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Happy International Women’s Day! 8 March 2007 3:16 pm

Posted by Tracy in : books,cooking,feminism,identity,news,politics , trackback

I didn’t go on strike because I was covering the opening shift at Morning Glory for my boss — it’s her partner’s birthday, and that’s a pretty good cause, too, and besides I was home by 10:30 which is honestly when I might have gotten up today if I had been on strike or just rocking the usual laziness. But I digress. Today is also officially Blog Against Sexism Day 2007, so I figured now’s as good a time as any to state clearly (instead of between all the lines) that yes, feminism is TracyFood, in that delicious food for thought kind of way. Also, take one look at this official Blog Against Sexism image:

and just try to tell me it has no place in a food blog. Good grief, kids.

Anyway, the real point of this entry is to say “feminism is TracyFood” but while I’m on the subject here’s a letter I wrote to feminism that’s about as good a summary as I can write. (For extra credit in the general-feminism-blogging department, you could read Occasionally Conversations With My Man Are Instructive by Ilkya Damen, which I learned about from the inimitable Twisty at I Blame The Patriarchy, which features pictures of many delicious edible treats as well as some of the tastiest anti-sexist rants around.) But enough generalities; on to specifics, like how is TracyFood blogging against sexism?

Well, for one thing, in my quest for interesting articles to share on Monkey Monday, I’ve noticed that a lot of food writing makes me all kinds of twitchy with its implication or assumption that it’s being read by either

1) yuppie scum

or

b) girls

— but the latter (in case I wasn’t clear enough with my ironic misnumbering) only in the most godawful patronizing way imaginable. After all, so many articles about food seem to say between their lines, real men don’t cook, or if they do it’s just a hobby, definitely not an everyday housework drudgery chore kind of thing, because lord knows that’s all home cooking ever is and that kind of work is for housewives, or better still the hired help (for the most part, nameless faceless underpaid nonwhite women). Maybe fancy culinary-school educated executive chef types might count as real men if they’re super well-paid, but any other dude who cooks for money is kind of low-class because again, real men (i.e. rich white ones) have wives for that sort of thing or else they pay people like me to make them food. Sigh. You get the idea. I try really hard to make TracyFood sound, well, nothing like those assumptions, because they are boring and lame.

Actually, the Salon Broadsheet (ad-watching or bypass required) post I linked to on Monday summarizes a lot of my complaints about food writing and gender pretty well: when women cook (especially at home) it’s nurturing and mundane and devalued, but when men cook (especially in high-end restaurants) it’s skilled and special and spendy. The really funny thing (to me, anyway) is that the New York Times article that provoked Broadsheet in the first place is by Laura Shapiro, whose book Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century has been on my “maybe I should get it from the library” list ever since I noticed it turning up all over the place in the endnotes to Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America by Jessamyn Neuhaus last year. I’m really fascinated by the history of cookbooks, it turns out: the Neuhaus book led me to Stand Facing the Stove: the story of the women who gave America The Joy of Cooking by Anne Mendelson, which ate my brain in a most enjoyable way. My most recent reading specifically on the subject of women and cooking is Can she bake a cherry pie? American women and the kitchen by Mary Drake McFeely but it’s due back to the UO library next Wednesday so I probably won’t be able to take as many notes on it as I did the Mendelson, which I would like very much to discuss on TracyFood someday. (There are lots of badass women, cooks and otherwise, including the authors, in Frances Moore Lappé and Anne Lappé’s Hope’s Edge: The next diet for a small planet, which I mentioned on Monday and have now almost finished, but they’re more of a recurring theme than the subject of the book.) Yay for good writing about food and gender!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Even if I don’t mention it in every single entry, believe me when I say that TracyFood is against sexism in between the lines, and also all about recognizing the many yucky ways that sexism is tied to classism, racism, homophobia, the worst kinds of religious fundamentalism, and so on (I love many things about bell hooks but one of my favorites is how she says “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” like it’s all one word that means stupid and hateful all at once). In my dreams of punk rock teahouses and community gardens, we are harnessing the power of deliciousness for the greater equality and awesomeness of everybody. Especially you, dear reader. (Cue “Glad To Have A Friend Like You” song from Free to Be… You and Me, for all the lyrics about friends cooking together, and also because I am a big hippie sap.)

  • http://www.allchiara.com Chiara

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  • http://soy.dyndns.org/comics Penny

    Seriously. I grew up with my dad cooking, and never thought that was weird – some people’s moms cook, some people’s dads cook, whatever. And then I learned about presumptions and all this shit, and then I learned to cook and had to start dealing with people’s presumptions about me as a woman and as a lesbian, and I think it’s less confusing that I’m a good cook because I’m a vegan cook (even if not always vegan otherwise), but still – so fucked up. I learned to cook a little from my dad and a little from Cory and a little from Barb and Anna and a lot on my own, and I didn’t do it because I’m a woman, I did it because I want to eat better food. And I hate how people can be dismissive and in the next conversation talk about how their mom made the best food in the world and they miss it so much.