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Help! There's a New Bitch in My Kitchen

Male food snobs are elbowing women out at the stove

By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff

Posted Dec 15, 2009 1:07 PM CST

(Newser) – Over the past 40 years, the amount of time men spend in the kitchen has tripled—and they have turned the once-womanly art of home cooking into a competitive playing field. On TV, “it’s hard to keep up with the itinerant rage-aholics cycling through the Food Network,” writes Hanna Rosin for DoubleX, “as the celebrity chef becomes synonymous with testosterone-fueled asshole.” And at home, there's the rise of the kitchen bitch—and let's just say they're not women.

Rosin’s own husband isn't an extreme food snob, but he is prone to nag over vegetables not chopped finely enough or a pan deglazed incorrectly. And though 1950s housewives “would have wept with joy” at the thought of husbands julienning veggies, Rosin found herself missing her “lost dominion over the kitchen.” Nowadays, she’ll hold her baby with one hand and chop vegetables with the other, just to get a chance at the stove—“I have pushed womankind back at least 30 years,” she writes. “But hey, I’m thrilled to have my kitchen back.”

Gordon Ramsay of the shows Cookalong Live, Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares, demonstrates how to make a Baked Alaska dessert in Pasadena, Calif., Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009.
Gordon Ramsay of the shows "Cookalong Live," "Hell's Kitchen" and "Kitchen Nightmares," demonstrates how to make a Baked Alaska dessert in Pasadena, Calif., Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009.   (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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When did a certain group of men take over the womanly art of home cooking? And why can’t we who are married to them just sit back and call their conquest of the kitchen a feminist triumph? - Hanna Rosin

We adore men changing diapers and going to playgrounds, men vacuuming and straightening up (ahem, sort of). But male cooking is turning out to be one of those feminist-friendly changes that come with an unexpected, bitter aftertaste. - Hanna Rosin

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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 8 comments
JGirl
Dec 18, 2009 7:08 AM CST
*insert big chuckle
Snarfeh
Dec 16, 2009 12:40 PM CST
Cooking is like poker or billiards. Gender plays no role in the development of the skill. And for the record, my Xtreme Potato Salad is so good, it will make you slap your mother for ever trying to make it.
Riffran
Dec 15, 2009 10:41 AM CST
In Texas...lol...that means YOU have been in one of those crowds too..kinda like when we make sausage...we start at about 4 in tha morning..when it's nice and cold, and start the oak going, and the whiskey flowing..got a buddy up in Austin that shoots deer for us to make sausage out of for him...says "You can't get the good ole german sausage "up" here... I hear ya about that dude being jerk though
 

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