1
00:00:06,080 --> 00:00:08,240
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to stuff mom

2
00:00:08,320 --> 00:00:22,680
Speaker 1: never told you. A couple of weeks ago, a Glamour

3
00:00:22,800 --> 00:00:26,360
Speaker 1: article called I'm a great cook Now that I'm divorced,

4
00:00:26,400 --> 00:00:29,440
Speaker 1: I'm never making dinner for a man again went viral.

5
00:00:29,520 --> 00:00:31,040
Speaker 1: I bet a lot of you saw it in your

6
00:00:31,080 --> 00:00:33,839
Speaker 1: social media feeds, and I bet this because I saw it,

7
00:00:33,920 --> 00:00:37,640
Speaker 1: and I am very rarely on social media. The title

8
00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:40,840
Speaker 1: caught my eye because, as I've said before on this show,

9
00:00:41,280 --> 00:00:45,680
Speaker 1: I love cooking, but I can't stand being expected to cook,

10
00:00:45,720 --> 00:00:48,680
Speaker 1: which some people have a tough time squaring that in

11
00:00:48,720 --> 00:00:51,080
Speaker 1: their head. To me, it makes perfect sense, and that's

12
00:00:51,080 --> 00:00:54,960
Speaker 1: what this article was all about. I related to it hardcore.

13
00:00:55,800 --> 00:00:58,920
Speaker 1: I used to try so hard to make these elaborate dishes,

14
00:00:59,560 --> 00:01:01,680
Speaker 1: but I I wasn't doing it for me. I was

15
00:01:01,720 --> 00:01:04,120
Speaker 1: doing it because I thought I had to, and it

16
00:01:04,160 --> 00:01:09,560
Speaker 1: wasn't appreciated, and it became something that really interfered with

17
00:01:09,920 --> 00:01:12,760
Speaker 1: my love of cooking for a while. And I've in

18
00:01:12,800 --> 00:01:14,920
Speaker 1: the past couple of years come back to it and

19
00:01:14,959 --> 00:01:17,160
Speaker 1: I once again love it because it's something that I

20
00:01:17,240 --> 00:01:19,920
Speaker 1: do for me and that I like to share. But

21
00:01:20,280 --> 00:01:22,880
Speaker 1: if I'm cooking, then you're doing the dishes. That's just

22
00:01:22,959 --> 00:01:26,039
Speaker 1: the way it is. But one thing that a lot

23
00:01:26,080 --> 00:01:28,520
Speaker 1: of you probably have heard or is a part of

24
00:01:28,520 --> 00:01:31,920
Speaker 1: this whole thing, is that women are doing a lot

25
00:01:31,920 --> 00:01:34,679
Speaker 1: of the cooking in our homes. That is changing, but

26
00:01:35,160 --> 00:01:36,880
Speaker 1: in general, women are still doing a lot of the

27
00:01:36,880 --> 00:01:40,759
Speaker 1: cooking in our homes, and women are working in restaurants,

28
00:01:40,760 --> 00:01:45,759
Speaker 1: but they are generally not the chef that has been

29
00:01:45,840 --> 00:01:49,920
Speaker 1: traditionally more of a male position, and we even see

30
00:01:49,920 --> 00:01:54,120
Speaker 1: it in movies like Gratitude where it's sort of a joke,

31
00:01:54,480 --> 00:01:57,600
Speaker 1: but there's truth to it. And in light of all

32
00:01:57,680 --> 00:02:00,960
Speaker 1: of this, I thought we could take a listen to

33
00:02:01,040 --> 00:02:05,160
Speaker 1: this classic episode all about how men took over this

34
00:02:05,200 --> 00:02:09,920
Speaker 1: position of chef and how women are changing that today.

