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

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