagrin).

I would suggest rather that it is because American coffee was very weak until the triumph of Starbucks and other sources of a stronger brew. I well remember a visit to Chicago during which I found I could literally read through my breakfast coffee, so thin and pale it was. Europeans visiting until recent decades regularly complained about American coffee.
posted by languagehat at 2:34 PM on January 15, 2012 [4 favorites]

Watch this TED Talk by Jennifer 8 Lee about General Tso's chicken... full of misconceptions about food and Japanese/Chinese culture.
posted by matty at 2:35 PM on January 15, 2012 [8 favorites]

The Crocodile Hunter - his persona was a weird parody homage to Crocodile Dundee, itself a weird parody of Australia.

I seriously never even heard of this guy until I went to Europe.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:58 PM on January 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

HTWRT, actually Irwin owed a lot more to Malcolm Douglas, outdoor man, documentarist and lunatic, than to Paul Hogan. And from what I know, both men's personas were absolutely genuine.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:11 PM on January 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

"Handys" I think this is short for "Handy Talky"
posted by bottlebrushtree at 4:02 PM on January 15, 2012

A trope of imaginary cultural origin?
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:25 PM on January 15, 2012

Untethered signifier of an imaginary community?
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:29 PM on January 15, 2012

"Handys" I think this is short for "Handy Talky"

I always thought it was short for "handphone", which is what people in Indonesia call cell phones. Handphone, or "HP".
posted by emeiji at 4:43 PM on January 15, 2012

As for the American coffee, an americano is a shot of expresso diluted with water, which in effect is a cup of weak coffee. This came from WWII when American soldiers in Italy ordered coffee and got espresso instead, but watered it down as it was too strong for their tastes. Maybe the Japan story borrows from this one, or both happened independently.

BTW, in Japan this happens quite a bit--the appropriation of Western concepts in a way that is uniquely Japanese, but most Japanese are unaware it's in fact Japanese. (Off the top of my head I'm drawing a blank but will post again if I think of something.)
posted by zardoz at 5:05 PM on January 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

HTWRT, actually Irwin owed a lot more to Malcolm Douglas, outdoor man, documentarist and lunatic, than to Paul Hogan. And from what I know, both men's personas were absolutely genuine.

Interesting. Thanks for that.

I don't doubt that Irwin's persona was genuine, but his costume, and the way the show was presented, edited and marketed, seemed to me to be tied up in kitschy 'Australiana'. The show was, after all, originally filmed for broadcast on the US cable channel 'Animal Planet', i.e., a US audience, rather than an Australian one.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:06 PM on January 15, 2012

By the way, I wasn't trying to be anti-Semitic when I made my apparently flagged-to-death comment. I was under the impression that you were looking for examples of false stereotypes.
posted by crunchland at 6:00 PM on January 15, 2012

BTW, in Japan this happens quite a bit--the appropriation of Western concepts in a way that is uniquely Japanese, but most Japanese are unaware it's in fact Japanese. (Off the top of my head I'm drawing a blank but will post again if I think of something.)

I've never been to Japan, but I've heard in Japan celebration of Christmas is a relatively new thing, and on Christmas they eat Christmas Cake under the impression that it's a part of western Christmas celebrations the same way.
posted by catwash at 6:23 PM on January 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Edward Said and other researchers in fields like postcolonial studies would call this sort of thing "orientalism."
posted by cosmologinaut at 6:47 PM on January 15, 2012

A cultural Thomasson: like a door that doesn't open, the takeout box has no actual referent in Chinese culture.
posted by bad grammar at 7:07 PM on January 15, 2012

Kwanza
posted by Confess, Fletch at 7:22 PM on January 15, 2012

In the late 90's (think animated gifs) I wanted to do a General Tso vs. Col. Sanders web page and did a bit of research on where General Tso's Chicken came from. The best I could find was that Chinese railroad workers in the 1800's found themselves hungry, but ≈8000 miles away from the ingredients they were familiar with. Adapt or die, as they say.

Comparing what my two Italian grandmothers cooked with what you'd get if you had dishes with the same name in Italy suggests that practicality and "close enough" trump hunger every time.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 7:25 PM on January 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Japan is great for stuff like this. I was always highly amused by the McDonalds Japan "Big America Burger" series. My favorite was the Idaho burger, essentially a bacon cheeseburger with a fried hashbrown on it. People there were also surprised that Americans don't eat chicken for Christmas dinner, since for the longest time KFC Japan has done Christmas chicken dinners, the higher-end ones approaching 100 bucks and requiring a pre-order.
Another example is the Big Boy diner chain which has a big Japanese presence. To my great disappointment they didn't actually serve burgers, or any other American food, just ground beef patties on a sizzling platter with vegetables and a couple steak fries, AKA hamburg steak.
posted by azuresunday at 7:29 PM on January 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

Beardman: "Westerners are sometimes surprised to find that their version of sushi isn't common in Japan. Italian pizza is not much like the Ninja Turtles' pizza."

I'm not certain this is so, having eaten these in both countries.