35
00:02:10,400 --> 00:02:16,799
Speaker 1: Please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You from

36
00:02:16,800 --> 00:02:25,120
Speaker 1: how stupp works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

37
00:02:25,160 --> 00:02:28,359
Speaker 1: I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we're cooking with

38
00:02:28,520 --> 00:02:33,760
Speaker 1: gender in the podcast Studio we are we're talking about chefs,

39
00:02:34,120 --> 00:02:37,480
Speaker 1: not the movie Chef, well maybe a little bit the

40
00:02:37,520 --> 00:02:40,359
Speaker 1: movie Chef to kick things off, because first of all,

41
00:02:40,560 --> 00:02:48,640
Speaker 1: just generally speaking, this chef gender women, cheffing, cooking words

42
00:02:48,639 --> 00:02:52,040
Speaker 1: words topic is one that a number of stuff I've

43
00:02:52,040 --> 00:02:56,680
Speaker 1: never told you listeners have requested because chef is still

44
00:02:56,800 --> 00:03:02,680
Speaker 1: very much a masculine, gendered down and it is epitomized

45
00:03:02,800 --> 00:03:06,720
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways by the movie Chef starring

46
00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:10,119
Speaker 1: Jon Favreau, which may may I offer a brief synopsis

47
00:03:10,200 --> 00:03:13,760
Speaker 1: before we give our stuff I've never told you review Chef,

48
00:03:14,040 --> 00:03:18,079
Speaker 1: So Jon Favreau, who I like. Okay, I'll go on

49
00:03:18,120 --> 00:03:21,720
Speaker 1: the record. I like Jon Favreau. He stars as this

50
00:03:22,320 --> 00:03:26,200
Speaker 1: tempestuous chef who's very inventive, very good at what he does,

51
00:03:26,280 --> 00:03:29,760
Speaker 1: of course, but he ends up getting fired from his

52
00:03:30,240 --> 00:03:33,400
Speaker 1: chef position because, you guys, he tweets out what he

53
00:03:33,440 --> 00:03:38,240
Speaker 1: actually thinks about a rude food critic and ends up

54
00:03:38,600 --> 00:03:42,720
Speaker 1: starting a food truck. And that seems fine enough, right, Yeah,

55
00:03:42,720 --> 00:03:45,320
Speaker 1: But basically the movie comes off like Jon Favreau just

56
00:03:45,360 --> 00:03:48,560
Speaker 1: put together a script or a screenplay in order to

57
00:03:49,520 --> 00:03:53,600
Speaker 1: have sexy times with Sophia Vergara, who plays his wife

58
00:03:53,720 --> 00:03:58,200
Speaker 1: or his ex wife wanted to uh and Scarlett Johansson,

59
00:03:58,280 --> 00:04:01,160
Speaker 1: who is the hostess in his restaurant question Mark, who

60
00:04:01,200 --> 00:04:03,720
Speaker 1: was very attracted to him, And that was the scene

61
00:04:04,120 --> 00:04:07,640
Speaker 1: where I wanted to throw my whisk at the television

62
00:04:07,680 --> 00:04:13,080
Speaker 1: screen was when scar Joe was really pining for him

63
00:04:13,200 --> 00:04:15,560
Speaker 1: actively and he was like, Oh, I don't know if

64
00:04:15,560 --> 00:04:17,800
Speaker 1: I can do this, And I was just like, seriously,

65
00:04:18,360 --> 00:04:21,520
Speaker 1: seriously a blow to Jon Favreau gets gets to turn

66
00:04:21,600 --> 00:04:26,640
Speaker 1: down Scarlett Joe Hanson like I welcome to Hollywood. Yeah, yeah, no,

67
00:04:26,800 --> 00:04:30,200
Speaker 1: that that movie. There's this like super long speaking of

68
00:04:30,200 --> 00:04:33,640
Speaker 1: Scarlett jo Hanson, there's a super long grilled cheese making

69
00:04:33,720 --> 00:04:37,200
Speaker 1: like sexy montage. He's making the grilled cheese for her.

