From BlogHer:
His latest treatise on how the downfall of Western civilization (and all those we pollute with our culture) will be because we spend less time cooking and more time watching cooking shows ("Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch") was the cover story of the New York Times Magazine this past weekend. According to the article, if the world falls apart because people spend only 27 minutes a day preparing food, we can blame feminism. Seriously.
This is a ridiculous characterization of Pollan's article.
Well, I haven't had a chance to read the article yet - I just wanted to "bookmark" this by posting it on babble so I'll have a chance to read it! But I'd be interested in hearing why you disagree with the blogger.
Because Pollan lists a few reasons why real cooking fell out of favour including (not surprisingly) women entering the work force. And the answer Pollan proposes is women AND men resetting their priorities. Pollan most certainly does not lament women having the option to work outside the home and it's churlish and unfair to imply that he does.
First time commenting - couldn't resist, having read Michael Pollan's article with interest. Reading "BlogHer" - I had to restrain my gag reflex. Similar to Margaret Wente's colunn/response in Saturday's blog. Gosh. Are all successful, professional women that defensive about not being able or willing to cook?
They both miss the point, probably intentionally. He's not blaming feminism. He's blaming corporate consumerism.
"Shapiro shows that the shift toward industrial cookery began not in response to a demand from women entering the work force but as a supply-driven phenomenon."
I'm not much of a cook. But really, it's not the cooking that hurts. It's the shopping ie: if you're stuck with supermarkets instead of local markets and food stores (which are gradually appearing again in my Halifax neighbourhood). You don't need to be Julia Child to put a daily meal on the table. A cob of corn, a potato and some green beans will do.
"The question is, Can we ever put the genie back into the bottle? Once it has been destroyed, can a culture of everyday cooking be rebuilt? One in which men share equally in the work?"
So, according to Pollen, the guys should share in the cooking.
It reminds me of the heated feminist debates about Ivan Illich's book "Gender". He didn't invent the historical/traditional division of labour. He described it. Just as Michael Pollen describes our recent history of food and cooking. For sure, women and feminism have had a lot to do with buying into the changes Michael Pollen discusses. And now we have the power and influence to change again.
First time commenting - couldn't resist, having read Michael Pollan's article with interest. Reading "BlogHer" - I had to restrain my gag reflex. Similar to Margaret Wente's colunn/response in Saturday's blog. Gosh.
Kathleen - I'm so glad you bothered to respond to this. Salon ran a similiar piece titled
Michael Pollan wants you back in the kitchen
A great many of the comments to the salon piece took the writer to task for failing to grasp what he was saying.
Thanks for the reference, well well well.
Here's the Salon piece: Michael Pollan wants you back in the kitchen
Pollan takes pains to assure us that the large number of women now working outside the home is only partially responsible for this trend, and that he's not calling for women to get back into the kitchen or anything. He's calling for everybody to get back into the kitchen -- or at least one cook in every household, and if that happens to be the woman, well, he didn't make the rules! To be fair, Pollan would probably not be such a fierce advocate for home cooking if he didn't enjoy it himself, but I still can't help thinking his penis is showing when he describes Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" -- which also debuted in 1963 -- as "the book that taught millions of American women to regard housework, cooking included, as drudgery, indeed as a form of oppression." Funny, I always thought Friedan became a feminist icon because she articulated what millions of women already felt, not because she brainwashed them into believing that repetitive, menial, unpaid labor might not be the best use of their talents.
Child, argues Pollan, demonstrated that "cooking approached in the proper spirit offered a kind of fulfillment and deserved an intelligent woman's attention. (A man's, too.)" And even Simone de Beauvoir said whipping up pastries could involve "revelation and creation" -- a statement Pollan characterizes as "a bit of wisdom that some American feminists thoughtlessly trampled in their rush to get women out of the kitchen." Oh, those thoughtless feminists! I wasn't around in the '60s, but I'm guessing they made ridiculous, man-hating arguments like, "Dude, Julia Child gets paid to cook."
Pollan is right that we do need to get back to the kitchen. That is not a sexist comment in and of itself.
However, I think his argument is very silly, to be charitable, in regards to Friedan and the argument she was making.
However, the larger point that we have abdicated food to large corporations both in its preperation and creation is one that is hard to argue. Neither is it either exactly brain science to suggest there has been a wholesale abandonment of food preperations skills. In a world were mirocwavable Karft Dinner exists because regular Kraft Dinner is just too time consuming and complicated is a screwed up world no matter how you slice it. It never ceases to amaze me the number of times I end up giving basic food preperation advice at our two farmers market stalls. Young people - and by that I mean under say 40ish- often have no idea what to do with a roast, or a whole chicken.
