The New York Times hosted one of its (poorly executed and overly polemic) “Room For Debate” series called “Motherhood vs. Feminism” a few weeks ago on the style of parenting that, to oversimplify, advocates breastfeeding, co-sleeping and baby wearing.

A recent book from a Frenchwoman arguing that attachment parenting and feminism can’t co-exist is what pushed this subject into the mainstream media, but now it has really spun out of control, especially with the Time magazine cover this week that features a mom breastfeeding her almost 4-year-old and the headline “Are You Mom Enough?”

I posted on Twitter yesterday that I had mixed feelings about the cover. Several friends couldn’t understand why those feelings weren’t firmly for or against the cover, either that it was so offensive that there’s no way I could be in favor of it or that, as a breastfeeding advocate, why would I have a problem with a woman breastfeeding so openly.

But this is precisely why the cover is so troubling. The headline is easily the most repulsive part of the package because it flames the mommy wars that don’t need any more flaming. There’s far too much judgement going on in both the AP and non-AP communities toward women who choose different parenting styles, and to imply that people who do not breastfeed, wear their babies or co-sleep with them aren’t mom enough is downright offensive, especially with Mother’s Day coming up this weekend.

For this reason alone, Time should be ashamed of itself. Mothers everywhere are doing their best, and to taunt them like this is abhorrent.

But what saddens me more is the photo. If you’ve been reading this blog for long or knew me when I was breastfeeding my own two boys, you’d know that I’m outspokenly adamant about a woman’s right to breastfeed in public, while drinking a glass of wine if she wants to, without feeling the need to cover up.

The fact that we’ve so sexualized breasts that we can’t comfortably feed our babies when they are hungry and we are out in public is a problem in American society.

But to brazenly show a boy who looks like he should have a backpack on going to school standing on a chair with his mom’s nipple in his mouth doesn’t help this cause.

I’m not against extended breastfeeding, but it’s unrealistic that a boy of that age would breastfeed in this way. After a certain age, breastmilk isn’t given for nutritional needs. It’s for comfort and bonding between the mother and child, not for an after school snack. I get that and I support that.

A friend of mine, who recently stopped breastfeeding her five-and-a-half-year-old pointed out on Facebook that she doesn’t “know any moms who do extended breastfeeding (at least w/preschoolers) that just whip it out like that in public, as the photo – and various poorly-done films – seem to indicate.”

Manipulation comes to mind. I don’t know that mother or her son or the photography staff at Time, but clearly this scene was set up to provoke a reaction, which it clearly did. And all I can think about is that poor kid who probably didn’t have much choice in this matter even those he’s starting to be at the age where he is developing his own sense of self, where he has a say in the activities he wants to pursue, what he wants to wear or eat or read or watch and how he fits in with the world outside his home.

I’m sure he’s not being forced to breastfeed, but at what point is it up to the parent to say, “You are too old to be sucking milk from Mom’s breasts.”?

I like to point out breasts’ natural biological function as much as any breastfeeding advocate, but it is irresponsible to deny that they have a sexual function, too.

There is a very fine line between toddlerhood and the age when kids, say, start requesting privacy in the bathroom or asking what sex is, and at some point, we have to agree that a mother’s nipple in a child’s mouth is inappropriate. I don’t know what that age is, but some would argue that four or five is starting to push it, especially in such a public way.

Any breastfeeding is better than no breastfeeding, but that photo combined with that headline does more to hurt attachment parenting and breastfeeding in general than to help it, which is unfair.

Although we co-slept for the first few months of both boys’ lives and I carried them around with slings for even longer, I don’t really think of myself as an AP-er, mostly because I’m too selfish to co-sleep with them any longer and, by god, we still have to let Avery cry it out sometimes, which few AP advocates would support.

But despite my own history with attachment parenting, I hate that articles and covers like this villainize them as being this crazy group of extremist parents.

I’ve found that many of them, including my sister, fully support parents’ right to choose how they raise their kids, which is the first tenet of feminism, in my book.

I found it liberating, cost-saving and very much in tune with my feminist ideals to breastfeed my kids. Thankfully, my milk supply let me have that choice, which isn’t always the case.

But, when the kids had moved on to other sources of food, it was equally as liberating to stop.

Although it was tempting to pick “Fifty Shades of Grey” as our new book club selection, we went with Elizabeth Engelhardt’s “A Mess of Greens,” which we’ll be talking about at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 10. Yes, we’re skipping June, but that should give you some extra time to get a hold of the book, which is out on paperback.

