This was so good--please do keep interviewing non-celebrity intellectuals! I don't have much to add, other than that I found the interview insightful and a pleasure to read.
Oh wow, what a fascinating read. I think the link between politics and food is really fascinating, particularly how men use kitchens and cooking to appear more relatable (with often poor results) and women have to play up feminine traits (see Margaret Thatcher cooking for her cabinet colleagues in the Crown).
Thank you AHP and Emily for this!! Such a good read. I work in community organizing/advocacy in food banks so naturally I applied the discussion to the themes that pop up in my world. The gendered aspect of food work takes on a whole new dimension when you factor in food insecurity-- I think many people who haven't experienced food insecurity don't understand just how much labor goes into figuring out where food distributions are or signing up for SNAP. But the thing that I see over and over again that most applies to the conversation of power and food is how much policing of what is "acceptable" to eat or to buy for people who rely on SNAP/food banks. There is a bill that was just filed in the state lege in Texas that would restrict what people can buy with SNAP to "healthy" food (which, like, what does that even mean) and it is SHOCKING how many middle-class/wealthy "progressives" don't see how absolutely disgusting that sort of legislation is. This is compounded by fat shaming and how obesity and diet-related chronic conditions are directly linked to access to nutrient-dense foods.
This is excellent. It's remarkable how the gendered "food is love" motivation clashes with the disordered "ladies control your intake" theme so strikingly at Big Traditional Family Meals (my experience of the disordered aspects is that it's not only granny or whomever the family chef is withholding the grand meal from her own plate, but that she's also keeping a sharp judging eye on other women's plates around the table, "food is love but don't eat too much, girls").
Another thought: when I was an immigrant living in the US, July 4 was also a Big Universal Holiday, with similar importance in having lots of food, but maybe because it's typically non-kitchen food, i.e., dudes grilling, it doesn't have the same gendered obligations for women?
So much I hadn’t thought about! (The magic of AHP 💗) Thanksgiving is the holiday I actually reclaimed for myself. I cook the traditional food and use my great-great-great-grandmother’s silver but spend the day in my pajamas and listen to the Beatles. We usually have friends or family over with the understanding that everyone is relaxed about it all. Christmas was always a fraught time growing up, so that’s the one I struggle with. It’s not just the food, it’s the entire process of making the magic happen, which seems like it’s part of this—meals are magic and connection that provide a sense of safety? My spouse was upset about my negative feelings about Christmas until he finally came around to seeing that he did little to “make the magic” for our kids (and also spent a lot of time listening to my sisters talk about how much anxiety we had around the holiday).
There’s also daily dinner, which is one of my least favorite things and yet necessary. When my kids were in school it really was the only time the whole family could connect (when I’ve homeschooled, like now, breakfast is a more organic time to do that). But—I’d love to know if other people experience this and if Dr. Contois has studied it—it’s also a fact that in school my kids get around 7-12 minutes to eat lunch (technically it’s 45 but that includes standing in line, recess, and socializing. I’ve had lunch with them numerous times and they get shuffled out within 7-12 minutes of sitting down). They are not only hungry but lacking nutrition, so they need a meal in the evening. It’s wrong but entirely wrapped up in the expectations of K-12 education standards and the way time is sliced up to meet curriculum requirements.
I loved reading about the diversity of Dr. Cointois’s education! I wish everyone had an education like that, including in high school.
This morning, in the afterglow of a very quiet Thanksgiving, where I cooked all the foods and had all the feels, I thought how it was so much easier than the holidays of my youth. Divorced parents, with remarriages resulting in 4 extended families, contending with the inability of any adult to manage coordinating where each kid needed to be to maintain expectations and court orders. A holiday like Thanksgiving could span ten days. Not to mention the grandparents. It was just so exhausting, all the drama and being powerless to meet all the adults' needs to have "their Thanksgiving" with us kids. Then I read your article and it clicked about "food is love" but when the love is poisoned by broken relationships, the experience at the table isn't going to generate a bunch of happy memories. It's much better now that I cook what I want (lots of chiles in my food) and invite who I want. I cooked the whole feast and now I am not cooking again for days.
I think it's touched on here but warrants a larger discussion: health and healthy behaviours are as much a construct as gender.
Behaviours that are pathologized in someone with an ED diagnosis are considered admirable in someone with a "normal" BMI and are considered the bare minimum to show you're a "good fatty" for anyone in a larger body.
