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Is a woman’s place still in the kitchen, eating yogurt?
The way food products and cookbook are marketed and written these days, you’d think women were still staying at home to bake all day and the majority of men only touched food when they were eating it or grilling it.
Take this barbecue tool belt or just about any little kids’ cooking set. Remember the pink Easy-Bake Oven? Don’t worry, it’s still pink and “still delights with a girl’s first real baking experience,” according to the official word from Hasbro. Nearly every grilling cookbook I get features “manly men” on the cover, holding some grill tool and looking gruff. No ovens in sight.
The stereotypical marketing extends to not just cooking, but eating, too. CurrentTV recently had this piece about how yogurt makers rely on really generic stereotypes (for example, that all women want in life is shoes, long walks on the beach and a happy digestive tract) to sell more yogurt.
Missy Chase Lapine, one of two cookbook authors who’ve burst onto the scene in the past year with recipes that encourage people to sneak vegetables into their foods so that their kids will eat them (the other is Jerry Seinfeld’s wife, whose book is “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food”), has moved from teaching you how to deceive your children to encouraging you to deceive your husband in “The Sneaky Chef: How to Cheat on your Man (In the Kitchen).”
It’s amazing to me that not only is she suggesting that encouraging males to eat vegetables is somehow a betrayal of their love and trust, but also that men somehow won’t eat vegetables of their own volition.
“A Man, a Can, a Plan” is another book based solely on the stereotype that men can’t (or
Does this drive anyone else mad? My fiancée, Ian, is a great cook, and Julian already has a little cooking set-up that he plays with. I just have a hard time believing that with more men cooking now than ever, these companies (and authors!) aren’t changing how they sell food-related products and books.
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By Karen
May 27, 2008 3:19 PM | Link to this
I could not get my man to embrace veggies - especially fresh ones (and no, corn does not count) - until he was forced to stay home during an illness and was turned on to the Food TV network. (I left it on when I left the house for work). Now he appreciates variation, although he often slides back to his MO midwest meat and starch only roots. Viva Food TV!
By Catherine
June 1, 2008 8:36 AM | Link to this
It’s the same way with parenting issues — ads/media/how-to books portray mom as as the primary caregiver and dad as the lovable doofus (if he’s around at all). We just have to keep working to change it through the next generation. Keep raising your boy to be well-rounded — that’s what my husband and I are doing with our boys (and yes, all the men in this home cook!)