September 11, 2011

Is “Maggie Goes On A Diet” really as bad as it sounds?

Like just about everyone else in America, I’ve heard plenty about “Maggie Goes On A Diet” but haven’t actually read it.

Paul Kramer’s self-published children’s book about a 14-year-old girl who needs and wants to lose weight has, understandably, stirred up a lot of controversy. While everyone agrees that childhood obesity is an epidemic that we need to do something about, not everyone is so sure that encouraging young kids (the book is targeted to kids — specifically, girls — ages 4 to 8) to go on a “diet” is such a good thing.

After all, eating disorders on the opposite end of the weight spectrum are as big a problem as  kids weighing 20-30 pounds more than they should, and Americans are particularly screwed up when it comes to body image. (I can’t even bring myself to read about those little pageant girl shows, much less watch them.)

But after reading this AP article by Leanne Italie, I’m beginning to think that the book — and its author — are as misjudged as the chubby girl on the cover. Or at least that’s what Italie implies having interviewed the author and actually read the book. (It doesn’t come out until next month.)

Kramer expresses regret for having drawn such a thin version of Maggie’s “fantasy self” on the cover and that the word diet has such negative connotations. “To me, diet means a change of habits, eating nutritiously, losing unhealthy weight,” he says.

It sounds like Maggie doesn’t want to lose weight for beauty, but because she wants to be able to move easier on the soccer field and feel healthier. The AP reporter does reveal some odd benefits of Maggie losing weight — gaining friends, including guys; getting higher grades and invitations to sleepovers; “bringing deodorant spray so she doesn’t have to worry about leaving a smell when she uses the bathroom” (ugh, deodorant spray. Is there anything worse, any place more uncomfortable than a middle school locker room?) — but in general, the theme doesn’t seem as malicious as I’d originally assumed.

Italie, the AP writer, ends the article with a fitting piece of irony:

The book concludes, as Maggie collects a soccer trophy: “It is sad that people are judged mainly because of how they look. A pretty cover does not necessarily guarantee a good book.”

Hm. Being judged by our looks instead of what’s inside. Even if we haven’t been the overweight girl looking in the mirror (and don’t make me pull out the photos to prove I’ve been there, too), we all know what that feels like.

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September 6, 2011

A look ahead at next week’s book club selection, “Blood, Bones and Butter”

(Editor’s note: This is a post from Caroline Jann, aka @gastronomaustin, the Austin cook/writer who is helping coordinating the Feminist Kitchen book club + film series that started last month. At next month’s meeting, we’re talking about “Blood, Bones and Butter” by Gabrielle Hamilton, which is available with a 10 percent discount at BookWoman if you mention the Feminist Kitchen. Here are a few of Caroline’s thoughts about the book ahead of the meeting at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, September 13, at Thrice, 909 W. Mary St.)

When I wrote about being a woman in the kitchen for CNN’s Eatocracy last spring, many responded that I should stop complaining, give up or at least give this issue a rest and move on.  Behind the safety of anonymity, clever nom de plumes and a computer screen, I got to read comments that made me cringe, blush, raise an eyebrow and want to trace a few IP addresses.  Filtering through the prattle, there were some responses that reassured me that people actually read past the feisty title of the article and digested the meat of my writing.  I was especially struck by a direct email mentioning Gabrielle Hamilton’s memoir, “Blood, Bones and Butter”.

I welcomed the comments from my new email correspondent not only because she was able to present her criticism in a polite fashion but also because she brought in quotations from Hamilton’s book. The commenter obviously had thought about what she was writing before pressing “enter.” Long email short, the commenter told me that I shouldn’t still be questioning why there aren’t more females in professional kitchens. What is, is and tough chick chefs are out there cooking–not writing articles for blogs.  She brought in a quote from Hamilton to sum it all up: “This topic’s a dinosaur.”

I had only heard many summaries and reviews of Hamilton’s book but had yet to sit down with it myself.  With the email lingering in my head, “Blood, Bones and Butter” quickly jumped to the top of my reading list. I devoured it.

The trick to writing a convincing essay or winning an argument is greatly in the framing of evidence.

Needless to say, if you only quote the beginning of a chapter yet leave out the subsequent pages, it seems like the chef/writer doesn’t budge on her stance. Yes, initially she “can’t imagine that we were still having this conversation, this draining, polarizing conversation about where the women are in the industry” as she prepares for a female chef conference at the CIA (203).

My email commenter did successfully draw me in with the excerpts she chose from “Blood, Bones and Butter”, however, she left out the evolution of Hamilton’s argument.  Just a few page turns after her dinosaur statement, Hamilton admits that “there was some validity to the conference after all.  If there were so few of us visible in the industry that we kept seeing each other at so many events, there must still be a problem with employing female chefs” (208).

