It seems that women are rejecting cooking for shoes - well, the ones who can afford to, anyways.

According to this article in the The Tyee, “liberated women” don’t want to cook. Noting the trend for women (read upper-class, slightly rich, and I would venture to guess, white women) to consider cooking as old-fashioned and low-class, this piece pretty insightfully considers how cooking food, no matter its cultural and political importance, has often been associated with women in Western culture and is therefore unvalued activity.

This piece also provides a fascinating look at how men have taken up gourmet cooking. I can’t help but point out that men have long taken up the cooking that is seen as particularly “skilled” and full of showmanship. Just check out Ontario’s cottage country on any summer long weekend and you’ll see many a man behind the BBQ grill showing off! Making kid-friendly food, or maybe pureed stuff for babies or the sick or the elderly, is just never gonna make it onto the Iron Chef.

Anyways, the real point here is that it is likely impossible for women to seem liberated in the kitchen, no matter how skilled they are - as this writer at the Tyee puts it, they are more likely to be perceived as “domestic suckers who aren’t paying enough attention to their ambition or their libidos.”

So on this Valentine’s Day, what are you eating? And is it the way to your feminist heart?