Heartbreak and Ice Cream

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"Am enjoying a relationship with two men simultaneously. The first is called Ben, the other, Jerry. Number of current boyfriends: zero."
—Bridget Jones

After being dumped, or suffering some other form of romantic rejection, an adult male character will often be seen drowning his sorrows by consuming a lot of alcohol.

It is less common, however, to see women in fiction drinking heavily, so, possibly as a more socially acceptable alternative, a heartbroken woman will often be seen eating a large quantity of ice cream instead. It may also be a sign that the character has "let herself go" if this behaviour continues for several days or even weeks. If so, it will often be accompanied by other behaviours such as wearing pyjamas during the day and refusing to leave the house.

This sort of behaviour also tends to happen with single females around Valentine's Day, even if they haven't experienced any recent rejections. Occasionally, ice cream is replaced with chocolate or some other sweet. Sub-Trope of Comfort Food.

Examples of Heartbreak and Ice Cream include:

Fan Works

Film

  • Miss Congeniality: Sandra Bullock orders a pint in a bar, which turns out to be a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
  • Scary Movie 3 "parodied" this trope with two woman discussing their relationship woes by spooning chocolate ice cream out of a container that's about the size of a washing machine.
  • Bride Wars: After Anne Hathaway's character calls her friend to tell her that she just got engaged. Her friend hangs up, and is so distraught that takes three containers of ice cream out of the fridge and devours them all.
  • Kung Fu Panda has Po having a psychological urge to gorge on food when he's upset. Thus when he throws back the dumpling after his fight over it with Shifu, it's a welcome sign of how spiritually healthier Po has become.
  • Sherman Klump in the remake of The Nutty Professor is seen doing this, but over his massive weight.
  • An obscure movie, but in Angel Angel Down We Go (a.k.a. Cult of the Damned), an overweight and insecure heiress (played by Holly Near!) wolfs down a table-full of eclairs when she is confronted by a sexy rock singer and her own sexual frustrations.
  • In the Bewitched film, Isabelle eats tubs of frozen whipped topping product instead of ice cream when she's upset.

Literature

  • Obliquely referenced in the Harry Potter books via the Dementors, who are The Heartless / a personification of depression. A good way to recover from their presence is to eat chocolate.

Live-Action TV

  • Mike and Molly: Both title characters overeat on Valentine's Day as a result of having a fight with each other.
  • This practice is known on Friends, notably when the girls act as "relationship tutors" for Chandler when he tries a serious relationship with Janice. They also add another piece of advice:

Chandler: This ice cream tastes like crap by the way.
Rachel: Yeah, well that's that low-cal, non-dairy, soy milk junk. We sort of... we save the real stuff for the truly terminal cases.
Monica: You know, when you start getting screwed over all the time, you gotta switch to low-fat.

  • Referenced in Buffy the Vampire Slayer after Angel breaks up with Buffy in "The Prom", Giles responds with "I understand that situations of this sort require ice cream of some kind".
    • Gender Inverted when Angel and Buffy have their unseen meeting after Buffy comes Back from the Dead for the second time. It's implied things didn't go well. Buffy's comfort food is chicken wings while Angel decides he wants ice cream.
  • In an episode of Happy Endings Penny, depressed and thinking she would end up a lonely spinster, is shown in her pajamas and eating ice cream. Jane takes it away from her and her falls onto the couch and pulls out another. Jane takes the "couch ice cream" and Penny immediately picks up a tub of "floor ice cream."
  • Has happened several times on How I Met Your Mother, such as the time Robin got "dumped" by a six year old.
    • According to Ted, Marshall breaks out the Ben and Jerry's whenever he has a fight with Lily.
  • A rare male example happened in Perfect Strangers, when Larry explained to Balky that this is how people in America deal with heartbreak after Balky was dumped by his first love interest (who was just using him).
  • Played with in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Déjà Q". Q, Brought Down to Normal and feeling hungry for the first time in his life, asks Data in Ten Forward what people typically eat.

Data: I have observed that many food selections are influenced by the mood of the person ordering.
Q: I'm in a dreadful mood. Get me something appropriate.
Data: When Counselor Troi is in an unhappy mood, she often has something chocolate.
Q: Chocolate...
Data: For example, a hot fudge sundae. I cannot speak from personal experience, but I have seen it often has a profound psychological impact.
(A waiter comes over)
Q: I'll have ten hot fudge sundaes.
Data: I have never seen anyone eat ten.
Q: I'm in a really bad mood.

  • In Lois and Clark we see that Lois keeps a quart of ice cream with the lid off and a spoon already in it for just such occasions.
  • In one episode of One Day At a Time, Ann and Barbara sit down to demolish a coffee table completely covered by quart cartons of ice cream in numerous flavors.

Newspaper Comics

  • The newspaper comic strip Cathy thrived on this trope.

Web Animation

  • On one episode of Happy Tree Friends, Giggles is seen dejectedly scarfing down tons of ice cream after being stood up by The Mole, who had both gone on a date with Lumpy by accident—and subsequently horribly killed him, also by accident.

Web Comics

Western Animation

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