It's true that items like the California roll are not common, but rolls and negiri are both pretty common in the US and are identical to what you'd have in Japan, although generally at a higher standard.

And there is no such thing as "Italian" pizza, really, since it varies highly from region to region within Italy. In Florence, for example, if you order a pie it will be very large, very thin, crunchy, and sparsely covered with sauce and toppings. In Naples, the pizza will be so soft that it will fold over on its own. Rome is somewhere in between. This is also true in the United States, by the way. There are regional variations here: Chicago style, California style, New Jersey's "tomato pie", etc.

And then in Italy there is pizza by the slice which, aside from generally being offered in rectangles rather than wedges, is virtually identical to the sort of pizza-by-the-slice that you'd get in the US. The only difference is probably in the quality of the ingredients. This varies little from region to region in makeup, although I'm certain the toppings vary from place to place just as they do here in the US.

In fact, I would say that for Italy, the very concept of food being Italian is very much a kind of placeholder. Italy is still incredibly regional and while it's true that there is also no such thing as "Chinese" food or "French" food (or even "American" food), it's very, very true that there is no such thing as "Italian" food. In fact, it's not uncommon for people to talk about Szechuan or Hunan or Hong Kong cuisine, but it's less common for people to refer to food from Italy with regional precision.
posted by Deathalicious at 8:51 PM on January 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was under the impression that you were looking for examples of false stereotypes

No, that's not what I'm looking for.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:41 PM on January 15, 2012

To add to what catwash said about Christmas cake, they also have KFC on Christmas many think that other Westerners do the same.

When my Japanese friend came to England, she went out on Christmas actually hunting for a Christmas cake and tried to go to KFC but was very upset and confused that it was closed (and went back several times over, thinking she missed that it was open!).
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 12:19 AM on January 16, 2012

Japan is great for stuff like this.

Is there a Japanese word for the category of items like Christmas cakes?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:23 AM on January 16, 2012

Although it's not an exact match, the term 洋食 (youshoku) just means foreign food, including authentic varieties as well as things like tonkatsu and omurice that are actually pretty unique to Japan.
posted by Muttoneer at 4:38 AM on January 16, 2012

Cliched example, but London Fog raincoats are not British and are an unknown brand in the UK.

As others have said, 'Indian' (and to some extent 'Chinese' - though we don't have those take-out boxes in the UK; they seem deliciously American) food, as served to Westeners, has little resemblance to what one would find in said countries. Chicken Tikka Masala is the most prominent example.

know the french used to (still do?) call the brits les rosbifs (the roast beefs), as far as i know a brit wouldn't know it's mean as an insult. correct me if i'm wrong here.

Not quite what the OP talks about, but Americans often think we eat things like spotted dick or bubble and squeak, which I don't think I've ever eaten in my life. Food in Britain has changed a lot in the past twenty years and there is a lot more Mediterranean influences on what your average Briton eats, along with various immigrant cultures.
posted by mippy at 4:53 AM on January 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

For example, Disneyland's Main Street is a simulation of a turn-of-the-century small town's main street, but it's not actually a simulation of any specific place and time. It's a great big artistic impression of how such a place might have felt.

There are a few 'American Diner' chains in London that do this.
posted by mippy at 4:54 AM on January 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Our marketing department used to cast about in meetings, trying to coin terms or evoke feelings that would represent "Old Island" culture. It's called faux-thenticity.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 6:47 AM on January 16, 2012 [4 favorites]

I'd say every ad (commercial and political) that purports to depict "hometown America" (i.e. the Hal Riney vision) would fall into this category.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:51 AM on January 16, 2012

It's called faux-thenticity.

Your answer is the best, so far, I think.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:10 AM on January 16, 2012

The best I could find was that Chinese railroad workers in the 1800's found themselves hungry, but ≈8000 miles away from the ingredients they were familiar with. Adapt or die, as they say.

General Tso's was invented by a Chinese restauranteur in New York for American tastes. It's not something created by resourceful Chinese-American immigrants to feed themselves with unfamiliar ingredients. In fact, if you think about it, this makes no since considering that General Tso's is fried chicken with a spicy corn syrup glaze and some token hunks of broccoli and carrot. It's not something any "resourceful" person would come up with to eat. It's something someone with access to wholesale bulk chicken breasts would come up with.
posted by Sara C. at 7:30 AM on January 16, 2012

In my part of western Europe, the 'Chinese' food comes in aluminum foil trays, I've never got it in a cardboard box, so the cardboard box has not 'come to represent the idea of Eastern cuisine in Western society', it has come to represent the difference between American Chinese and Irish Chinese.
posted by Gomoryhu at 7:56 AM on January 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

In São Paulo:

• An americano is a sandwich with ham, cheese, lettuce, tomato and an egg.

• Copo americano is a small (190ml) glass, used in popular bars and restaurants for everything — beer, coffee, soft drinks.