Pollan misses the fundamental point though in that a major part of that abandonment is because we still live in a fundementally sexist society. With men, as a hasty generalization, refusing to at least share the kitchen it was inevietable in some ways that women - who were still carrying the major load of home work- plus jobs - would look elsewhere for help.
The real answer is for us men to get our asses into the kitchen, and it wouldn't hurt to clean behind the toilet too.
In a world were mirocwavable Karft Dinner exists because regular Kraft Dinner is just too time consuming and complicated is a screwed up world no matter how you slice it.
That's quite hilarious. I have the same concerns about minute rice.
Pardon the thread drift but one thing that really pisses me off is men who don't lift a finger in the kitchen regularly but pull out all the stops when it's barbecue time. Does cooking only count if your friends see you do it?
Pardon the thread drift but one thing that really pisses me off is men who don't lift a finger in the kitchen regularly but pull out all the stops when it's barbecue time. Does cooking only count if your friends see you do it?
Fire = more fun than steaming vegetables.
It only counts if there is fire!!!!
Ah- PBull you beat me to it!!!!
It looks like Kate Harding's thoughtful Salon article was the unfortunate victim of a keen junior editor who opted for a sensationalistic title, which, naturally, became the focus point for subsequent commenters. It's almost always the editor who chooses the headlines for a piece, not the writer. If it was Harding, however, succumbing to the urge to add a bit of flair to her op-ed shouldn't negate the just feminist criticism she applies to portions of Pollan's (mostly good, I thought) article.
For me, it's the class issue that Pollan misses most: he notes that Julia Child helped French cooking lose its elitism mantle, but fails to acknowledge that the eat fresh, eat local, eat from scratch movement is rooted in its own elitism. I'm reminded of a review of British TV cook Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's (what a name!) cook book. For those who have not basked in the glory of Hugh (I'm a fan) he's a major player behind the eat local, eat the whole cow movement in the UK--he rears his own pork and lamb on 'River Cottage', forages for nettles and cockles, hunts red deer and pigeon and tells you how to do it all yourself. Here's a review for The River Cottage Year (which I own) in the Guardian:
How on earth could you not be seduced by all this? Why is it that reading the book leaves one feeling slightly uncomfortable and queasy? In cookbooks and through cookbooks one is always searching for an answer and an alternate self - be French; be Mediterranean; be different. Use olive oil, use ceps, use salsify and scorzonera. Change your life. Crucially, unlike the distant promises of other holy books or grails, the cookbook appears to offer an easy virtue which can be almost instantly acquired, in which complications disappear and total fulfilment seems possible. In a cookbook there is never any sign of weakness, no drift. The author of a cookbook is like a cross between Henry James and Charles Atlas: he has arranged himself perfectly, and by following a few simple rules you can too.But of course for most of us it's all unachievable. September, Fearnley-Whittingstall writes, "is a good month for killing a steer" ("I hang my beef for a full month at the abattoir"). He does all his own butchering, with a friend. But do you have a table big enough to carve up a cow, and friends prepared to wade in and assist with the mess and guts?
Tossing his curls and throwing another cock pheasant in the pan, he advises, in January: "See if you can track down a mallard, a teal, a brace of woodcock, or two of snipe." What? In Dagenham? Or Worksop? Go to your local farmers' market, he suggests. But what if there is no local farmers' market? At my local market all you can buy is three lighters for a pound, some bootleg videos, cheap school uniforms and the few remaining vegetables that the supermarkets wouldn't touch.
I'll have to read all links when I get a chance. I've been a fan of Pollan for a while now. Good comments here so far.
I love cooking. I love cookbooks. They offer a pre-defined structure, a set of rules to follow, and an expected outcome, but they also allow for flexibility, creativity, personal contribution. My wife and I subscribe to the slow food movement. We go to St. Lawrence market here in T.O. every week. We just recently joined Front Door Organics.
There are a number of movements right now that are trying to get us not so much back in the kitchen but to take a long and hard look at what we're putting in ourselves, where it comes from, and what it takes to make it. The by-product of this is that you realize that the best way to control what you eat is to make it yourself. Doesn't mean that we don't do junk every now and again. It's just about awareness and informed decisions.