70
00:04:37,279 --> 00:04:41,000
Speaker 1: She is not a grilled cheese um. And I just wondered,

71
00:04:41,040 --> 00:04:44,000
Speaker 1: like thinking about that if the role were reversed, if

72
00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:46,320
Speaker 1: the woman, if the main character were a woman chef,

73
00:04:46,880 --> 00:04:51,240
Speaker 1: would they have made like a sexy grilled cheese montage, No, Caroline,

74
00:04:51,279 --> 00:04:54,560
Speaker 1: it just would have been a cutaway to her eating

75
00:04:54,720 --> 00:04:59,400
Speaker 1: yogurt very sexily as every yogurt commercial test right, and

76
00:04:59,520 --> 00:05:02,960
Speaker 1: laughing with a salad. Yeah. Maybe if she were making

77
00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:05,800
Speaker 1: some kind of chocolate dish and some like fell out

78
00:05:05,800 --> 00:05:07,840
Speaker 1: of the bawling out of the counter and she was like, oh,

79
00:05:07,839 --> 00:05:10,120
Speaker 1: I'll look it up. Oh wait a minute, or she

80
00:05:10,160 --> 00:05:12,880
Speaker 1: could have re enacted that cover. I can't remember what

81
00:05:12,920 --> 00:05:15,800
Speaker 1: magazine it was. That had Nigella Lawson on it with

82
00:05:15,839 --> 00:05:17,680
Speaker 1: the caramel. It was a cheek here or something like

83
00:05:17,760 --> 00:05:21,599
Speaker 1: dripping down her face. Yeah, as same as that's just

84
00:05:21,640 --> 00:05:24,040
Speaker 1: hard to get out of the hair. I don't know, Yeah,

85
00:05:24,080 --> 00:05:26,080
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I know. That's all I could think about.

86
00:05:26,520 --> 00:05:29,760
Speaker 1: It's hard enough to get like bubblegum out of the hairs,

87
00:05:29,800 --> 00:05:33,320
Speaker 1: the whole bucket marshmallow fluff. You know, I don't know

88
00:05:33,360 --> 00:05:37,280
Speaker 1: what I'm doing, but but for our purposes today, Chef

89
00:05:37,400 --> 00:05:41,360
Speaker 1: starring Jon Favreau is a useful jumping off point because

90
00:05:41,720 --> 00:05:47,280
Speaker 1: it really does contain so many of these gender dichotomys

91
00:05:47,360 --> 00:05:49,320
Speaker 1: of men and women in the kitchen, where you have

92
00:05:49,480 --> 00:05:56,120
Speaker 1: man as revolutionary, innovative, sexy chef by virtue of his genius,

93
00:05:56,960 --> 00:06:00,320
Speaker 1: whereas women are kind of always struggling in the male

94
00:06:00,400 --> 00:06:05,919
Speaker 1: dominated profession. They have to be more sexless unless they

95
00:06:05,960 --> 00:06:08,280
Speaker 1: are like a Nigella who's cooking on television, which we're

96
00:06:08,279 --> 00:06:11,240
Speaker 1: going to talk about in our next episode. Um, and

97
00:06:11,520 --> 00:06:17,799
Speaker 1: are nurturing with their food. They're feeding people rather than inventing. Yeah,

98
00:06:17,880 --> 00:06:19,880
Speaker 1: and I mean also when you look at the movie Chef,

99
00:06:19,960 --> 00:06:23,839
Speaker 1: everyone in his kitchen is a dude gold, including John Leguizamo.

100
00:06:24,160 --> 00:06:26,320
Speaker 1: It's really the only other person I remember in that movie.

101
00:06:26,760 --> 00:06:29,360
Speaker 1: But but there are no ladies. Um, I don't even

102
00:06:29,360 --> 00:06:32,080
Speaker 1: know if there was a lady pastry chef in that movie.