Hamilton, the 2011 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef NYC, continues her flow of realization as she recalls a scenario when a restaurateur a few years back “introduced me to his mother as one of the top, one of the best female chefs in New York City.” Everyone becomes silent and awkward when Hamilton calls him out for using “the qualifying word female” (208).  If that encounter hits you as strident, let’s imagine inserting the race of a chef or the socio-economic status of their parents.

I felt like giving a big “Hear, hear!” to Hamilton after reading this. Her experiences are extremely applicable to a variety of industries and I’m sure many women, cooks or not, can relate to her frustration.

Another part of the memoir my email correspondent pointed out was Hamilton’s disapproval of all the women who flaked out and retired to typing up articles for magazines.  The particular spot of reference was this:

“Especially when we know perfectly well where the women are. They jumped into publishing, and are now busy with idolizing the male chefs who made it impossible for them to continue cooking in restaurants and they are so busy writing features and articles about them that they don’t have time left–or column inches–for the female chefs who actually toughed it out” (206).

If this excerpt stood by itself, it can seem like Hamilton is cutting down women in the publishing world for not being in the kitchen.  Did we forget that Hamilton’s bio on the back cover even touts her numerous published articles and features?  If any chef appreciates writing, it’s surely Hamilton who has a Masters in English / Creative Writing from the University of Michigan.  Another tidbit we shouldn’t forget is that her sister was “the food editor at Saveur magazine” right around the time Prune was opening (137).

Hamilton is not criticising the female publishers for their career choice… necessarily. If a woman would like to be a publisher, then so be it. If a woman would like to be a female celebrity chef (like Gabrielle Hamilton these days), she should “get in the kitchen; cook well; and the rest will take care of itself. You can’t be a recognized woman chef if you are working at a magazine” (206).  As for those female publishers who claim to be fed up with a male-dominated culinary industry, yet still enable the spotlight to be focused on male celebrity chefs, I’m pretty sure Hamilton is not a fan. Female publishers who aren’t vigorously supporting women chefs are part of the problem–sort of a practice-what-you-preach situation.

I’ll stop now. Let this sink in and marinate. Although I will be cooking abroad for the next few months, I do hope to be involved with the discussion on this wonderfully lush memoir via Italian Wi-Fi and Addie’s live updates.

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August 29, 2011

Gender’s role in the Bourdain v. Deen fight over culinary elitism

It was interesting to watch the discussion about culinary elitism evolve over the past week.

In a New York Times op-ed piece, former restaurant critic Frank Bruni used what was otherwise an everyday online spitting match between Anthony Bourdain and Paula Deen as a platform for a bigger point: That the culinary elite (represented here by Bourdain) should stop looking down on regular folk (represented here by Deen, who hasn’t led a “regular” life in at least a decade) who might not have the access to, education about, money to buy or interest in fancy, organic, complicated or out-of-the-ordinary food.

Bourdain called Deen “the worst, most dangerous person in America” because she’s “telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us.”

And you know what that reminded me of? The study that made the rounds earlier this year that blamed the childhood obesity epidemic on working mothers.

When he’s not making a living traveling around the world making one of the best shows on television, Bourdain makes his living by picking on people who sometimes need to be picked on. He’s famous for saying things that people think but no one has the balls to say. It’s a good gig, especially when so few have the equally big balls to throw it back in his face.

Well, Bruni did. (So did Paula, but it’s Bruni’s piece that has everyone talking.)

He brought up some terrific points about class and the social divide that culinary elitism has created that we would be foolish to overlook, but I was also interested in the gender divide that appeared in his article.

There’s a clear delineation in gender between the “self-appointed sophisticates and the supposed rubes.” Bourdain and chefs David Chang and Andrew Carmellini represent the first. Deen, Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee are Bruni’s choices for the latter.

I tweeted something about it being worth noting that the people who are supposedly leading America down the culinary toilet are women who promote fast, easy-to-prepare comfort meals and that the cutting edge sophisticates who think everyone else is foolish are men.

But there are two big exceptions, one who was mentioned by name in the article and another who was conspicuously absent: Alice Waters and Guy Fieri.

In their respective camps — chefs who are trying to change the world one bite at a time and home cooks who are just trying to get dinner on the table — Waters and Fieri are always outnumbered by the opposite gender, but their presence alone doesn’t allow us to treat this as a gender-neutral discussion.

Emily Matchar, who is working on a book about New Domesticity, used this ruckus as an excuse to break down the show on the Food Network by gender:

Female chefs – even lauded professional restaurant chefs like Alexandra Guarnaschelli – are described as being “working moms” or “stay-at-home moms” and their food is described with adjectives like “simple” and “homey” and “accessible” and “healthy.” The food on the male-hosted shows is “intense” and “extreme” and “ultimate” and “fearless.”

