#20: Food & Feminism
This week everyone is talking about what any woman in hospitality has generally accepted as just part of her job: dealing with a vast spectrum of sexual harassment in order not to jeopardize the tips she depends on to convert her service earnings into a living wage.
"Their workplaces are casual environments where alcohol lightens the mood and erodes boundaries. A “customer is always right” ethos often tilts the equation — creating the kind of power imbalance that has become front and center in a broader conversation about sex and gender in the workplace."
As for the back of the house, last fall the NYTimes pointed to the raunchy ‘locker room’ environment of professional kitchens that can make women feel complicit in their own harassment just to be taken seriously.
“People want women in food media to be ingénues or broads,” muses cook and author Tamar Adler in an interview by Alex Van Buren in last week’s WaPo on the rise of the “quiet chef."
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So how are some prominent women in the business contributing to the conversation?
Amanda Cohen, of NYC’s Dirt Candy, who has been a prolific spokesperson for women in the kitchen for years, makes no bones in an essay published in Esquire this past November: “...if the press had been as eager to celebrate the talents of female chefs as they are to discuss their victimization, we wouldn’t be in this position in the first place."
For International Women's Day, the very woke food-dude Francis Lam continues the convo with Chef Cohen in last week’s episode of The Splendid Table.
Chef Anita Lo of Annisa says change will only come with a significant cultural shift, and also stands up as a queer chef to remind us that gender politics in the kitchen goes beyond a binary perspective.
Patently unlikable Boston chef Tiffani Faison DNGAF if you like her, and she’s 100% right.
According to Bloomberg News, it’s less likely for a women to be hired as a head chef than it is for her to be hired as a CEO. Boston filmmaker Joanna James reveals the realities of a woman’s place in the professional kitchen in her 2017 documentary, A Fine Line. You can view the trailer here.
And not without (I hope?) some irony, the Starz network released the first look at the trailer for their upcoming adaptation of Stephanie Danler’s “Sweetbitter,” a semi-autobiographical account of the steamy (errmmm, kind of harass-y?) goings-on behind the scenes in a thinly-veiled version of NYC’s Union Square Café.
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It’s obvious we’re just on the precipice of a massive shift, and last week’s robust celebration (or inculcation?) around International Women’s Day demonstrated real forward momentum, even if it’s just a baby step. As with any holiday/tragedy, brands seized the opportunity to capitalize on the moment in typical and hopelessly misguided ways, though thankfully not quite at Pepsi and Kendall Jenner-level of egregiousness.
GrubHub made a searchable map of woman-owned food businesses and legendary French chef Hélène Darroze is a Barbie, sooooo…
Parting on a high note, however, Food and Wine featured some good advice for the next generation of women in food, and also shared this fantastic round-up of articles and profiles on the women who are currently leading the way.
#PressforProgress