[drift] Hey Weltschmerz, it's nice to see you! [/drift]
Having read all the articles now, I am going to agree with everyone, including the feminists who wrote the critical articles, and the feminists here who criticized the critical articles. :) And perhaps even Pollan, who wrote the original article!
I agree with those here who are saying that the critical articles were too dismissive of Pollan's point of view. I don't think he was out-and-out trashing feminists. But I also agree with the critical articles in certain spots, where they say that Pollan's analysis is too simplistic, and doesn't take into account the reality of women's experience when it comes to housework.
I think I liked the second article from Salon the best, because it acknowledged the fact that Pollan didn't claim that women should get back into the kitchen barefoot and pregnant where they belong. But it was critical of him because he also didn't get the reality, that women still earn less than men, so if anyone gets "back to the kitchen," you know who's going to get stuck with the job. Heck, we're still stuck with the job now, statistically speaking, in that women still shoulder an unequal burden of housework, even though we're working outside the home.
I also like the fact that they acknowledged in the second article from Salon that Pollan over-romanticizes the "home-cooked food" of the past, and described not only the type of fatty, starchy food that housewives cooked at home back in the good old days (certainly not the yuppie fare he and other "foodies" these days do food porn about on TV and in cookbooks) but their attitudes about what a drudgery it often was. Speaking of which, I've never heard of that sarcastic cookbook she mentions in the article, but I'm definitely going to look for it - it sounds like a scream! :)
I think I liked the second article from Salon the best, because it acknowledged the fact that Pollan didn't claim that women should get back into the kitchen barefoot and pregnant where they belong. But it was critical of him because he also didn't get the reality, that women still earn less than men, so if anyone gets "back to the kitchen," you know who's going to get stuck with the job. Heck, we're still stuck with the job now, statistically speaking, in that women still shoulder an unequal burden of housework, even though we're working outside the home.
Isn't Pollan's point that we need to get away from exactly this kind of "stuck with the job" thinking. If we keep thinking of cooking as a job that somebody "gets stuck with" pretty soon we'll all be stuck with nothing but crap food.
Food is what keeps us alive, it is also something which gives pleasure. Don't we need to question the thinking that food prep is so menial a task that we are all too good to do it?
This reminds me of a story from last year in the US when raids were conducted on meat plants employing illegal immigrants. They arrested the immigrants and brought in prisoners to do their jobs. I know this is drifting, but it is an example of this kind of thinking in action.
I also like the fact that they acknowledged in the second article from Salon that Pollan over-romanticizes the "home-cooked food" of the past, and described not only the type of fatty, starchy food that housewives cooked at home back in the good old days (certainly not the yuppie fare he and other "foodies" these days do food porn about on TV and in cookbooks) but their attitudes about what a drudgery it often was.
"Over-romanticize" ??? "home-cooked food" of the past??? - wouldn't this be monsantos attitude? What a quaint time when humans cooked their own food?
As to the claims that thinking about eating better food is elitism or classism - I have had a life long appreciation of real food. My grandparents were immigrants - they owned a produce business and they also brought with them a love for fresh, good food. It is from them that I learned about leamington tomatoes. Essex county corn was a family treat - only available for a short time, we ate as much as could knowing full well we wouldn't have anything that good until the next year. The farmer's market is/was not a classist or elitist institution.
I'm talking about the way we tend to over-romanticize WHAT the homecooked food of the past was. And no, I don't think I'm embracing Monsanto's attitude, thanks. I'm saying that I get the point that the author of the Salon article was making when she said that a lot of the homecooked food of the past that people now get so nostalgic about often wasn't the yuppie food you see in food porn these days. I think it's a valid point.
As to the claims that thinking about eating better food is elitism or classism - I have had a life long appreciation of real food. My grandparents were immigrants - they owned a produce business and they also brought with them a love for fresh, good food. It is from them that I learned about leamington tomatoes. Essex county corn was a family treat - only available for a short time, we ate as much as could knowing full well we wouldn't have anything that good until the next year. The farmer's market is/was not a classist or elitist institution.
Agreed, but I think there is a certain cachet associated with terms like "organic", "heirloom" and the current fave "artisan". And there are people that are buying things featuring these terms without giving any thought to what they mean. One of the other places we get fantastic produce from is the Italian couple who live next door to us. You don't get much more organic than your own back yard :)
I'm talking about the way we tend to over-romanticize WHAT the homecooked food of the past was. And no, I don't think I'm embracing Monsanto's attitude, thanks. I'm saying that I get the point that the author of the Salon article was making when she said that a lot of the homecooked food of the past that people now get so nostalgic about often wasn't the yuppie food you see in food porn these days. I think it's a valid point.