This is not a surprise to anyone, but it’s an important distinction to be aware of when one camp is being vilified in such a public manner. Bourdain could have chosen Fieri, the bleach-haired dude’s dude who is about as annoying as they come, or his target fellow Travel Channel host Adam Richman, who has built an entire show around eating three days’ worth of calories in one sitting.

But he didn’t. He took aim at Deen, and then suddenly Bruni was writing about three female hosts who, to the culinary elite, represent just how stupid Americans have become about food.

But in reality, they are sharp business women who happen to have built brands that appeal to home cooks, many of whom are certainly trying to cook and eat more responsibly for their health and for the environment than Deen does (at least on her show). At least one of them, Rachael Ray, is doing far, far more than Bourdain ever thought about doing to try to reform school lunches and help kids eat better. (And she doesn’t even have kids!)

Bourdain isn’t anti-woman or anti-feminist. I was happy to write a piece in his defense last year when, in his most recent book, “Medium Raw,” he reveals his egalitarian attitude toward home economics and takes aim at famous people in food that piss him off with little regard to gender.

But gender is a part of this debate, no matter if Bourdain realizes it. Subconsciously or not, we’re still drawing a line in the sand between female home cooks who are stuck in the bacon jar and the male progressive-minded problem solvers who never think of their actions or words as hypocritical.

Photo illustration via Gothamist and Ray photo from the New York Post.

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August 20, 2011

Twenty five or less: Morning pages and school lunches

Trying something new this afternoon.

Remember Julia Cameron’s “morning pages”? Does anyone still do those? (I’m pretty sure my mom does.) The idea is this: To help yourself along the artist’s way, write three pages every morning. Make it the first thing you do, and just write. No self-correcting. No self-judgement. Just words. And words and words.

I dabbled in morning pages when I was in a screenwriting course my last semester of college. My professor, who was diagnosed with breast cancer that fall, had assigned us to keep a journal and the only thing she checked for was the number of pages. It was a free space to let your mind pour out onto the page.

Stream of consciousness writing is partially what makes blogging so special, but most of us agonize so much over our stream-of-consciousness posts that it stops being the kind of theraputic exercise Cameron envisioned.

When life gets busy, as it has in recent weeks — the four-and-a-half year old starts pre-kindergarten this week, the littlest just started walking and my job duties are expanding and morphing — the Feminist Kitchen takes a back burner, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But what if I could find time for just 25 minutes to write something on women and food. Whatever has been on my mind and whatever comes to me. What it lacks in links, photos and in-depth research, it makes up for in brevity and unfiltered prose.

Thanks to Pomodoro, I have a 25 minute timer on my desktop to help me stay on task.

Back-to-school is what’s on my mind right now. I’m drunk on nostalgia of my own school years. My mom has been teaching for more than 25 years, so I spent more time than most kids roaming the hallways, cleaning blackboards, helping with whatever classroom tasks my mom or her teacher friends needed.

Julian’s first day of school is this week. The First. Day. Of. School. Ever. He has no idea what awaits.

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Because we’re in full-fledged school mode, I’ve been thinking a lot about lunches in the past few days. My editor at work has been obsessed with school lunches all summer because her daughter is also starting pre-K, and now I understand why. What to buy, what to pack, when to pack, how to pack it, how to clean it, how to make its contents appealing. Julian has previously been eating everything from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (even though he won’t eat them at home) to barbecue chicken (his favorite) at his daycare. The wonderful woman who runs the place has a special touch for getting kids to eat food that I just don’t have. She’s been watching kids for longer than I’ve been alive, which is why I’m not offended when Julian asks me if I could take a cooking class from her.

But now lunch is on me. And Ian. I’m guessing we’ll split the duties of lunch-making just like we do dinner: Whoever has the most energy and best ideas. It’s nice to have an editor and a blog audience to share my discoveries with, but that adds to the pressure — from the teachers, from within — of wanting to get it right.

Sure, I want him to eat healthfully, but ultimately, I want to set a precedent of what kind of lunches he’ll be expected to make when it’s time to pass the lunch torch. Just before I started second grade, my mom told me I had a choice: Eat the school lunch or make my own. My pickiness and stubbornness meant I made my lunch every day from that day forward. All the was through high school.

It was how I learned how to make food for myself. I wasn’t cooking, per se, but assembling meals is a very important step toward cooking them.

We have a brand new Transformer lunch box that’s ready to carry whatever we pack in it.