Low-to-no carb, for example, is a stark marker of disordered eating and can be responsible for the telltale ammenorrhea, and yet is considered admirable in normal BMI people and required in larger bodied people. And yet we know that a fairly large intake of carbohydrates is necessary for optimal menstrual health, and going too low carb even while maintaining a "normal" or high BMI can fuck with your periods.
And these conversations are so hard to have because--especially larger bodied people--are told over and over and over again that if they don't <insert extreme dieting behaviour> they'll essentially die. When what we know from the literature is that health behaviours and consistency are the most important in terms of improving and maintaining good health. So consistently eating vegetables every day, regardless of fat loss, is going to lead to improved health, reduced morbidity and mortality, etc. But the messaging we get is that if we don't undergo some uber restrictive diet to achieve heroic weightloss we'll die--when it's the extreme behaviours themselves that cause harm in terms of relationship with food, increased cortisol, weight cycling, etc.
I think it also speaks to how we often define health in the negative--not being too fat, not having chronic illnesses, not having mental illness--rather than in the positive: having a varied diet, having a healthy relationship with food, finding meaning through vocation or volunteering or community, etc. Which is, of course, a marker of neoliberal thought. It is our individual responsibility to be appropriately thin (but not too thin! or too muscular! but definitely have a booty while somehow also a flat stomach), and if we are faced with food deserts or having to work 2 full time jobs or chronic illnesses, that just means we have to work harder. And there is no government or societal responsibility to ensure greenspaces and adequate rest and nourishing food and childcare and all of the things we need to have a positive definition of health.
When I got the email notification for this article, I saw the subject line "Seems like a good week to talk to a food and gender scholar" and thought you were writing to me personally. For a second I was all warm and fuzzy because someone noticed.
This is such a good read. Really dig how it was pointed out that "wellness" culture and that big money industry is just a softly salt-lamp lit spin on diet culture. I love to hate-read GOOP but still, it's such a guilty pleasure.
It's so baffling to me how this plays out and now I'm keen to check out the book and see how it unpacks some of these thins. Women diets are soft frilly weaknesses, but then Jack Dorsey can trot off and through IF etc makes what would otherwise appear to be a serious eating disorder a hip new way to optimize. Unreal.
As I read the millennial masculinity stuff, I wondered about the differences in men/women moving back home.
My sister-in-law recently got engaged. She's older than my wife by about 6 years, and has wanted to get married for a while. She's quite conservative politically, and quite religious (in the conservative/evangelical translation of Christianity/religion in the US) and my wife and her have had some nasty discussions this summer. One of them stemmed around how the sister-in-law lived with their dad in a house his work was paying for, for free, for about 18 months (they're both doctors) and didn't offer to pay rent, etc. She'd have been in her mid-30s at the time.
My wondering as I read this was how she'd view a man she met in that same context, just given the expectations of men at any age. She rejects a lot of what is discussed in this space -- nothing is a construct, there should only be absolutes, etc. -- so my guess is she'd project something different on men living at home than she would expect from herself living with her dad at the same point in her life.
If anyone else is like me and wondered wtf The Time of Shedding and Cold Rocks was referring to (especially when their initial google search returned a TON of articles about a NYT editor who published an article without turning off his "Millenials to Snake People" Chrome extension, which is amazing and I am glad to have learned about that), it's referring to the global economic sabotage and subsequent collapse from 2007 to 2009.
thank you AHP & Emily! I have been loving these interviews and the insight into how researchers find the questions that guide their deep inquiry. I am still looking for mine and feeling inspired by hearing about others’ journeys.
I loved this article - touched on so many of my interests, food, gender, power. I work in wine and so many of these issues I see repeated in my industry and across hospitality.
whenever I get these, I'm like, "damn, she sends so many newsletters!" and get inbox anxiety and then I read a couple of paragraphs in and it is entirely worth it. This resonated hard and left me a bit flummoxed mabye..I think for members of the poorer-nation diaspora, food/restaurants is one of the few ways to "pull up your bootstraps" and obtain a level of "success" and be-your-own-boss. But it is also a way that forces immigrants to "stay in their lane." Lots to ponder on this one!
This was so good--please do keep interviewing non-celebrity intellectuals! I don't have much to add, other than that I found the interview insightful and a pleasure to read.
