Maybe it's because I'm a woman and not a man, that I pay careful attention to the roles women play in society.
In a recent article in the NY Times Magazine article Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch, Michael Pollan reviews the new movie Julie & Julia and discusses society in the time of Julia Child's PBS cooking show and his family's reaction to it. He continues:
"Curiously, the year Julia Child went on the air — 1963 — was the same year Betty Friedan published “The Feminine Mystique,” the book that taught millions of American women to regard housework, cooking included, as drudgery, indeed as a form of oppression. You may think of these two figures as antagonists, but that wouldn’t be quite right. They actually had a great deal in common, as Child’s biographer, Laura Shapiro, points out, and addressed the aspirations of many of the same women. Julia never referred to her viewers as “housewives” — a word she detested — and never condescended to them. She tried to show the sort of women who read “The Feminine Mystique” that, far from oppressing them, the work of cooking approached in the proper spirit offered a kind of fulfillment and deserved an intelligent woman’s attention. (A man’s too.) Second-wave feminists were often ambivalent on the gender politics of cooking. Simone de Beauvoir wrote in “The Second Sex” that though cooking could be oppressive, it could also be a form of “revelation and creation; and a woman can find special satisfaction in a successful cake or a flaky pastry, for not everyone can do it: one must have the gift.” This can be read either as a special Frenchie exemption for the culinary arts (féminisme, c’est bon, but we must not jeopardize those flaky pastries!) or as a bit of wisdom that some American feminists thoughtlessly trampled in their rush to get women out of the kitchen."
With a women's studies minor, I am well acquainted with Betty Friedan & Simone de Beauvoir. And, perhaps because home cooking was the provence of women, it was "trampled" upon by some feminists. Isn't it interesting, still, though the hold men have on the commercial kitchen and chefdom? We still seem amazed by women chefs and sometimes appalled that there aren't more them. But, let's face it .. most of us don't eat food prepared by a chef on a daily basis. By a cook? Yes - home or out, but not usually a chef.
Michael Pollan is a defender of whole food - the stats that support home cooking are astonishing. Cooking is important. Poor women who cook often have a better diet than more wealthy women who eat prepared foods (Journal of American Dietetic Association, 1992 study) And, today we only spend an average of 27 minutes in food preparation ... which may mean just pairing pre-fab foods together, not really cooking from scratch.
I love to cook, but don't take the time all that often. I know when the food I prepare actually comes from the ground, meaning the purest form of the meat, vegetables, grain possible, we eat better and feel better. Yet, the time crunch gets us. It gets me. I spend more time reading my cookbooks than cooking from them at times.
I'm off to see Julie & Juliatonight with a friend who also enjoys cooking. May it inspire me to cook most nights of the week .... and perhaps a few mornings & noons as well. You can get Michael Pollan's books from your local library.
