The Injustice

If 1950's-era advertisements are to be believed, women and their abilities to cook are what make a family.  They are the linchpin in the American nuclear unit, champions of wholesomeness, nurturing and hospitality.  No day was complete without a home-cooked meal from mom, and modern day nutritionists lament that we have strayed from the days past where women were full-time homemakers, and our health and waistlines are suffering for it.

First of all, your kids are fat because you have zero discipline.  How do I know that?  Because I was a fat kid.  A really fucking fat kid.  Of course your kids want a dopamine cocktail of fat and carbs from Wendy's every night, and yes they are going to bitch unless they get it.  Should you give in?  No, you tell that little chubber to buck up and eat some carrots.  Then you tell them they're running wind sprints until they're too tired to bother you anymore and until their tits don't jiggle every time they climb the stairs.  At least this is how I would have envisioned my ideal childhood.  Would I have hated my parents?  Probably, in that very temporary and insignificant way children express hatred.  But would I have thanked them for it later?  Probably, because I'm not an ungrateful twat.

Second of all, I just went on a pretty hard tangent when my real point was that if women are so strongly associated with cooking and nurturing, then why are they all but banned from professional kitchens?

The ratio of males to females at The Culinary Institute of America's Culinary Arts program is 3:1.

It is the exact inverse for the Baking and Pastry Arts program, with the asterisk of every dude at Apple Pie Bakery is gay.  I'm not being a homophobe, I'm just being real.  So, public service announcement: Future hetero male applicants to the CIA; apply to Baking and Pastry.  Yes, making a marzipan rose is literally the most god-awful task this planet has to offer, but you will be swimming in an over-saturated mating pool with next to zero competition.  It's like the ballet program at Juilliard.  Get. In. There.

But tangent no. 2 aside, what is the deal?  So are women only suited to baking?  A gentler more controlled art, something more akin to classical music as opposed to hot line jazz?  Did the 1950's teach us that Mom was best left to making apple pies and Betty Crocker cakes, leave the meat to Dad?  Did we really go through all that societal upheaval from Homo erectus to now just so that our cooking roles remain the same as when we started; man kills animal and plays with fire, woman gathers... I don't know, some of those fucking berries over there and make 'em pretty?

When you try to think of the first female chef to recently reach the lime light a lot of people think of Alice Waters.  Only problem is Alice Waters is not a chef.  She has no professional culinary training, she's an extra-crunchy hippy from Berkeley who relied on a professionally trained chef to run her kitchen.  Now that dude has gone the way of the dodo (Jeremiah who?) and Alice Waters remains.  I don't hold a grudge against her, I think her intentions are very good but she does a very limited amount of good with a whole lot of proselytizing.  She is culinary Mother Theresa.

What other female role models do we have for professional cooks?  Rachael Ray?  She is self-admittedly not a chef, and that is why Food Network loves her.  Because much like Julia Childs, she was marketed towards housewives.  Professional chefs were intimidating, they made TV food inaccessible.  Julia Childs' goofiness and eccentric manner made her inviting, much like Rachael Ray's constantly fluctuating weight and Stepford-Wife-cheery disposition.  Giada is marketed just as much towards housewives as it is towards stoned college-aged boys because BOOBS (mincing garlic causes your chest to heave and jiggle like the fat kid in a Moon Bounce Castle).  Don't get me started on Paula Deen.  And not to get overly Bourdain-like here, but Sandra Lee is the second most terrifying personality on TV since Roseanne was taken off the air (the reigning queen of "Television's Most Nightmarish Amazon" is Ann Coulter).  They almost make you want to say "Let's rip off this Paul Newman-themed denim table setting and have some really right-wing sex; Procreative ONLY."

So we really haven't come that far.  Women who cook are expected to do so at home.  "Leave the elite level cookery to the boys, poop out a bunch of kids before your shit dries up, shop at Whole Foods and get those fuckers to college" seems to be the message.

Why is that?