Oh wow, what a fascinating read. I think the link between politics and food is really fascinating, particularly how men use kitchens and cooking to appear more relatable (with often poor results) and women have to play up feminine traits (see Margaret Thatcher cooking for her cabinet colleagues in the Crown).
In the UK, we've had the four ovens scandal: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/james-brokenshire-ovens-two-four-picture-a8913971.html
The two kitchens drama: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31875297
And famously, 'eat your cereal' lady of the Scottish independence referendum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLAewTVmkAU
Thank you AHP and Emily for this!! Such a good read. I work in community organizing/advocacy in food banks so naturally I applied the discussion to the themes that pop up in my world. The gendered aspect of food work takes on a whole new dimension when you factor in food insecurity-- I think many people who haven't experienced food insecurity don't understand just how much labor goes into figuring out where food distributions are or signing up for SNAP. But the thing that I see over and over again that most applies to the conversation of power and food is how much policing of what is "acceptable" to eat or to buy for people who rely on SNAP/food banks. There is a bill that was just filed in the state lege in Texas that would restrict what people can buy with SNAP to "healthy" food (which, like, what does that even mean) and it is SHOCKING how many middle-class/wealthy "progressives" don't see how absolutely disgusting that sort of legislation is. This is compounded by fat shaming and how obesity and diet-related chronic conditions are directly linked to access to nutrient-dense foods.
This is excellent. It's remarkable how the gendered "food is love" motivation clashes with the disordered "ladies control your intake" theme so strikingly at Big Traditional Family Meals (my experience of the disordered aspects is that it's not only granny or whomever the family chef is withholding the grand meal from her own plate, but that she's also keeping a sharp judging eye on other women's plates around the table, "food is love but don't eat too much, girls").
Another thought: when I was an immigrant living in the US, July 4 was also a Big Universal Holiday, with similar importance in having lots of food, but maybe because it's typically non-kitchen food, i.e., dudes grilling, it doesn't have the same gendered obligations for women?
So much I hadn’t thought about! (The magic of AHP 💗) Thanksgiving is the holiday I actually reclaimed for myself. I cook the traditional food and use my great-great-great-grandmother’s silver but spend the day in my pajamas and listen to the Beatles. We usually have friends or family over with the understanding that everyone is relaxed about it all. Christmas was always a fraught time growing up, so that’s the one I struggle with. It’s not just the food, it’s the entire process of making the magic happen, which seems like it’s part of this—meals are magic and connection that provide a sense of safety? My spouse was upset about my negative feelings about Christmas until he finally came around to seeing that he did little to “make the magic” for our kids (and also spent a lot of time listening to my sisters talk about how much anxiety we had around the holiday).
There’s also daily dinner, which is one of my least favorite things and yet necessary. When my kids were in school it really was the only time the whole family could connect (when I’ve homeschooled, like now, breakfast is a more organic time to do that). But—I’d love to know if other people experience this and if Dr. Contois has studied it—it’s also a fact that in school my kids get around 7-12 minutes to eat lunch (technically it’s 45 but that includes standing in line, recess, and socializing. I’ve had lunch with them numerous times and they get shuffled out within 7-12 minutes of sitting down). They are not only hungry but lacking nutrition, so they need a meal in the evening. It’s wrong but entirely wrapped up in the expectations of K-12 education standards and the way time is sliced up to meet curriculum requirements.
I loved reading about the diversity of Dr. Cointois’s education! I wish everyone had an education like that, including in high school.
This morning, in the afterglow of a very quiet Thanksgiving, where I cooked all the foods and had all the feels, I thought how it was so much easier than the holidays of my youth. Divorced parents, with remarriages resulting in 4 extended families, contending with the inability of any adult to manage coordinating where each kid needed to be to maintain expectations and court orders. A holiday like Thanksgiving could span ten days. Not to mention the grandparents. It was just so exhausting, all the drama and being powerless to meet all the adults' needs to have "their Thanksgiving" with us kids. Then I read your article and it clicked about "food is love" but when the love is poisoned by broken relationships, the experience at the table isn't going to generate a bunch of happy memories. It's much better now that I cook what I want (lots of chiles in my food) and invite who I want. I cooked the whole feast and now I am not cooking again for days.
I think it's touched on here but warrants a larger discussion: health and healthy behaviours are as much a construct as gender.
Behaviours that are pathologized in someone with an ED diagnosis are considered admirable in someone with a "normal" BMI and are considered the bare minimum to show you're a "good fatty" for anyone in a larger body.