Quite. If I had continued eating the fare that I grew up on, I don't think I'd still be alive today. Heck, even my parents changed their diets years ago. My dad still has a love affair with his butcher, but otherwise their diet is much healthier than 40 years ago.
Quite. If I had continued eating the fare that I grew up on, I don't think I'd still be alive today. Heck, even my parents changed their diets years ago. My dad still has a love affair with his butcher, but otherwise their diet is much healthier than 40 years ago.
Here is an article from 2 years ago - from the guardian
I'm talking about the way we tend to over-romanticize WHAT the homecooked food of the past was.
OK. Just remember that not everybody's past includes the meat and potatoes diet that was brought here by those of european origins. My background is mixed euro/noneuro.
My euro, but canadian born grandfather died at the age of 67 from a heart attack - all that bad homecooked food you are talking about. My noneuro immigrant grandfather lived to 100 due to all the amazing homecooked food he ate.
Oh definitely. :) You're right about that!
You should read Pollan's books, Michelle. He is a fellow who likes to cook including those home cooked meals of the past (and what are wrong with those? Is Chef Boyardee really that good?). In Defense of Food, he instructs readers to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." And he argues that the issue is eating foods, whole foods, as opposed enriched processed foods or food-like objects (and what is "yuppie food" exactly?).
What Pollan tells us is that the Western diet, the North American diet in particular, is corn and soy. Almost everything we eat that is processed is corn and soy. He tells us, further, that our corn/soy diet, coupled with what he terms the ideology of nutrionalism, is making us sick and destroying our land base. His arguments are supported by Raj Patel's book, Stuffed and Starved, which begins by telling us that while 1 billion of the world's population goes hungry, 1 billion face the diseases of obesity.
Both authors make the point, Pollan better, I think, that the industrial food model is great for the profits of a few giant corporations but very bad for farmers, the developing world, and us, as eaters, as it undermines both our health and our environment at the same time.
I think you would find Pollan would be very supportive of your home cooked diet of meat and potatoes and especially so if your diet came from outside of the factory farm system.
Both Pollan and Patel acknowledge that choices are more limited for those on lower incomes, but they don't have to be. The greatest challenge facing every social movement is breaking down the barriers to change and most often those barriers exist at the community level where communication and cooperation have been supplanted by telecommunication and corporation.
Thanks for the Salon piece. Didn't like it much - I think the attitude is both classist and elitist - but appreciated the comments.
I'm still all for Pollen's attitude as opposed to the 100 mile diets etc. People have exported food forever, like the spice trade. But never have we relied on imports to the extent we do now. I mean to inlcude "processed" and "packaged" in the imports catagory. We still need to know how to grow and prepare and preserve our own food for daily sustenance. Nothing wrong with adding a few hot peppers and mangoes now and then. Even my very old mother remembers tasting tropical fruit when her father, who worked as a station master in small town Saskatchewan, brought samples home from the train. But nobody expected to have it for dessert every day.
As for starch and fat, I loved it and still do. Pork hasn't tasted as good since they de-larded the pigs. And Italian bread is white. So's French. Add the wine and cheese and die happy.
Hey FM Great to see you around.
I really like Patel's book and recommend it widely. He is great speaker if you ever get the chance to hear him
His description of how the world bank works based on the Robin Hood scene from Time Bandits is worth the price of admission alone!
Great post FM!
I am everything that is wrong with the world, in the most serious sense of the crisis we face. I can't cook to save my life, and I really honestly wouldn't have time if I could. I work ridiculous hours in a high-stress environment, and I do not slow down to savour things like preparing a wholesome meal. It's an awful consumerist mess, and I am not alone by any means. In fact, I'm probably better than a lot because of my aversion to burger joints (my only food snobbery: burgers are to be cook on a bbq. There is no other way.)
Anyway, really interesting discussion. This is the kinda thread babble needs more of!
Well sometimes it is just impossible to live pure.
I think it is why we should all cut each other slack from time to time and not minimize anyones choices - if they can even be called choices.
I look at the number of times we come in from the field - running an organic farm, and we are so dead tired the thought of cooking is just too much. So what do we do - we run to town and get a supper at a local Fry Truck. I hate it - but in those cases at 10 pm I just want a frikkin supper - NOW.
Or since we both work off the farm, and I always seem behind schedule - I will find myself pulling in somewhere and grapping a gag and puke lunch because that's all I have time for.