Well, there are actually thousands of hardcore lady cooks it's just that most of them tend to look like Neville Longbottom with long hair.  And you have to remember that this is America.  If you're an ugly woman you are completely and utterly shit out of luck.  This country has zero things to offer you.

But lady cooks are a lot like short guys in the NBA.  It's a hell of a lot harder for them to get to where they are, so if they've made it they are fucking good.  I mean take-no-prisoners, ball-crushing, iron-tits, Stonewall Jackson good (fun fact: those are all nicknames I've used for a woman I hold in very high esteem. She has yet to stab me for using them).

Now, why is that?  Women are lovely.  They smell better (I'm convinced there's some sort of evolutionary advantage that has been passed down through the ages so that a woman's hair is the ideal thurible for shampoo and other smell-good's [Also, you're damn right that I had no fucking idea what a thurible was until this imagery popped in to my head so I googled "Catholic swinging incense thingy." You're welcome]).  They have dainty hands that are way better-equipped for peeling an orange, and despite their inability to parallel park, can be exceptional technicians when it comes to cooking.

So why is there such a dearth of women in high-level kitchens?

Well, you have to remember that kitchens are pirate ships, and do they allow women on boats?  Not really.  Because confining a large male population in to a dangerous and inescapable vessel causes a simian-like attitude to envelop the whole crew that is extraordinarily dangerous to women.  Testosterone flares off one another, dicks are measured and much like prison, the borders between hetero and homosexual start to get a little fuzzy in the absence of females.  Professional kitchens and medium-security prisons are probably the only workplaces in the world where it is acceptable to put your finger in another man's butthole.  Yet despite the presence of sharp objects in both environments, only in prison will you likely be shanked for it.

Let's face it.  Men are pretty vile creatures.  They become much more so when around other men.  Their malicious, unspent libidos feed and multiply off one another like Gremlins in a rainstorm (See: most fraternities, the Navy when at port, and 912 Hamlin).  Without a good and moral captain at the ship things devolve rather rapidly.

First, there's that what-I-must-assume to be the very unwelcome feeling of having a whole room full of creeps undressing you with their eyes.  The poor front-of-house ladies who have to look so nice for their jobs.  Every time they walk in to the kitchen ten pairs of eyes of follow them out.  Maybe some of them revel in it, mastering that cat walk with oh-so-feminine grace.  But the attention must get a little old.  Especially when that mouth-breathing hot apps guy keeps asking you out.

Second, there's the physical touching.  Touching one another is rather inevitable in kitchens, and especially New York kitchens, due to a rather serious lack of real estate.  You are literally going to be cooking with your dick in someone else's pocket at some point.  Yes, literally.  You are going to sidle along a wall past one of your coworkers and for however brief a moment your dong and their ass crack are going to dock.  I put the full weight of my sack on the back of my sous chef's head once while he was temping lamb in the oven.  It's going to be awkward.  And no you cannot give them the ass like on the plane in Fight Club.

And not to mention all the "Behinds!" and "Coming down the line!" and gently guiding people out of danger's way.  For their sanity and the cohesiveness of the group, women might as well be men in these situations.  It's pretty common to give someone a light pat on the ass to get them out of the way.  I've seen it happen to women.  It's not a sexist thing, it's a solidarity thing.  That may not be comforting at all.  But it happens and I doubt it's terribly pleasant.  I also think all the arm touching and nudging can be charged with a lot of sexual inflection, which I can only imagine gets tiresome.  Guys, you know that feeling when she grabs your elbow in just the right way, or steals your hat with just the right amount of playfulness that you know right then "Shit, we's gon' fuck."?  Yeah, imagine that much sexual energy but at work.  When you're not expecting or wanting it while you're just trying to get the lentils out of dry storage.  No bueno, Chef.

