Is the foodie movement keeping us from enjoying, or even attempting, to cook? Or: How much time does Martha Stewart think I have, anyway? By A.K. Whitney

As an avid cook, I’ve got to hand it to Martha Stewart. Even going to jail for six months in 2004 didn’t stop her from cooking from scratch. It takes real dedication, I say, to make crabapple jelly, particularly illicit crabapple jelly, while behind bars.

But as much as I admire Martha for her culinary fortitude, and applaud her for building a media empire that rivals that of any man, I also blame her for why so many women don’t cook these days, and for why those who do cook worry that they aren’t good enough for the kitchen unless their food looks like it could be featured in a magazine. And let’s not forget that all of us — especially these days — don’t make the money needed or have the time to do any of it.

This, Martha, is not a good thing.

In the first installment of FemiNoshing, I explored the idea of women shunning cooking as a way to rebel from their society-imposed roles. To paraphrase Nigella Lawson, Gen Xers and Ys take the same kind of pride in not knowing how to cook that their mothers took in not knowing how to type. In the second, I talked about how, when something gets turned into a profitable venture, it invariably becomes the domain of men — see the preponderance of star male chefs for proof. And, let’s face it: Sexism is a given in every male-dominated field. Therefore, those women who actually want to cook—and make a decent living at it—too often get discouraged by the boys’ club. And those who do make it are often unwilling to rock the status quo.

But there’s a third aspect to all of this: The same movement that elevated home cooking from a woman’s chore to an arty hobby has backfired.

Sure, we are inundated by cooking shows, magazines, and so-called gourmet food products. Your average 7-11 carries balsamic vinegar and sushi these days (well, at least in most major urban centers). Many people love to look at beautifully art-directed spreads in food magazines and cookbooks. But how many go on to try to recreate them? Or are they content to just read them and then get takeout? And why do they feel that way?

Apparently, fear is a big factor for a number of the women I queried on the subject.

“It is actually the exact reason why I don’t cook: I am intimidated by it,” says Brenda, who I feel deserves kudos for purchasing a grill pan and actually using it. An avowed perfectionist, she continues, “And there’s the threat of failure, which is my own overachiever issues at play, but I think that figures into it too—as a generation raised to think we should be able to kick ass at everything, are we too scared to try something we might not be undeniably awesome at?”

While I agree with Brenda that fear of not matching up to the frothy ideal of Martha Stewart Living is keeping many people away from the kitchen, I don’t think that’s the entire story. Money also plays a part. Being a good cooking hobbyist (aka a “foodie”)  means buying the right (usually pricey) toys, from that Le Creuset cookware to the set of Wusthof knives. Then, of course, you need the best ingredients, and those never come cheap. Specially imported European butter and artisan bread, anyone? (Stay tuned for a future FemiNosh on why eating healthy, never mind organic, is a luxury the poor—and women live in poverty far more than men—can’t afford, and how utterly messed up that is.)

Finally, you need the time to plan, shop for, and cook those elaborate recipes. Case in point: most soup recipes in Martha Stewart’s cookbooks call for homemade stock, a process that can take multiple hours.

As Sophia, a mother of two who runs her own business but also loves to cook, puts it: “How much time does Martha think I have, anyway?”

In other words, that kind of home cooking is not feasible for those who actually have to work for a living.

Now, I realize I’ve been giving Martha Stewart a particularly hard time of it so far. She is by no means the only one to blame. She is one of a huge chorus of celebrity cooks and chefs pushing these ideals, which some women are beginning to reject.

Julie Powell, a reformed foodie who blogged for a year about the challenge of making every recipe in Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” (a blog that became the book and soon-to-be movie, “Julie & Julia”), has a splendid rant on the subject: “I have had enough,” Powell writes. “Enough of the $40 olive oils and imported semolina flour and ‘please, Turkish oregano only!’ If I read one more dining guru gushing about ‘honest ingredients, treated with respect,’ I shall vomit, sir. And ‘Market Menus’? Don’t get me started. The well-meant ‘food revolution’ Alice Waters instigated some 30 years ago has metastasized horribly.”

Powell goes on to tell us about the one foodie she respects (no shocking reveal here): Julia Child. “Julia Child isn’t about that. Julia Child wants you—that’s right, you, the one living in the tract house in sprawling suburbia with a dead-end secretarial job and nothing but a Stop-n-Shop for miles around—to master the art of French cooking. (No caps, please.) She wants you to know how to make good pastry, and also how to make those canned green beans taste alright. She wants you to remember that you are human, and as such are entitled to that most basic of human rights, the right to eat well and enjoy life.”

Now, as much as it pains me to say this, I have to beg to differ a bit: I think Julia Child deserves some blame for leading us toward the Cult of Martha. While I will always adore Child for making the rarefied art that is French cuisine accessible to everyone (and giving the figurative finger to chauvinists like Fernand Point in the process), she pretty much started the culinary hobby movement. You know, the movement that told the women who liked to cook, but were disinclined to be domestic drudges, that cooking was okay. It was okay because you, too, could make it an art! Unfortunately, what was meant to be empowering also made women like Brenda reject it because they feared they were simply not “artistic” enough.

True, Child never to my knowledge endorsed the need for $40 olive oil, but then again, the leader of a certain popular religion I will not name here would also likely be horrified at things done in his name. Nor do I think Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse and mother of the movement toward fresh, locally grown ingredients necessarily meant to endorse the rampant food snobbery on display at places like Whole Foods (or, as many like to call it, “Whole Paycheck”). But the fact remains that Stewart, Child and Waters (and most celebrity chefs and cooks, for that matter) all have a part in creating a toxic environment for fledgling or experienced cooks.

And I think that is a shame. So, please, Brenda and Sophia—and everyone else who wants to cook but has let the foodies ruin it—listen to me. Forget art. Forget technique. Forget fancy accessories. Forget feeling like you have to put on a show. Just go to the market and buy something that you can afford and that appeals to you. Get a cookbook with recipes that you would actually make (I recommend the “Joy of Cooking”). Or forget recipes; wing it. Really. No one is going to punish you for experimenting.

Stop being afraid. If you screw up, you screw up. And if it’s edible, you can still eat it. Just have some fun. Remember this: The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless.

A.K. Whitney is a Los Angeles writer and contributing editor to Sirens.

Also in FemiNoshing: Cake Wrecks,

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Tags: cooking, feminoshing, food, foodies, martha stewart

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 30th, 2009 at 7:22 pm and is filed under Being A Siren. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.