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Quick link: “Is Feminism Compatible With the Kitchen?” 26 February 2008 2:07 pm

Posted by Tracy in : consumerism,cooking,feminism,politics , trackback

That’s seriously the headline on this article about women cooking (or not) that ran on Alternet a week ago. It is still making my head spin, and now I am sharing it (and my bewilderment) with you, dear readers. To be fair, the article mostly doesn’t agree with media stereotypes of (probably white and at least middle if not upper-class) professional/career-oriented women who prefer shopping to cooking, but I mean, really. What the crap? I have been trying to compose a response to this piece for about a week, but so far I haven’t come up with anything coherent. A few more thoughts:

I gather that part of the weirdness here is that somehow somebody somewhere thinks that Sex in the City represents real people or was popular because it appealed to audiences on some level other than escapist fantasy, but I’ve never watched that show and really wish that writers discussing real life would refrain from using examples from fiction without at least making some sort of acknowledgement that it’s not real. Is that so much to ask? (Insert some rant here about how I know intent is bunk and all, but it’s not like it’s hard to look at popular books, TV, and advertising as reflecting both their creators and their audiences, right? Please?)

The headline question is so not even wrong.

I’m filing this article away for my future studies of the cooking-optional world. Remind me to write a big rant about how I don’t live in that world.

  • Peter L.

    I suspect that this is hard to respond to because — well, there isn’t actually that much there. “Women don’t cook anymore! ’cause! There’s an ad! And a TV show! And a friend told me so!” I mean, that’s a hard thing to respond to…

    I have noticed that, as a guy who cooks, I get a lot of praise — “ooh, you’re a chef!” Well, no, I cook, and I am OK, but I am not the best cook I know much less a chef, either at a personal or professional level. I don’t know that any women I know get that kind of praise for their cooking, and I expect that it is because they are *expected* to be able to cook to at least a “reasonable degree.” As a man, I am expected to be no good in the kitchen at all (except maybe for grilling). And that is a double standard that demeans everyone — devaluing the status of the real accomplishments of women and marginalizing the accomplishments of men who strive to do better in the kitchen than “heat up something frozen” through overblown praise. There’s probably something worth examining in that interrelation.

    And using commercials as a glimpse into how people live? If we go by that, we must assume that all men are lazy, sleepless louts (except for those who spend all their time in a) bars or b) Xtreme! sports) who cannot figure out how to turn on a stove. It’s baffling; who, exactly, is meant to be drawn to this depiction of gender roles…?

    Anyway, those are *my* incoherent thoughts.

    Peter

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

    I get credit for knowing how to cook because everything I cook is vegan, and people expect vegans to eat, like, grass and twigs.

    Also I cook pretty well, and most of my social circle – at least on this coast – doesn’t cook at all.