I guess the real answer is though what we try to accomplish. And you know what- cooking simple but nutritious meals is really not very difficult or costly. It comes down to time. We have made ourselves too busy.
I tell you - however you want to look at it microwavable Kraft Dinner is a sign of the coming apocalypse
Thank you, BA. George cajoled me back. Where is he?
In fact, Coyote, you are probably very typical. Pollan, in Omnivores Dilemma, describes how food has become both personalized and disconnected from a communal experience. He describes how parents will eat one meal, a teenager something else, and another family member something else entirely and how it is all prepared in a microwave, consumed separately, and often in front of a TV or another screen. Where food was once a cultural and pleasurable experience, it is now another physical chore that must be performed like, say, having a pee.
On that note, Pollan suggests that the rise of nutritionalism and eating as maintenance comes from the puritanical origins of the US and points to a campaign that once was critical of eating being considered pleasurable.
I think the undercurrent of Pollan's argument, and perhaps Patel too, is that food is a linchpin to our culture and economy and that a return to real food could lead to a return to real communities and real lives. I can't guarantee it as we are all different, but I will wager that on your deathbed you will not regret not having worked more.
In fact, since reading these books I have dramatically altered my diet (I am no saint), and I now cook at least half our meals. We are rediscovering both the joy of cooking and eating. I am not talking about any yuppie meals, but basic foods cooked with fresh ingredients including those we grow ourselves.
I'm not getting any thinner, but life is always better over a good meal.
What a delight to be able to read some thoughtful posts again FM!
In other work I do I keep trying to stress the cultural importance of the shared meal. We are not always successful but we try really hard to have meals together - cooked and consumed together. I think it is desperatly import part of family life whether you are a couple, friends living together, or the traditional nuclear family.
Sharing of food is at its essence is the sharing of life. It should be enjoyable, tasteful and a break from the rest of the day.
It isn't easy by a long stretch, but it is important.
Food has become so bland we have to add all kinds of sauces and crap to put on it. With our farm when I have elderly customers tell me our chicken tastes like they remember it tasting when they were young I take it as the highest of compliments. We get similar comments about our beef- younger people say things like - I didn't realize beef could taste like that. If you have properly grown food it doesn't need a lot of extra stuff and it is often the cheapest thing on the shelf.
My stomach is still straining my shirts - but since we switched to a better diet life has been a lot better and more enjoyable and I think we have a better family life to boot because of it.
But like some of the criticisms of Pollan article point out - food preperation and clean up can't simply be pushed onto the woman in a relationship - thats when it becomes drudgery. I don't know if it was just our family- but growing up all the old folks cooked together when possible. (Often because of strength issues the older men were in the fields or barn) But I can distinctly remember grandfathers being a part of meal prederation and/or cleaning up. Certainly my father was very involved in either cooking or the cleaning up. I expect though we were a bit of an anomoly.
"Sharing of food is at its essence is the sharing of life."
I hope you don't mind if I steal that.
I think some of the criticism of Pollan is a unfair. He writes about food and not one of us is perfect. But Pollan himself cooks and he writes that one of the reasons he wanted to learn about food and cooking was because of his son's fussiness. And now his son is cooking too.
I did, however, grow up in a family where my mother did all the cooking and I wasn't expected to learn how to cook. I taught myself later. I would like to think we have advanced, in some ways, that a return to home cooked meals doesn't necessarily mean a return to dumping all the kitchen responsibilities on women and I am happy to report that two of my three sisters have married men who do cook and clean right along with them.
As well. I think, it can be argued that escaping the ball and chain that ties one to a stove for a ball and chain that ties one to a corporate owned stall but with all the same home responsibilities and a poor diet to boot, is really no escape at all.
How we managed to confuse another set of chains with liberation is beyond me, but here we are.
When "we" just happen to be decrying the very real liberation that challenged the situation where one gender just happened to cook for the other and for the kids without pay in 90% of cases, I remain very wary of the nostalgia.
I hope you don't mind if I steal that.
You might want to fix the awful grammar 
When I was a kid, Cub Scouts had a badge for cooking (a frying pan with an egg in it) and a badge for housekeeping (an upright vacuum cleaner). Ya, I had both. :)
When "we" just happen to be decrying the very real liberation that challenged the situation where one gender just happened to cook for the other and for the kids without pay in 90% of cases, I remain very wary of the nostalgia.