• Pão francȇs, or french bread, is the default bread style — and as far as i know it doesn't exist in France

In Rio de Janeiro:

• Filé à francesa, or french-style steak, is a common dish with steak, onions, fries, green peas and small pieces of ham. The connection with france is unclear.
posted by Tom-B at 8:38 AM on January 16, 2012

Regarding that "pao frances" - we have those in southern Louisiana, where they're called "pistolettes". I have no idea whether they really are French in origin, or what they'd be called there, but there's a strong likelihood that they have an ultimate point of origin and that said point of origin is French.

Then again, we, too have "French bread" which bears little resemblance to any bread in France. It is in the shape of a baguette, though, so my guess is that this is more a question of authenticity, a la American pizza vs. pizza in Italy.
posted by Sara C. at 9:08 AM on January 16, 2012

Sara C.: "The best I could find was that Chinese railroad workers in the 1800's found themselves hungry, but ≈8000 miles away from the ingredients they were familiar with. Adapt or die, as they say.

General Tso's was invented by a Chinese restauranteur in New York for American tastes. It's not something created by resourceful Chinese-American immigrants to feed themselves with unfamiliar ingredients. In fact, if you think about it, this makes no since considering that General Tso's is fried chicken with a spicy corn syrup glaze and some token hunks of broccoli and carrot. It's not something any "resourceful" person would come up with to eat. It's something someone with access to wholesale bulk chicken breasts would come up with."

Although the version you'd get at most take out places undoubtedly is made with a corn syrup based sauce, the original does use sugar. The introduction of vegetables is definitely an American touch, as a chicken dish in China would contain little or no meat at all (vegetable dishes are almost exclusively served separately and individually, at least at restaurants). And any General Tso's that involved bulk chicken breasts isn't proper General Tso's, as it is only supposed to be made with chicken thighs. In that sense, it is true to Chinese cuisine, which generally favors the fattier meat of the thigh over the breast.

I personally think it's a perfectly fine dish when done well. If you want to turn your nose down at American Chinese cuisine, there are much better targets, such as sweet and sour chicken or fried egg rolls.

Interestingly enough, Kung Pao Chicken is an authentic Chinese dish popular through much of China. The name in Mandarin is very similar: gōng bǎo jī dīng. I ordered it all over (well, mostly just the North East/Central and parts of Sichuan) China when I ran into language problems at restaurants. It varies regionally but is generally very dependable. The kind you order in the States usually has a mess of vegetables added to it but in China it's just chicken, peanuts, and whole chili pods, sometimes with scallions and, in Sichuan itself, Sichuan peppercorns.

Which brings me to another answer: the "Chinese stir fry" really doesn't exist in most of China. Vegetables are often cooked separately rather than mixed together, and very rarely will you see dishes that mix meat and vegetables together. They tend to be separate dishes.
posted by Deathalicious at 9:14 AM on January 16, 2012

I personally think it's a perfectly fine dish when done well. If you want to turn your nose down at American Chinese cuisine, there are much better targets, such as sweet and sour chicken or fried egg rolls.

I'm not. It's just laughable that 19th century Chinese immigrants working on the railroad would create such a dish. The ingredients are very much not things that would be available to poor rural immigrants at that time and in that place - if anything it would have been a luxurious dish to be prepared on very special occasions. (Do you know how many chickens you'd need to kill to get enough chicken thighs to make more than a couple servings of General Tso's?)

It's very much a dish of 20th century American restaurant culture. Which is not surprising as it was created in a 20th century American restaurant.
posted by Sara C. at 9:30 AM on January 16, 2012

This may be controversial, but a burrito is not a Mexican dish.
posted by notned at 10:43 AM on January 16, 2012

Chicken (which is typically cheap as meat goes), vinegar, pepper and breading doesn't seem all that exotic to me - particularly along a railroad in southern California, even in 1860. If there is anything that is actually true about this origin (I'm just reporting what I read) I would fully expect the modern restaurant version of the dish to be have undergone the same level of transformation that any number of "comfort foods" have.

I know what my grandmother called polenta (which was very much a poverty food in its day) and I know what they're serving at the local "Eurobistro" under that moniker. They do both include corn meal.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 12:11 PM on January 16, 2012

Just ran across this in Patrick O'Brian's The Fortune of War, set in 1813 (Norton paperback, p. 297): "The Americans had been kind, polite, hospitable, and their sailors thorough seamen, but they had the strangest notion of coffee: a thin, thin brew - a man might drink himself into a dropsy before the stuff raised his spirits even half a degree."
posted by languagehat at 7:46 AM on January 22, 2012

Sara C.: "It's just laughable that 19th century Chinese immigrants working on the railroad would create such a dish."

Agreed and this is true of nearly every dish served in an American Chinese restaurant. I'd personally love to sample authentic Chinese railroad worker cuisine. I can't help but imagine that somewhere out there are a bunch of dishes dating back to the late 19th century that combine elements of both Chinese and southwest cuisines.

For a while I wondered whether Mu Shu was actually a fusion of Chinese and Tex-Mex, but it turns out that wrapping things in a burrito-like roll is entirely Chinese in origin (don't have a reference but I'm sure Wikipedia will have some background).
posted by Deathalicious at 8:01 PM on January 23, 2012