![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sexism in cuisine
Mar. 1st, 2012 09:29 pmIt is generally known that there is a lurking bias in restaurant cooking. Women are held up as 'home cooks' and young men often see cooking as a girl thing... but when it comes to expensive high-end food, suddenly it's all about the male chefs. The balance in professional kitchens tips that way, and the balance in cooking programs tends to tip that way too.
Why? Well, that's complicated and I'm not going to make any sweeping statements on the subject.
However, while watching this year's Masterchef on the BBC, there was one moment that really stuck out to me. Contestant Aki (who along with being an experimental Japanese cook is also a nuclear physicist) was having a rough day and running around madly, partly because she was accepting things being said and done by the larger, pushier guys and thus changing her mind all the time. She eventually tried to make simple brownies and even that was going wrong and they weren't cooking through properly (someone MAY have tampered with her oven to sabotage her, it wasn't entirely clear). Amidst all the mess, she had a good bit of chocolate smeared onto her white chef's uniform.
The show's presenters decided to, in a very patronising way, chew her out for looking unprofessional and disreputable. Not only that, but they brought it up again on the NEXT show, at the end of which she was eliminated from the program.
It was a really noticeable moment because it's rare for the hosts to talk to someone about anything other than their food, other than to provide support for someone who's looking a bit frazzled (like when they stepped in and personally rescued the dish of one of the guys who stayed through into the finals well past Aki). It felt condescending. It felt mean.
But the reason this particularly sticks out to me is that in a later episode (thai food) multiple male contestants were looking quite messy. Perhaps not quite as bad as Aki's chocolate disaster, but their uniforms were DEFINITELY smeared and discolored with the residue of today's cooking exercises.
Did a single one of them get chided on-camera? No.
Why? Well, that's complicated and I'm not going to make any sweeping statements on the subject.
However, while watching this year's Masterchef on the BBC, there was one moment that really stuck out to me. Contestant Aki (who along with being an experimental Japanese cook is also a nuclear physicist) was having a rough day and running around madly, partly because she was accepting things being said and done by the larger, pushier guys and thus changing her mind all the time. She eventually tried to make simple brownies and even that was going wrong and they weren't cooking through properly (someone MAY have tampered with her oven to sabotage her, it wasn't entirely clear). Amidst all the mess, she had a good bit of chocolate smeared onto her white chef's uniform.
The show's presenters decided to, in a very patronising way, chew her out for looking unprofessional and disreputable. Not only that, but they brought it up again on the NEXT show, at the end of which she was eliminated from the program.
It was a really noticeable moment because it's rare for the hosts to talk to someone about anything other than their food, other than to provide support for someone who's looking a bit frazzled (like when they stepped in and personally rescued the dish of one of the guys who stayed through into the finals well past Aki). It felt condescending. It felt mean.
But the reason this particularly sticks out to me is that in a later episode (thai food) multiple male contestants were looking quite messy. Perhaps not quite as bad as Aki's chocolate disaster, but their uniforms were DEFINITELY smeared and discolored with the residue of today's cooking exercises.
Did a single one of them get chided on-camera? No.