Here’s a sample from the book that was published in Edible Austin, and a blurb from an article I wrote for the paper last fall:

Who knew tomatoes could be so empowering?

 

In the early 1900s, as many as half a million young girls throughout the country, but especially in the South, participated in tomato clubs, where they had to plant one-tenth of an acre of tomatoes, which would provide more tomatoes than they or their families could use in a year.

 

“This forced them to have to learn how to can them, market them and sell them – and then they could do whatever they wanted with the money,” said Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt, a University of Texas professor whose new book, “A Mess of Greens: Southern Gender and Southern Food,” (University of Georgia Press, $24.95) explores the history of women and food in the South.

 

Pressure cookers and glass jars weren’t abundant, so these girls were learning lessons in soldering, chemistry and the technology of the day, skills that they weren’t necessarily being taught elsewhere.

 

“I think that was one of the real attractions to girls,” Engelhardt said. “It felt modern and progressive. They were getting to participate in a world” outside the small towns they usually called home.

 

See you on July 10!

Just in time for our next book club meeting, Beanie Babies do “The Hunger Games”.

The Pioneer Woman-Laura Ingalls Wilder story from the New York Times was a great conversation piece for “The Wilder Life” book club meeting this week. There are some really funny and poignant lines and observations in there.

Love this parody diet article on Jezebel.

Both Jezebel and Feministing had a lot to say about a Lady Gaga tweet this week in which the Monster Goddess confessed that after a major workout, she was having a salad instead of a hamburger, which is what she really wanted. A classic case of body image versus wants and oh so much more. “When it comes to talking about diet and exercise, it seems female celebrities must adhere to a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy or risk offending the masses. Once again, we lady-types just can’t win,” writes Erin Gloria Ryan on Jezebel, who rightly points out that the only error is that the former bulimic with more Twitter followers than anyone in the world should have chosen a different hashtag.

The first half of the book is almost all about food. Where they get it, how little there is, who took it away and why, and how the people who have power use food as a tool to make the citizens of Panem comply with their crazy rules. Katniss, our heroine, has a knack for hunting and an appreciation for even the smallest slice of apple with goat cheese. The book is a quick read, and though the waiting list for it at the library is probably a year or two long, many book stores have the paperback version on sale for about $10.

We’ll meet at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 8, at Thrice Cafe, 909 W. Mary. Hope to see you all there!

1) Hat tip (again) to Emily Matchar for pointing out this New York Times story about city living versus country living and the vast landscape of reality in between that is where we all, including The Pioneer Woman, happen to fall.

2) Wendy McClure, author of April’s book club pick “The Wilder Life,” will be at BookPeople in Austin at 7 p.m. on April 9, the day before we’ll be talking about her book at our monthly book club get together. Crazy timing, I know. Looks like she’ll have already moved on to San Francisco (wagons sure do travel a lot faster than they used to) by the time we are meeting, though.

A reminder about this month’s book club: At 7 p.m., April 10 at Thrice Cafe, 909 W. Mary. St., we’ll be talking about Laura Ingalls Wilder in general, not just McClure’s book. Hope to see some of you there!

I’d been aware of the book for the past few years but had no desire to read a story about teenagers hunting each other until a recent encounter with a certain 13-year-old girl for whom I have a great deal of respect. Last time I saw her, she was an eager, bright, ahead-of-her-years 12-year-old who wanted to hang out with me. Now, just a few months later, she could hardly pull her nose out of a well-worn copy of “The Hunger Games” even to say hello.

“Oh, I’ve heard a lot about that book,” I told her. “Are you excited about the movie?”

“Yeah,” she said, not even looking up.

“I haven’t read the book, but I’d like to check out the movie when it comes out.”

“You have to read the book,” she said, cutting me off.

I could hear something in her voice that I’ve heard subtly in my own when trying to convey to someone how much a book has meant to me. You have to read the book or else I really won’t think much of you, is what she really meant. You have to read the book or you really won’t know who I am.

At the height of the hype ahead of Friday’s movie premiere, I bought a copy (perhaps the 24,000,001st copy) and dug in, and it seems like I have reached for the book every spare second I’ve had over the past three days. It’s packed with challenging references to food, power and gender (check out Mike Sutter’s list of all the food in the book), and I hope we get to talk about it in a future Feminist Kitchen book club.