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August 11, 2011

Catching up with Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem is making the rounds in the press right now ahead of the release of a new HBO documentary, “Gloria Steinem: In Her Own Words,” that premieres on Monday night. An article on The Daily Beast has a nice overview of her life in the past half century and tells us what’s not in the movie (eg, “how her father’s obesity engendered in her an almost pathological fear of food that continues to this day”), but I really connected with this piece on Huffington Post by Sheryl Sandberg. Sandberg expresses her gratitude for Steinem’s work, even though Steinem explicitly states that she doesn’t want it. “She even quotes another feminist icon, Susan B. Anthony, who declared, ‘Our job is not to make young women grateful. It is to make them ungrateful so they keep going.’,” she writes.

And how do we move forward? In the documentary, Gloria offers the following advice to young women. “Listen to the voice inside you and follow that,” she says, adding “The primary thing is not that they know who I am, but that they know who they are.”

I’m sure her interview with Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report tonight won’t be quite so sentimental, but I’m sure it’ll be just as relevant. You can see her previous appearance here, and I’ll add a link to the interview on Hulu when it’s posted on Friday here’s the link to Thursday’s clip.

I have nothing but respect for Gloria Steinem. At 77, she’s tackled issues that seemed insurmountable to others. She’s tackled every hurdle thrown her way with intelligence and grace. The Feminist Kitchen probably wouldn’t exist without her. So, thanks, Gloria.

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August 11, 2011

Book club + film series: Up next, ‘Blood, Bones and Butter’ in September

Caroline and I had a great time on Tuesday at Thrice chatting with the people who showed up for our first Feminist Kitchen book club + film series meeting! Thanks to Thrice for hosting us and to everyone who came to the cafe and chimed in on the discussion online. (You can check out some of the conversation on the live blog.)

Next month’s selection isn’t quite as mainstream as “Eat Pray Love,” but it is by far the biggest food book to have come out this year: Gabrielle Hamilton’s “Blood, Bones and Butter.” Hamilton is the chef/owner of Prune in New York City, and she won the James Beard award for best chef in the city a few months ago.

Here’s the recap of the book I posted in March, but I’m looking forward to reading it again and hearing your thoughts on it.

We’ll meet at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, September 13, at Thrice, 909 W. Mary St.

If you don’t own the book, consider buying it from BookWoman, 5501 N. Lamar Blvd., which is giving 10 percent off to customers who mention the Feminist Kitchen book club.

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August 9, 2011

Book club + film series: “Eat Pray Love” live chat at 7 p.m.

Thanks to WordPress wonkiness, I can’t embed my favorite liveblogging tool, Cover It Live, here on the site, but I think we’ll be able to use the program on my Tumblr page. So, if you can’t make the screening and discussion at 7 p.m. tonight at Thrice, 909 W. Mary St., click the image below, which will take you to the Tumblr page that will have the live chat going. You can also use the #feministkitchen hashtag to participate via Twitter.

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August 7, 2011

“Eat Pray Love” kicks off Feminist Kitchen book club + film series on Tuesday

(Editor’s note: This is a post from Caroline Jann, aka @gastronomaustin, the Austin cook/writer who is helping coordinating the Feminist Kitchen book club + film series that starts this week. )

When I first saw “Eat Pray Love,” I was at one of the Austin theaters where you can eat and drink throughout the screening, and I remember leaving the theater more satisfied with my meal and the movie.

It wasn’t horrible, but I’d seen better.  The main character, Liz, seemed much too clueless for her age and stage in life and I didn’t find the resolution to be satisfying. After an entire year of full-time reflection, Liz ended up attaching herself to yet another person. This fresh perspective on life didn’t seem very revelatory to me.

So why in the world would Addie and I pick “Eat Pray Love” to launch our Feminist Kitchen book club + film series? (It kicks off at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 9, at Thrice, 909 W. Mary St. No need to bring anything, besides a few dollars for a snack or beer/wine/agua fresca from Thrice or Thai Fresh. If you can’t make it, you can join in on through a live chat on this blog.)  Although the film as a whole leaves something to be desired in my opinion, there’s a reason why Liz’s character and the conflicts she’s trying to overcome resonate with so many millions of women who bought the book and flocked to theaters.

(Speaking of buying books, I’m happy to announce that Book Woman is on board as our featured bookseller. Look for details and discount info on the book club homepage.)

As Addie mentioned in her earlier blog post about this film, food becomes Liz’s highest priority in Italy. What role did dropping her food inhibitions have on Liz’s path to self discovery? She allows herself to lust after food but not men, but is her fiery passion for cibo italiano just as cathartic as the new romance that pops up later in the film? And why can’t we see a women be both sexually and culinarily fulfilled at the same time? It will be important to address the fact that Liz is an upper class white woman with enough free time and money to run to Italy for the sole purpose of finding oneself through gelato.

By looking at the contrast of cultural values portrayed in “Eat Pray Love,” we can start dissecting our own country’s concept of what is acceptable for women when it comes to food, cooking and gastronomia.