Perhaps you haven't noticed that "liberation", in most cases except for a minority of "opinion leaders", has resulted in women (and men) still cooking but in fast food restuarants or cafeterias, and still serving, and changing bed pans, and wiping asses, and doing all that work because whether it is done at home for family or in an industrial setting under constant threat of termination, it is still undervalued and grossly underpaid work. And despite the liberation from drudgery in the home to drudgery in the stall, women still perform the majority of the housework, cooking, and child rearing.
To many, capitalist, consumer "liberation" is the swapping of masters. There are those who prefer the comfort of a paradigm where one can pontificate and condemn and luxuriate in the comfort of always being, oh, so correct. For others, there remains the hope of a better world freed from all chains and where slave masters are never confused as liberators. I will leave you to your choices where there is always a judgement to be made and a condemnation to be rendered, and you can leave me to mine where I would prefer a constant striving just to be better - not perfect - just better.
Ciao.
It only counts if there is fire!!!!
That's easy then - just buy the boys a gas range.
Oh my god, I just lost my whole post because I hit something on my keyboard that erased the whole frigging window. Ack!
Okay, shorter version:
Glad to see FM here!
Pollan could have focused on how it was patriarchy that stopped men from picking up the slack in the kitchen when women (mostly white, middle-class women, since poor white women and poor women of colour have been in the workforce all along) decided that unpaid domestic drudgery wasn't all it was cracked up to be and decided to join the workforce and at least get paid for their drudgery in the pink collar ghettoes. But instead, he focused on how feminists "thoughtlessly trampled" the satisfaction women got from cooking "in their rush to get women out of the kitchen" when talking about that particular social change factor. It's much easier to blame feminism than to blame patriarchy, after all.
That said, I appreciated Pollan's discussion of how people are watching cooking for sport rather than engaging in it, and I liked the way he outlined the way the Food Network is actually quite "macho" in culture during prime-time. I think he's right about that.
And I think FM is also quite right about the fact that we've exchanged one set of chains for another. And I also share his hope for the future, that when people start to realize this, that MEN will realize that it's just as much their responsibility to learn how to cook and take on that chore as it is their wives' and mothers' and sisters' responsibility.
Good discussion (and nice seeing ya, FM) but I think it's veered off from being a strictly femminist forum topic.
I bring up Pollan all the time. It was a great book, and enlightening. It's why I started changing some of my farming practices.
Didn't babble once have a disucussion about women who never cooked? I believe Stargazer featured prominently in that thread and it had some similar echoes with this thread.
Slow food, local food, growing some of your own food, or just eating whole foods (one of Pollan's base suggestions is also to never eat anything that comes with a "Healthy" label; the idea being that apples and such are usually not labelled, and only processed foods need advertise their merits) is an empowering feeling, and therefore dangerous to the statua quo on many levels, including entrenched patriarchy. It's one of the few remaining areas of our lives that we can - if we choose - control.
Speaking on food... The one item that consistently drives me nuts is watching people guzzle soft drinks, diet, zero, or whatever. Of course, those same people would grimace at my beer consumption, so maybe it all equals out.
Grass fed\finished t-bones, sweet corn, and potatoes with butter last night, all cooked by me. Eat that, suckas and sistas!
...instead, he focused on how feminists "thoughtlessly trampled" the satisfaction women got from cooking "in their rush to get women out of the kitchen" when talking about that particular social change factor. It's much easier to blame feminism than to blame patriarchy, after all.
Excellent point michelle.
As a feminist, I have never left the kitchen and the satisfaction it brings me, however, as a feminist, I insist that the space and satisifaction be shared equally amongst all who may be currently living in the household.
When "we" just happen to be decrying the very real liberation that challenged the situation where one gender just happened to cook for the other and for the kids without pay in 90% of cases, I remain very wary of the nostalgia.
Just watched season one of Mad Men and there is no nostalgia on my part for the setup of days gone by. Just so you know, the show didn't convince me of anything, it just reinforced my thinking on "those days" as I am too young to have lived through them. But we are talking about something very different than an either/or situtation of past or present.
The fact that you think anyone here is "decrying the very real liberation" of women just shows you are not fully comprehending this discussion.
That must be it.
Still, someone must have had good reason to say: "If you can't stand the cheat, get out of his kitchen." 
It is a sad thing actually for women, who do not understand what exactly their plight is, though they know they have one, but have be so indoctrinated to believe they must carry the majority of living life's burdens.
One wonders how many women walk away with SFA, just so they can escape? or how many believe that nothing is theirs to take?