And then all the other stupid tomfoolery males engage in that I'm assured most women find horrendously primitive and stupid.  I mean, I feel bad for cows because they all have two tenderloins and one out of every two beef tenderloins gets used to cockslap someone with a massive, raw beef dick (I just want it for the record that if cooking goes south I'm going to run a full-time blog called Massive Raw Beef Dick).  I mean Superbad had it right, how many foods are shaped like dicks?!  Cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, bananas, corn, etc.  How many foods are vaguely shaped like dicks enough so that they can be used as a dick?  Eggplant, butternut squash, subs and logs of goat cheese.  That is so many dick-shaped objects!  And they are being used to play out some sort of middle-school level prank.  Why are there any women in this industry?

And despite all of the borderline and blatant sexual harassment/discomfort, there's just the straight disrespect.

Cooking is a very physical job.  If you advance up the ladders enough, you're going to come to a point where you're not cleaning peas and slicing tomatoes anymore.  You're going to do big boy stuff.  You're going to cut fish and meat.  Unfortunately that means you're going to be hauling around hundreds of pounds of ice, slinging around a slippery 40 lb. halibut, or moving a full roasting pan of beef braise in to an oven.  This is heavy, heavy lifting, something that I, as a clumsy, mostly-out-of-shape, mid-20's, once-was-kind-of-an-athlete find difficult and strenuous on the back.  Most women will find roasting 240 lbs. of veal bones challenging.  I know because my AM counterpart had to do it and she failed miserably at it.  Most women will have a hard time handling something heavy because it's almost always also going to be hot.  That means the amount of control you need to handle it is far greater, that means lifting roasting pans with your wrists and fingers.

This is not easy.

You will struggle.

And men will judge you for it.

Why? Because see Point A through J, men are assholes.  They can't possibly make the distinction between biologically-engineered sexual dimorphism and one's capability to cook a saddle of rabbit.  For some reason, those skills are mutually inclusive.  If you can't do one, you can't do the other.

So the physical nature of the job and a woman's inherent disadvantage at performing it are then going to cause men to see you as constantly needing assistance, and thus weak.  Because we all know in kitchens, if you ask for help, you weren't good enough to do it yourself.  Cook's pride, logical stuff.

And if they see you as weak they will attempt to run you over.

I've seen it a hundred times.  When I start yelling at someone, they listen, they take it to heart.  But when a 5-foot, hundred-pound, cute lil' munchkin of a girl tries to yell at the bullish grill cook, it's as if it was never said.

It's animal nature.  You fear the big shadow in the grass, not the unseen creatures scampering below you.  You fear the lion, you ridicule the mouse.  Kitchens bring out your most primitive side at times.

Is it right?  Of course not.  But you're asking for people to be better than they are.  And we know very well that that doesn't work.  People are, for better or worse, people.

So, what's a girl to do?

The route that most of them have to take is to become the Bitch with a capital B.  Someone who has earned authority with her incredible proficiency, proficiency she needed to rise above the pack.  She is usually an ice-cold mercenary.  She is usually a little aloof, a lot serious and does not welcome any advances in to her territory.  She is a lioness to the nth degree, she is vicious and performs at an exceptional level.  Almost every female sous chef in a Michelin-starred kitchen has been forced to be The Bitch at some point.

Or they can play the Chameleon card and try to become one of the boys.  This is the girl who will fearlessly crawl up the meat cook's butthole over beers when anyone questions her commitment or "coolness."  She burps, she farts, she slaps asses and dresses in the men's locker room.  She abandons all hangings of her feminine sexuality to the point that men will cease to see her as a woman, as an object of desire, and accept her in to the pack.

Or they can go the exact opposite route and play the Bombshell card, so as to try to earn command over the men because she is so hotly revered as a sex goddess.  This is the girl who has complete confidence in her body, in her looks and her ability to attract.  This is the girl who objectively is not that attractive.  You'd stare at a picture of her and say "Meh, 7 at best and I'm a little drunk" but something about her mystique, or the way she carries herself gives off this lusty aura.  The Bombshell is irresistible, her requests and commands are answered without question, even by the married men.  Only gay men seem to be impervious and yet Bombshells seem to mostly exist in the world of pastry.  Go figure.

Superficial categorizations abound and yet we have to ask; why can't a woman just be themselves?

Because people are people.

And people are imperfect.

Hence, the injustice.

EP6