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July 18, 2011

Guest post: A sociological study of why so few women chefs in restaurant kitchens

(Editor’s note: Deborah Harris and Patti Giuffre teach sociology at Texas State University in San Marcos and are working on a project exploring the work and life experiences of women in the culinary industry. They have interviewed 32 female culinary professionals in Texas and are researching how critics and food writers help shape what it means to be a “chef” and how this can be gendered. If you are interested in writing a guest post, email me at broylesa@gmail.com.)

A recent guest blogger on the Feminist Kitchen asked a familiar question: Why has only one woman won “Top Chef”? Discussions like this one usually then evolve into asking: Why aren’t more women “great” chefs? (That’s White House chef Cristeta Comerford above, who in 2005 became the first woman appointed to head White House chef.) A lot of possible explanations have gotten thrown around in the press. Are women uninterested in professional cooking? Are women chefs less skilled than their male counterparts? Do women lack the assertiveness, aggressiveness, leadership skills and general fortitude that men have “naturally”? Are women discriminated against in the culinary professions?

As sociologists, studying chefs raises some interesting contradictions. When done in the home, cooking is associated more with women than men, but professional, high-status cooking has remained the domain of men despite inroads women have made into other traditionally male-dominated careers.

Obviously, it’s difficult to understand all the factors that determine why some groups succeed in an occupation and some do not.  To learn more, we interviewed female chefs in Texas to hear about their experiences and reviewed hundreds of restaurant reviews and chef profiles to see how the media assigns the title of “top chef.”

One problem facing women chefs is the pressure to conform to the culture of professional kitchens. There is a fine line for what is considered acceptable behavior for women in this “macho” environment. Women described themselves as “invaders” of men chef’s turf, and their male supervisors often had preconceived ideas that women were not physically and emotionally strong enough to work in kitchens and would give them fewer high-status jobs.

As outsiders, women chefs said they felt they had to prove themselves. On one hand, they could act more masculine, such as “giving it right back” when teasing or sexual jokes were thrown around the kitchen. They could also take pains (sometimes literally) to demonstrate their physical strength by not asking for help moving heavy objects. They demonstrated emotional strength by not crying or showing stereotypically feminine emotions.

But the women had to be careful.  If they acted too masculine, such as brusquely giving orders like men chefs, this could get them labeled “bitchy” and undermine their authority. Other women took a more feminine approach and a caring attitude about staff. They also “got their hands dirty” doing some of the less desirable kitchen jobs to demonstrate their commitment to teamwork. This made their male coworkers view them as mothers or big sisters in the kitchen — two feminine authority figures —but it was a fine line between encouraging teamwork and being a pushover.

Another factor in why there are few women head chefs is that many leave the career before they rise to these positions. Chefs work six to seven days a week, often for 12-14 hours at a time. The hours worked are structured around meal times, and many fine dining restaurants (the highest status chef jobs) are only open at night. Despite the attention given to celebrity chefs, most chefs don’t earn that much money and many restaurants offer few benefits like health insurance, paid vacations and retirement plans.

Many women chefs are willing to put in the hours and put up with low pay and few benefits, but if they have children, these arrangements may not be as appealing. Most restaurants are not going to have paid maternity leave. Chefs in restaurants cannot leave if their child becomes ill. Few childcare centers are open when chefs are at work. Because childcare responsibilities still fall more on mothers, it can be very difficult for women with children to become successful chefs.

Women chefs said they felt that they had two options:  either leave professional kitchens or come up with creative childcare arrangements so they could stay in the industry. Several of the women we interviewed had left kitchen work for catering or meal delivery while others took jobs at upscale grocery stores and culinary institutes. Several missed kitchen work but found their new jobs much more compatible with family life. Other women were able to juggle work and family demands because their husbands had flexible work schedules and they could parent in shifts. Other women drew from strong family and friend networks to provide childcare.

Positive media attention can help make or break a chef’s career, and we wondered if how chefs were evaluated had to do with gender. To do this, we compared hundreds of high-end restaurant reviews and chef profiles in magazines (e.g. Food & Wine) and newspapers (e.g. The New York Times).  There were some pretty stark differences in how men and women chefs were discussed.

Men were given credit for the intellectual and technical work involved in producing a dish. They are masters who dominate the food they produce. Critics rarely mentioned technical skills of women—they are more likely to be praised for being “hard workers.” Successful men are described as iconoclastic rule breakers (especially men working in technically advanced food styles like molecular gastronomy). Women, on the other hand, were praised for following food traditions. When men chefs achieve status, the natural next step was to start a culinary empire of multiple restaurants, cookbooks and media exposure. Yet, women are described as shying away from this type of success — they cook from the heart and are motivated by the caring act of feeding people, not personal ego or financial success.

