My topic of choice is analyzing cookbooks through out time and looking at how gender roles have enforced through out cooking and the “feminine space” of the kitchen. Can man provide food for his family and be manly? Is kitchen the woman’s domain? Is society to blame? Men and women have been forced into standardized roles based on their sex. As a society we have perceived masculine roles to be paired with dominance, aggression, and fear; while feminine roles are associated with passion, nurturing and caring. The placement of these categories start with us at birth, repetition of these created socialized gender roles over time leads men and women into a false sense that they are acting naturally, rather than following a socially constructed role. Society teaches us that gender roles are based on natural differences between the sexes, but on the stereotypes based on the patterns of men and women. A pattern that cookbooks have helped enforced: the Virginia Housewife (1800s), The Sour Cream Queen(1950s), The Hostess cookbook (2000s). Each one of these books not only use their title, but the wording and some times the visual images are geared towards women. I want to use cookbooks and their content to further enforce the idea of “socially” acceptable gender normative ideas.
http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/menus/5-tips-for-throwing-a-1950s-dinner-party5.htm
http://www.cheftalk.com/t/6661/1950s-americas-popular-food-and-recipeshttp://hdmzweb.hu.mtu.edu/cookingbooks/?page_id=871
Really intriguing topic, Davion! As a feminist, I’m really interested to see what you find about how gender norms and stereotypes are reinforced through cookbooks. It will also be cool to see how these gender norms have evolved over time within the context of food writing.
I really like your topic because these questions were what I started with before shifting my topic to a more media centered viewpoint. I do find it interesting that although cooking has been “for the women”, a lot of famous chefs and food personalities are men. I am also personally interested in this because I come from a home in which my dad used to be the only one that cooked. It will be interesting to see when this dynamic shifted!
Interesting topic! I am definitely a person that believes that it’s just as acceptable for men to cook as it is for women. It will be cool to see if you can trace the task of cooking as a feminine role back to it’s roots. Moving forward with your research, one thing that I might suggest is to utilize written texts from the PCL or another library. This is a good resource for finding historical texts that may help to find some information regarding the historical background behind women and cooking.