My friend was among the millions of people who went to see the movie, which stars Jennifer Lawrence, the young actress that carried “Winter’s Bone,” and give the movie the third highest grossing opening weekend ever. The three-day total, which is somewhere around $150 million, is higher than what the Twilight movies and all the Harry Potter movies but one pulled in during their debut weekends.

I haven’t seen the film yet and I’m still a few chapters shy from finishing the first book, but I think my young friend was on to something.

Photo by nomadic_lass via Creative Commons on Flickr.

With the return of Mad Men for a fifth season, there is an endless amount of culinary tie-ins and themed party planning. There are tips on how to throw a Mad Men viewing party, lessons on retro cocktail arts, and an unofficial Mad Men cookbook.

There is an allure to retro ingredients like marshmallow creme, which seem out of place in our love of all things authentic. Yet there is also the problem of romanticizing a lost era of food without understanding the social inequalities of the 1960’s. A blurb from the Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook website highlights the romanticization perfectly:

“Ever wish you could mix an Old Fashioned just the way Don Draper likes it? Or prepare Oysters Rockefeller and a martini the way they did fifty years ago at one of Roger Sterling’s favorite haunts, The Grand Central Oyster Bar? Ever wonder how Joan Harris manages to prepare a perfect crown roast in her tiny apartment kitchen?”

What this kind of comment misses is that food in Mad Men displays the inequality of the time: it’s why office secretaries eat at their desks from parchment paper-wrapped sandwiches while the men sip old fashioneds and dine out with clients. And it’s why Don’s ex-wife Betty uses jarred tomato sauce and dried pasta in a hurry when her black housemaid isn’t around to make dinner.

Who gets to eat what in Mad Men is a small but detailed way the show’s writers use to illustrate the inequalities and misogyny of the 1960’s. Ruth Reich writes about the lost art of a correctly made Caesar salad, but those table-side constructed salads were primarily enjoyed in white and male-dominated restaurants by men like Don Draper.

Mad Men is one of the best feminist shows on television; its writers don’t lie to the viewer by transforming its female characters into perfect contemporary women. Instead they show us the unsettling historical realities of the time. The point isn’t to shun retro recipes–I’ve always wanted to make a baked Alaska, I’ll admit it–but to not forget the contexts in which these recipes were made.

I tried to look back at the past two weeks to find some Feminist Kitchen lessons, but unfortunately, there weren’t that many great food OR feminism panels this year. In fact, it seems there were just as many panels about sex as food at the conference.

The few food panels that I attended (cooking apps, Brooklyn food scene, something called “social food” that doesn’t at all sound like what it should mean) left me a little disappointed, and I only made it to one panel about gender and technology.

“Blogging: Why So Many Women Are Doing It” was a core conversation (read: smaller room, not so formal presentation) in which two fashion bloggers talked about why women are so drawn to the medium. The conversation was a little more focused on the business and branding side of blogging, but those are realities that are worth addressing.

In the same vein, money was the focus of a panel called “Monetizing Mommy,” which featured blogger-turned-cookbook author Erin Chase, who has written “$5 Dinner” books. My daddy blogger colleague Omar Gallaga recapped that panel here.

Statesman freelancer Isadora Vail covered a number of women-in-tech sessions, including one about how Planned Parenthood has used the digital space in the middle of the public fight over women’s health, including the Komen controversy.

Lisa Ling and Susan Orlean were on a panel about how women represent themselves online. “All of this technology is making women more insecure than ever before. We are being bombarded with things at all hours of the day. To me, its all these things we grew up resisting,” Ling said.

SXSW Tech Superwomen

A panel about mentoring called Tech Superwomen apparently had some feel-good messages: Don’t be afraid to fail. Seek out people who inspire you. Own your work.

I’m really bummed I missed this Designing Experiences for Women panel that explored the world beyond “shrink it and pink it” — I shudder at the thought of every website I’ve ever been to that is an example of this — and I’m thrilled that don’t have to deal with the scum that were at the center of a panel called “Pick up artists versus Feminists.”

But the biggest lesson I think I learned came from a panel called “Is Aggregation Theft?,” which was about the ethical dilemmas involved in sharing, linking to and repurposing content.

“Aggregate as you want to be aggregated,” an editor at large at Ad Age said. He was saying it in reference to the term used for condensing and passing along others’ content, but as the week went on, I took it as a reminder of the good old Golden Rule of conducting yourself, both online and off. Talk about others as you want to be talked about. Help as you want to be helped. Assume in others what you want others to assume about you.