We’re going to go out on a limb here and say that it’s likely that men and women chefs (on the whole) are not radically different in terms of skills, leadership qualities and professional drive. What are different are the perceptions and experiences of men and women chefs. Our research on media definitions of “great” chefs tend to reaffirm the cooking and career choices made by men — even though our interviews with women chefs show they face stereotypes (sometimes even hostility) and family demands that make it very hard for them to reach the same levels as their male colleagues.

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July 10, 2011

Chatter: Remembering Betty Ford, calling out Girl Scouts and the Pioneer Woman, pushing Tupperware on the social network

Betty Ford: I’m constantly humbled by the groundbreaking women who have come before me, and Betty Ford (pictured at the dinner table — no food, you’ll notice — with her family, above) was one of these women. The former first lady died this week at age 93, the third longest-living first lady in history, and I’m sad that I didn’t know much about her until reading her obituaries. She not only survived a chemical addiction in the public eye, Betty Ford kicked breast cancer and stood up for equal rights for gays and lesbians and a woman’s right to choose. She once worked on an assembly line at a frozen-food factory. An outspoken and brave lady.

Something’s fishy on the ranch: Austin writer Melanie Haupt is working on a fascinating dissertation about women and, among other things, food blogging, and she has some really interesting observations about the Pioneer Woman’s carefully cultivated image:

She offers up an idealized vision of domestic life, one in which the housewife gripes cheerfully about her neverending chores, extols the virtues of her adorable children, and gives voice to her unwavering desire for her hunk o’ burning love husband.

Girl Scout cookies aren’t so sweet: I blame my lack of enthusiasm about Girl Scout cookies on my brief stint as a Girl Scout (“Mom, why do the Boy Scouts get to learn how to start fires and tie knots and spend all night in their tents while we have to sleep indoors and sew sit-upons?”), but the daughter of the woman who invented Girl Scout cookies has another beef: palm oil. Instead of butter, which Ethel Jennings Newton used originally, all of the modern cookies contain an ingredient that is on the Department of Labor’s list of goods produced by child or slave labor.

Raising a gender-free baby: I loved reading about this Toronto couple that is keeping their baby’s gender a secret from anyone not in the family. That’s a mighty secret to keep and they can’t keep it forever, but the vitriolic the responses prove just how much our society values gender norms.

Baking as a feminist act: Nigella Lawson, the British chef known as much for her curves as her cooking and business acumen, says her new book “How to be a Domestic Goddess” should be read as a feminist tract. Lagusta Yearwood explains what she means:

If we are working toward a society in which women are valued equally with men, it’s not enough to champion what I (here in New York) call the “Hillary Clinton route”: women accessing careers that have historically been the provenance of men. Of course, this needs to be done – there are glass ceilings to smash and equal wages to fight for aplenty – but we need to do the opposite, too: we need to champion what has traditionally been devalued as “women’s work” and respect it for what it is – work. And valuable.

Nude food: Many artists have played with food and the human form, and Italian chef and “cultural provocateur” Tiberio Simone has paired up with American photographer Matt Freedman have created “La Figa: Visions of Form and Food” featuring tasteful, beautiful images of naked bodies and food “using the human body as his canvas, and natural fresh ingredients as his paint.”

Liberation through Tupperware? The BBC News explores how Tupperware parties in the 1950s shaped (or impeded, depending on whom you ask) the women’s movement. In her book, “Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America,” Alison Clarke calls the parties “revolutionary” because they provided an opportunity for commercial success based around “female co-operation rather than aggressive competition… It wasn’t discussed as work – it was an extension of socialising.” On the other hand, Susan Vincent argues that Tupperware exploited women by relying on their social networks and perpetuated stereotypes that women’s work should be based out of the home.

(Photos from LaFigaProject.com, the Ford Presidential Archives.)

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July 9, 2011

The Feminist Kitchen book club + film series

From “Mildred Pierce” to “Sex and the City,” movies and books are full of women eating, growing, making, sharing, talking about and being described through food.

I had no idea I’d be blogging about books and films so much when I started the Feminist Kitchen last year, but for months, I’d been hoping to start a Feminist Kitchen book club to make it more of a two-way discussion.

But with two kids, three chickens, a full-time job and a patient husband who already sees me less than we both like, I didn’t want to take on a book club until it could be done right.

Enter Caroline Jann.

Caroline (@gastronomaustin) is a culinary school graduate with an English degree and a food blog who lives in Austin. I met her after she wrote this article on CNN’s Eatocracy about women in restaurant kitchens, and a few weeks ago, she approached me about helping start a Feminist Kitchen book club/film series.

We figured out a plan in which she’ll take on the role of project coordinator, which means I still get to participate and enjoy the group but without the heavy lifting.

Starting with our first meeting on Aug. 9, we’ll meet at Thrice (the new coffee shop owned by and located next to Thai Fresh, 909 W. Mary St.) on the second Tuesday of every month, discussing a book one month and watching a film the next month. We plan to bring in outside speakers when appropriate to help lead the discussion, and if you can’t make the real-life meet-up, you can participate virtually via Twitter and Cover It Live.

