How Jamie Oliver saved the women’s movement

Image by bloggyboulga via Flickr

I bought my boyfriend a cheese house and a pepper mill for his birthday. His parents gifted him an apron with some cash tucked into the pocket. Our culinary-themed gifts may seem a bit banal, but they’re also a reflection of the general drift of masculine culture toward the kitchen. Remember when you bought men tool sets? A night with a prostitute?

Increasingly over the last decade men have displayed an interest in cookbooks, food magazines, and fancy kitchen equipment. This is likely the result of a wider social phenomenon: in professional middle and upper class circles, cooking has become a leisure activity, like golf and yoga. Declaring yourself a “foodie” reflects good taste and a health-conscious lifestyle—not to mention a bank account fat enough to support an organic arugula and grass-fed beef habit.

As a traditional female endeavor, food preparation is part of the so-called carework that women have long performed free of charge for their families, along with cleaning and child-raising. And, like most traditional female endeavors, this kind of daily cooking has never been particularly glamorous. But capitalism has transformed some forms of food preparation—the expensive, time-consuming kind—into a prestigious lifestyle orientation.

My friend J.J Kaye embodies this trendsetting male enthusiasm for food as leisure. A frat-boy in college and a triathalete, he’s as likely to splurge on organic food from the Venice Farmer’s Market as he is on a set of Velocity Deep V wheels for his fixed gear. J.J. even co-founded Culinary Competitor, a a recipe and nutrition resource for athletes. Masculinization of cooking 2.0.

Anecdotal evidence aside, scholars disagree whether men’s newfound love for cooking is simply a clever cultural adaptation—seeing as cooking is now a status symbol and a pleasure—or reflects a genuine change in the traditional male breadwinner-female breadmaker division of labor.

Some argue that despite its new hip factor, men only cook as a fun project: on weekends and special occasions. Women still have the more time-consuming and less praise-inspiring responsibility of planning and executing daily meals. (Of course, for many men spending more time in the kitchen stems from the complicated practicalities of being part of a dual-earner couple, not a desire to emulate the laid-back charm of The Naked Chefs’ Jamie Oliver.)

According to the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce, the percentage of men who report they do most or an equal share of cooking has increased from 34 percent in 1992 to 56 percent. That’s quite a change. But wait—in the same survey, only 25 percent of women reported that their husbands do most or an equal share of the cooking. A whopping seventy percent of women still say that they do most of the work in the kitchen. So what’s the real story? Perhaps women aren’t giving men enough credit for their new efforts; perhaps men aren’t taking into consideration the planning and purchasing aspects of food preparation.

Still, a 2008 study of highly egalitarian Nordic couples is cautiously optimistic that a real cultural shift is occuring thanks to the food as lesiure phenomena. On one hand, researchers found that even women in egalitarian partnerships still feel at least some pressure with regard to food preparation: they felt guilty if it wasn’t nutritious enough for the kiddies; guilty for pawning it off on their husbands; guilty, guilty, guilty. Sometimes, however, the men in the study expressed guilt as well, if they didn’t like to cook or if they weren’t very good at it. These men felt—bless their kind Nordic hearts—that they “should have shared the work.” A significant portion of the men did like to cook, and did so regularly. The authors of the study concluded that by constructing cooking as a fun leisure activity, these men (“pioneers”) de-gender food preparation, making it a shared project for dual-earner couples instead of a female obligation.

Capitalism works in mysterious ways, my friends. Put a price tag on a task once considered women’s work (read: unpaid labor), and suddenly, it’s a bona fide hobby, good enough for the boys. Me, I’m all for more men in the kitchen—whatever the motivation. I find they look quite daper in an apron. Just look what it did for Jamie Oliver.

- Liz

Read the studies:
2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce
Aarseth, Helene and Olsen, Bente Marianne (2008). ”Food and masculinity in dual-career couples.” Journal of Gender Studies,17:4, 277—287.