Low-to-no carb, for example, is a stark marker of disordered eating and can be responsible for the telltale ammenorrhea, and yet is considered admirable in normal BMI people and required in larger bodied people. And yet we know that a fairly large intake of carbohydrates is necessary for optimal menstrual health, and going too low carb even while maintaining a "normal" or high BMI can fuck with your periods.
And these conversations are so hard to have because--especially larger bodied people--are told over and over and over again that if they don't <insert extreme dieting behaviour> they'll essentially die. When what we know from the literature is that health behaviours and consistency are the most important in terms of improving and maintaining good health. So consistently eating vegetables every day, regardless of fat loss, is going to lead to improved health, reduced morbidity and mortality, etc. But the messaging we get is that if we don't undergo some uber restrictive diet to achieve heroic weightloss we'll die--when it's the extreme behaviours themselves that cause harm in terms of relationship with food, increased cortisol, weight cycling, etc.
I think it also speaks to how we often define health in the negative--not being too fat, not having chronic illnesses, not having mental illness--rather than in the positive: having a varied diet, having a healthy relationship with food, finding meaning through vocation or volunteering or community, etc. Which is, of course, a marker of neoliberal thought. It is our individual responsibility to be appropriately thin (but not too thin! or too muscular! but definitely have a booty while somehow also a flat stomach), and if we are faced with food deserts or having to work 2 full time jobs or chronic illnesses, that just means we have to work harder. And there is no government or societal responsibility to ensure greenspaces and adequate rest and nourishing food and childcare and all of the things we need to have a positive definition of health.
When I got the email notification for this article, I saw the subject line "Seems like a good week to talk to a food and gender scholar" and thought you were writing to me personally. For a second I was all warm and fuzzy because someone noticed.
This is such a good read. Really dig how it was pointed out that "wellness" culture and that big money industry is just a softly salt-lamp lit spin on diet culture. I love to hate-read GOOP but still, it's such a guilty pleasure.
It's so baffling to me how this plays out and now I'm keen to check out the book and see how it unpacks some of these thins. Women diets are soft frilly weaknesses, but then Jack Dorsey can trot off and through IF etc makes what would otherwise appear to be a serious eating disorder a hip new way to optimize. Unreal.
As I read the millennial masculinity stuff, I wondered about the differences in men/women moving back home.
My sister-in-law recently got engaged. She's older than my wife by about 6 years, and has wanted to get married for a while. She's quite conservative politically, and quite religious (in the conservative/evangelical translation of Christianity/religion in the US) and my wife and her have had some nasty discussions this summer. One of them stemmed around how the sister-in-law lived with their dad in a house his work was paying for, for free, for about 18 months (they're both doctors) and didn't offer to pay rent, etc. She'd have been in her mid-30s at the time.
My wondering as I read this was how she'd view a man she met in that same context, just given the expectations of men at any age. She rejects a lot of what is discussed in this space -- nothing is a construct, there should only be absolutes, etc. -- so my guess is she'd project something different on men living at home than she would expect from herself living with her dad at the same point in her life.
If anyone else is like me and wondered wtf The Time of Shedding and Cold Rocks was referring to (especially when their initial google search returned a TON of articles about a NYT editor who published an article without turning off his "Millenials to Snake People" Chrome extension, which is amazing and I am glad to have learned about that), it's referring to the global economic sabotage and subsequent collapse from 2007 to 2009.
thank you AHP & Emily! I have been loving these interviews and the insight into how researchers find the questions that guide their deep inquiry. I am still looking for mine and feeling inspired by hearing about others’ journeys.
I loved this article - touched on so many of my interests, food, gender, power. I work in wine and so many of these issues I see repeated in my industry and across hospitality.
Emily - is your book available in the UK?
This is fantastic, thank you!
whenever I get these, I'm like, "damn, she sends so many newsletters!" and get inbox anxiety and then I read a couple of paragraphs in and it is entirely worth it. This resonated hard and left me a bit flummoxed mabye..I think for members of the poorer-nation diaspora, food/restaurants is one of the few ways to "pull up your bootstraps" and obtain a level of "success" and be-your-own-boss. But it is also a way that forces immigrants to "stay in their lane." Lots to ponder on this one!
The references to IF in here make me curious to talk more about it. Threading for those, like AHP, who would rather just skip this discussion.