I’ll use a personal example here: I felt a little snubbed by Rachael Ray yesterday. For the past three SXSWs, we’ve done a quick little video interview for Austin360. In between festivals, I’ll interview her over the phone about some cookbook or project she’s working on. She always acts like she remembers me and cares about the work I do. Unlike Anthony Bourdain or Paula Deen’s people, her people make an extra effort to connect her with me, which inevitably leads to coverage that benefits their client.

But yesterday, my videographer and I waited and waited and waited for our three minutes one-on-one with her. The two of us and Ray all crossed paths plenty of times during her annual SXSW party at Stubbs, and instead of pulling her away from her husband’s band’s set or some other media interview, she and I just exchanged pleasantries about the party, the weather or the band. But after 3 hours, we decided we had better things to do on a sunny Saturday afternoon (that happened to be Ian’s birthday).

Ray has grown on me over the years, especially after reading the chapter about her in Kim Severson’s “Spoon Fed” in which Ray helps teach Severson to embrace her own weird, flawed self by being authentic, which is always a big buzzword of SXSW.

I was looking forward to asking her about that and catching up about the year behind us and the one ahead. But it just didn’t work out. At first, I took it as a personal affront to my medium. The TV stations, with their polished, practically airbrushed reporters and fancy equipment, sure looked slicker than our online-only set up. Then I started to question this so-called authenticity of hers that I’d started to buy into, but by the end of day, I’d talked myself out of walking away from the situation with a chip on my shoulder. “It’s not about you,” I could almost hear my mom saying. “Don’t assume the worst.”

I thought about all the times I’d left an event early or didn’t respond to an email until a few days too late. I wouldn’t want people to assume that it was because I was snubbing them, and everyone deserves to have the benefit of the doubt, even the almighty Rachael Ray.

Instead of hosting a book club meeting during SXSW — I am thinking about hosting a Feminist Kitchen tweet-up, though. Interested? @me or leave a comment– we’ll meet at 7 p.m. April 10 at Thrice to talk about Laura Ingalls Wilder.

For many of us, Laura Ingalls Wilder represents something within us that’s hard to explain in words and sometimes doesn’t even make logical sense when we try to figure out why that little girl who grew up in the big woods and expansive prairies, in the back of a roaming wagon and a creekside dug-out means so much to us.

Wendy McClure, whose previous book, “I’m Not The New Me” was about weight loss culture, felt this way, too, and she embarked on an adventure into the hows and whys of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author, the fictionalized character that Laura and her daughter, Rose, created and the unique fandom that continues to this day.

“The Wilder Life” is funny and fascinating (well, to Little House geeks like me). It’s not a food book, per se, but McClure has plenty to say about just about every detail in the book, which includes plenty of references to cooking, eating and the pioneering/homesteading spirit that is still very present in today’s food culture. (Hello, Pioneer Woman!)

Through McClure’s book, I’ve learned about a few other feminist takes on our favorite childhood author. One book I’m hoping to pick up between now and the book club is “Constructing the Little House: Gender, Culture, and Laura Ingalls Wilder” by Ann Romines. (What a small world: I got to hear Romines speak about her work on the Willa Cather community cookbook at the cookbook conference in New York that I attended last month.)

I hope you’ll join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 10 at Thrice, 909 W. Mary. Here’s the book club’s Facebook page if you want to RSVP.

In place of blogging these past few weeks, I’ve been caught up in a whirlwind of work (we’re getting ready to launch a magazine and South by Southwest starts next week), family (Avery is starting to talk and we finally got those holiday thank-you cards in the mail) and me (doing yoga and dabbling in Deepak Chopra’s 21-day meditation to balance the work stress).

But nothing has put things in perspective like this TedX Austin talk from Penny De Los Santos, my food photographer friend who recently moved from Austin to New York. It seems that she’s as in-demand as a motivational speaker these days as a photographer, and you can see why.

I have no idea how she made it through those 12 minutes, which included a description of her last meal with her mother, without even a crack in her voice. (A well-timed hug from one of the boys this week made me a weepy mess, but I guess I was in need of a good cry.)

I hope it inspires you to open your eyes and see the life around you, even if it’s only in your own (overgrown, full of toys and desperately in need of mowing) backyard.