TracyFood

Monkey Monday: rare woman edition 13 August 2007 8:26 am

Posted by Tracy in : eating, feminism, meat, meta, monkeys, news, politics, vegan, vegetarian , trackback

So looking back on last week’s entries, I’ve realized it was Revelations Week at TracyFood, from the subtitle on Monkey Monday (Ratatouille and other revelations) all the way through to the garden mystery I solved in pictures on Foto Friday. Okay, the Dilly Beans in the middle might be a bit of a stretch to fit the theme, but it feels like a revelation every time I tweak a cookbook recipe to fit my own weird particular tastes, so let’s count that one as a little victory, all right? Likewise, if you don’t think chocolate sorbet is a revelation, then you’re either a milk chocolate fanatic or I don’t understand you for some other reason. (Seriously, though, chocolate sorbet is amazing. The “frozen dessert melting in your mouth” sensation fills in for whatever fatty goodness you might be missing, and did I mention that it’s really good with fruit? I think I did.)

ANYWAY. My theme for this week is not eating meat, because although it’s something I write about indirectly all the time anyway (more on that in a bit), last week the New York Times ran this godawful article about women eating meat to impress men on dates and it completely grossed me out and made me postpone my plans for Pig Week just a little longer. As I’ve mentioned before, feminism is TracyFood, and in case you didn’t know, I’m not even vegetarian but I still think eating lots of meat is gross. Eating lots of meat to impress somebody, as opposed to, say, because you like it, is even grosser — perhaps the only thing grosser than secretly eating a big meal before a date so you can order just a dainty little salad and pretend to be all ladylike or whatever. Ewwity ew, ew, ew! I can go on and on about this article, how it starts with a cute little anecdote about a woman who mentioned meat in her personals ad not once but twice, and of course that’s why she successfully landed herself a meat-loving man to marry, because after all that’s the biggest prize life might possibly have to offer? Yuck! And of course that’s next to a picture of a woman eating a big steak as her date looks on? Gah. Finally, do not even get me started on the freaking article title, “Be Yourselves, Girls, Order the Rib-Eye.” Because nothing says being yourself like taking advice from an article that patronizingly calls you “girl” while telling you how to win the approval of others. Seriously. The only good thing about that article is that it provides at least a week of easy motivation with lines like:

Of course, there are always those rare women who order what they want and to heck with what a man might think.

which is of course exactly where I got this entry’s title. (I like to think I’m special for lots of other reasons, too, of course, but hey.)

So. There will be none of that “how to please a man by doing stuff that Tracy hates” crap around here this week (of course, there might be stuff about how sexy it is to do stuff I like), and I’ll try not too rant about that wretched Times article too much more (but if you wouldn’t mind reading some fun responses to its stupidity, I thought Feministing and Salon’s Broadsheet both kicked its ass). Coming up tomorrow: a little Ask TracyFood letter that turned into a big manifesto about being not even vegetarian. Later this week: more delicious not-meat recipes! Come to think of it, a quick look back through the archives suggests that I’ve never published a non-vegetarian recipe on TracyFood, unless you count Lady Bird’s chili. Which makes me pretty happy, even if I’ll probably break that streak for the Pig Week I’ve got in the works, and that makes me happy, too.