Even if you can’t come to the meetings, you’ll enjoy getting to know Caroline through occasional posts about what we’re reading and watching.

For the record, men are more than welcome and encouraged to participate, and everyone should read the manifesto before chiming in. (No one likes rules, but everyone likes respect and civility.)

Up first? A screening of the first third of “Eat Pray Love,” the movie based on the crazy bestselling book by Elizabeth Gilbert that you might or might not have already read/seen. For most of the movies, we’ll show the entire movie (and probably bump up the start time to accommodate a discussion at the end), but for this one, because the movie is 133 minutes long, many of you have already seen it and the “eat” part happens to be the first section, we’ll just screen the most relevant part.

For our first book in September, we’ll tackle “Blood, Bones and Butter” by Gabrielle Hamilton, the chef/restaurateur who won the James Beard Award this year for best NYC chef.

I’m looking forward to getting this project going and hope you’ll enjoy participating in the discussion.

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June 25, 2011

Ms. ‘Bossypants’ Tina Fey on the Myth of Not Enough, sneaking feminism into comedy

Remember this first Tina-Fay-as-Sarah-Palin skit?

Tina Fey certainly does.

“You all watched a sketch about feminism and you didn’t even realize it because of all the jokes. It’s like when Jessica Seinfeld puts spinach in kids’ brownies. Suckers!” she writes in “Bossypants,” her new memoir/collection of funny essays about her life as a women, mother and comedy writer.

Fey’s hilarious book is clearly more about the state of women in comedy than the state of women and food, but she has plenty of humorous things to say that involve food, too.

Much has been written about her response to Christopher Hitchens saying that women aren’t capable of being funny. “It’s an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good. I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove that it doesn’t exist,” she writes.

I found the chapter about breastmilk and formula particularly entertaining, especially the part about using a nursing position she called the Bret Michaels, “where you kind of lie over the baby and stick your breast in its mouth to wake it up.”

And there’s this observation about chicken wings and Hooters:

The book reads like “30 Rock” with lots of quick quips and pop culture references, but she’s serious about workplace equality, especially as it pertains to how women treat each other, which she says is based on “The Myth of Not Enough.” “Don’t be fooled. You’re not in competition with other women. You’re in competition with everyone,” she writes.

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June 7, 2011

Hostess of the week helps you ‘eat like a man’

I imagine the conversation in the Esquire headquarters to create their Hostess of the Week series must have gone something like this:

“Hey, editorial assistant over there. We need some more shallow content for our ridiculously stereotypical food blog, Eat Like A Man. Whatcha got?”

“What about hamburgers?”

“Done.”

“Donuts?”

“Done.”

“Recipes to help you get laid?”

“You must not be reading the blog, Mark.”

“Oh, I’ve got a great idea! Hostesses are always young and hot and dressed like they are going to a club, so why don’t we start a hostess of the week series? We’ll get them to self-submit photos of them at their sexiest, preferably in short skirts, heels and low-cut blouses, so that way we can pick the hottest of them all and do a little Q&A to ask them about their jobs and life outside the restaurants.”

“Sexy women who can comment on pissed off customers and what kind of TV they like to watch, and not a single one of them will be over 30! It’s brilliant, kid.”

“Plus, it’s not like we’re featuring Hooters servers or anything, so it still feels kinda high brow, even though it’s not. And a lot of them are in college, so they even might have some interesting things to say, but it won’t matter because our readers will be looking at the giant picture at the top of the post instead.”

“Exactly. Get started, and make sure you ask them silly questions like what kind of heels and ‘hostessing uniform’ gets them ‘excited’ for being ‘happy’ and ‘chipper’ for six hours every night.”

“On it, boss.”

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June 6, 2011

Their happiest days: Life in rural Oklahoma at the turn of the century

My family and I traveled to Beaver’s Bend State Park in Southeastern Oklahoma in April, and we found ourselves at a the Forest Heritage Center, which is a community museum of the area that became heavily populated because of the logging industry.

The museum is thorough, thanks for large-scale photographs of the people who called this part of the country home.

I loved this photo of four women and the all-school photo below, in which it’s hard to tell the oldest schoolgirls from their young teachers.


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May 29, 2011

Summer Reading: “Perfection Salad,” “Spoon-Fed” and more

You’d be hard-pressed to find a higher authority on women and food than Laura Shapiro.

The former Newsweek writer has carved a niche for herself in the food and gender studies worlds for her books and articles on women in and out of the kitchen. She covered the women’s movement for an alternative newspaper in Boston in the 1970s, and in the 1980s, she published “Perfection Salad,” which I somehow successfully pitched for my food book club’s next meeting. (Nothing sells a book like “aspic” in the first line of the book summary, let me tell you.)

