Tuesday, April 30, 2013

On the "we" (you) should cook more set

Emily Matchar and I are totally on the same wavelength. She writes:

The food movement, with its insistence on how fun and fulfilling and morally correct cooking is, seems to have trouble imagining why women might not have wanted to spend all their time in front of the stove. Since scratch cooking today is largely a hobby or a personal choice of the middle class, many of us wish we could spend more time in the kitchen. But it’s important to remember that this was not always the case. 
It’s easy to forget, in the face of today’s foodie culture, that cooking is not fun when it’s mandatory.
For my earlier musings on the topic, see of course the tag. Part of me is like, aaah, other people think the same! Another part of me is quite glad - how does everyone not notice this?

I do feel compelled to reiterate that this is very much like "monogamish." Food-movement leaders insist that they're speaking in gender-neutral terms. And, on the face of it, they are. Just like Dan Savage promotes gender-neutral negotiated non-monogamy. And, one needs to acknowledge this. But speaking in gender-neutral terms is not enough. And it gets exhausting trying to explain why that's not enough. But what Matchar and I are trying to do - reminding why it was that women didn't want to stay in the kitchen, or (and this is all WWPD, I believe) why women weren't content to look the other way in response to male cheating - is probably the way to go.

1 comment:

Petey said...

"I do feel compelled to reiterate that this is very much like "monogamish." Food-movement leaders insist that they're speaking in gender-neutral terms. And, on the face of it, they are. Just like Dan Savage promotes gender-neutral negotiated non-monogamy. And, one needs to acknowledge this. But speaking in gender-neutral terms is not enough. And it gets exhausting trying to explain why that's not enough. But what Matchar and I are trying to do - reminding why it was that women didn't want to stay in the kitchen, or (and this is all WWPD, I believe) why women weren't content to look the other way in response to male cheating - is probably the way to go."

FWIW, when I heard Pollan on Lopate, IIRC, he really did spend a lot of his time talking about how this all did come back to the utter necessity of folks having the gender-housework conversations that folks were supposed to be having in the 1970's.

So I can't speak for everyone, but Pollan does seem to be on the case...