Luce Giard’s “Doing Cooking” [1980]
I like Giard’s sarcastic and overt approach
used to be critical of society in terms of gender inequalities, especially when
she describes the “paperback cookbook devoid of both illustrations and
‘feminine’ flourishes” that in her mind “endowed the book with eminent
practical value and sure efficiency” (320).
As if there is NO WAY that anything associated with femininity could
ever be considered practical or efficient; the two just don’t mix.
I also thought it was interesting how much
stress she placed on memory in the cooking environment. From the time we are
children, we involuntarily inherit learned skills and tactics from watching and
listening to our mothers cook that are rooted in our memory until there comes a
time when we need to recall that information in order to fend for ourselves. This
skill is something that used to hold great societal appreciation and family
value, although today it is considered nothing more than women’s “work without
added value” (Giard 323).
Helen --
ReplyDeleteYou would think with the immense memory capacity a woman needs for cooking (along with everything else) at the time, there would be some sort of practical value in it. I wonder how the husband would feel to come home to absolutely nothing.
I think it is important that you mentioned this memory aspect, particularly because each culture's everyday life consists of extremely different things; however, cooking is a very intimate and familial trait that is passed down through stories and recipes learned from childhood. Cooking is a significant example of the reproduction of tactics.