(I’m in the middle of “Something From the Oven,” which Shapiro published in 2004 and could be considered the sequel to “Perfection Salad.”)

When I pitched the book to my (mostly female) book club members, I’d forgotten to beef up Shapiro’s cred by mentioning how cutting edge — and Feminist Kitchen friendly — her food writing continues to be.

She was writing about Gabrielle Hamilton and the state of women chefs in Gourmet magazine way back in 2008 and the weird election campaign ritual of expecting prospective first ladies to swap recipes, and defending Alice Waters. She published a Julia Child biography at the same time “Julie and Julia” was coming out. (Shapiro didn’t shy away from writing a scathing opinion piece on exactly one half of the movie.)

So, for the next few weeks, I’m going to be reading a lot of Laura Shapiro and thought some of you might be interested to read along. Part of my book club duties are to come up with 10 questions about the book to get people thinking and talking, and I might as well share them on here, too.

It’s not exactly a full fledged book club, but it’s a start.

If you’re looking for some other good books to read this summer, check out a few of the other titles on the required reading page. I just added Kim Severson’s wonderful memoir “Spoon-Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life.” It’s an intimate look at some of the most well-known women in culinary history, including the cook who is telling the story.

Severson will be in Austin for the International Association of Culinary Professionals annual conference this week, and I’m looking forward to meeting her, as well as other food friends I’ve gotten to know virtually over the past few years.

I’ll be blogging from the Hilton on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday over on my Statesman food blog, Relish Austin, but hopefully I’ll find time for a Feminist Kitchen post from the conference and festivities, as well.

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May 26, 2011

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: Female-flavored gum

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Quite possibly the most, um, fragrant letter to the editor ever printed in Harper’s magazine.

It also gives a whole new subtext to that “Afternoon Delight” scene in “Anchorman.”

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May 23, 2011

Gourmet Live’s top 50 women who changed the food world

Gourmet Live is the iPad app version of our favorite, retired magazine, and Kate Sekules posted a list of the top 50 women game-changers today.

This is interesting: Rachael Ray isn’t in the top 10, and she’s only a few places ahead of French blogger Clotilde Dusoulier. I was a little sad to see Edna Lewis so far down the list (No. 36), and the commenters were quick to chide them for leaving off people like Marion Cunningham while including Julie Powell, the Austin-reared blogger whose book “Julie and Julia” revived our collective love of No. 1 Julia Child.

Lists are made for sparking debate, so what are your thoughts on this one? Anyone you are particularly surprised to see up high or down low (or perhaps left off altogether) on the list?

I agree that Ruth Reichl should get more than an honorable mention, even though she’s part of the Gourmet legacy. Even though I am a proud food blogger, I thought there were too many on the list. And my favorite commenter points out that there aren’t any women like Marion Nestle or Rachel Carson who have influenced the political side of food. Apparently, Gael Greene wasn’t too happy with her ranking, (No. 46).

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May 22, 2011

Who needs a Sugar Daddy?

It was either this lunchbox or a Hello Kitty one at Old Navy today.

I’ll stick with Hello Kitty.

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May 10, 2011

James Beard loves Gabrielle Hamilton, too

Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times

Every year, the perennial complaint I hear (and have made) after the James Beard Awards is the lack of female chefs who are nominated.

Not this year.

Gabrielle Hamilton, author of “Blood Bones and Butter,” which you’ll remember I really, really liked, one Best Chef – New York City, beating heavy favorites Michael White of Marea and Wylie Dufresne of wd-50.

Josh Ozersky has this to say in a piece for Time magazine (in which he also admits to licking his own wound for not winning his own James Beard last night):

The Beard Award was really given for her memoir — and all the press and attention she garnered with it. As with the Oscars, marketing and name recognition can be more important than merit.

I have no idea whether her cooking is worthy of a James Beard award, but I wonder if we’d be talking about merit if she were a he who was the underdog. She’s the first female to win the award since 1997. (Even though he was openly gay, James Beard succumbed to stereotypes about women long before the awards started.)

Four other women won the coveted awards last night, but five isn’t a number to get too excited about when you consider there are 23 categories in all, Kim Conte reminds us on the Stir.

I’m far enough from the New York food scene that all I can comment on is the media exposure and hype, both of which Hamilton most certainly had the most of, but I wonder if we can’t just let her win and trust that the judges saw something extraordinary in her cooking.

(Besides, I’m still trying to figure out exactly what Florence Fabricant meant in her post over at the New York Times when she said that Hamilton’s thank you remarks — “All you have to do is open a can of sardines and a box of Triscuits, call it a signature dish, and you get Best Chef New York City” — were a “cold shower.”)

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