I'll start off with my hands up: I'm not married, don't have kids, and therefore do not have any logged hours with which to provide insight on gender-based roles and balance in a functioning marriage.
Maybe that's why I was so puzzled when I read Hanna Rosin's article, The Rise of the Kitchen Bitch. (And yet MORE puzzled upon hearing about a new magazine in Germany angled specifically at Man-Foodies, titled: BEEF! EmPHAsis theirs.)
Kitchen gender politics have always been contentious and highly subjective. A person's place in a kitchen has got zilch to do with gender roles. It's all about personality. Whether you're a wizened Punjabi matriarch or a Tennessee pitmaster, if you're a Type-A with any kind of confidence and know-now, you're going to dominate a kitchen. Period.
If you're in a long-term relationship/marriage, SOMEone is going to be in the kitchen more than the other. It's as unkind and counterproductive to call your husband a bitch for ruling the kitchen as it would be if he stormed in and demanded a hot dinner.
Rosin seems to be saying that home kitchen dominatrix is a pre-established role that women have been robbed of--that if her husband was the kitchen beta and she the alpha, he would have to take her potato-peeling nitpicking into stride, as this is her domain.
Continue reading "Takin' Back Bitch, Gender or Kitchen Notwithstanding" »

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