103
00:06:32,120 --> 00:06:34,479
Speaker 1: And if you look at the statistics today, ladies and

104
00:06:34,520 --> 00:06:38,120
Speaker 1: gentlemen women make up the bulk of pastry chef. Yeah,

105
00:06:38,120 --> 00:06:40,120
Speaker 1: pastry chef would have been a perfect like token woman

106
00:06:40,480 --> 00:06:43,440
Speaker 1: role for that. For that, here's your opportunity, and you

107
00:06:43,520 --> 00:06:46,520
Speaker 1: missed it. So let's talk a little bit though about

108
00:06:46,920 --> 00:06:51,440
Speaker 1: the history of cheffing, because as long as there have

109
00:06:51,640 --> 00:06:54,679
Speaker 1: been people wealthy enough to not cook their own food,

110
00:06:54,880 --> 00:06:58,880
Speaker 1: there have been private cooks. Though it wasn't exactly an

111
00:06:58,960 --> 00:07:01,400
Speaker 1: esteemed position because if you go back, for instance, to

112
00:07:01,440 --> 00:07:06,560
Speaker 1: ancient Rome, then cooking would have been the job of slaves. Yeah,

113
00:07:06,560 --> 00:07:08,960
Speaker 1: so women at the house, they were not tasked with cooking.

114
00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:11,480
Speaker 1: You didn't have the ancient Roman wife in there with

115
00:07:11,520 --> 00:07:14,280
Speaker 1: a whisk being like, oh, I've got to get dinner

116
00:07:14,280 --> 00:07:17,400
Speaker 1: ready for the gifts, all these great leaves. No, none

117
00:07:17,400 --> 00:07:20,840
Speaker 1: of that. It was slaves jobs. But but don't be fooled,

118
00:07:21,240 --> 00:07:24,320
Speaker 1: there were still ancient food snobs. So like you can

119
00:07:24,360 --> 00:07:26,880
Speaker 1: take comfort and when you're rolling your eyes at food

120
00:07:26,880 --> 00:07:29,200
Speaker 1: snobs today, whether it's a food writer or just your

121
00:07:29,240 --> 00:07:32,920
Speaker 1: friend who won't stop posting pictures on Instagram. It's always

122
00:07:32,920 --> 00:07:34,920
Speaker 1: been there and it will always continue to be there.

123
00:07:35,080 --> 00:07:38,120
Speaker 1: So this is coming from Patrick Fosz, who wrote Around

124
00:07:38,120 --> 00:07:42,480
Speaker 1: the Roman Table in UH. He says that there were

125
00:07:42,520 --> 00:07:46,800
Speaker 1: these cookery writers who asserted that the art of cooking

126
00:07:47,040 --> 00:07:50,480
Speaker 1: and that's in quotes, should not be left to slaves

127
00:07:50,560 --> 00:07:52,960
Speaker 1: or ordinary folks. So there was the idea back then

128
00:07:53,040 --> 00:07:55,680
Speaker 1: of like chef or not chef, but a cook as

129
00:07:55,720 --> 00:07:59,160
Speaker 1: someone who was above the fray, that they were smarter

130
00:07:59,240 --> 00:08:02,600
Speaker 1: and more artists than you in practicing this craft. And

131
00:08:02,680 --> 00:08:06,720
Speaker 1: there are even third century BC plays that do feature

132
00:08:06,880 --> 00:08:12,880
Speaker 1: boastful commercial cooks who had their own kitchen slaves. And

133
00:08:12,920 --> 00:08:15,200
Speaker 1: when we get to the Middle Ages, things start becoming

134
00:08:15,280 --> 00:08:21,160
Speaker 1: a little more professionalized and structured thanks to guilds and apprenticeships.

135
00:08:21,200 --> 00:08:25,960
Speaker 1: But for the origins of restaurant chefs, we have to

136
00:08:26,040 --> 00:08:31,320
Speaker 1: go to France, Caroline, Let's go to France, France and

137
00:08:31,400 --> 00:08:34,959
Speaker 1: to sup places. Yeah, I love. The first restaurants were

138
00:08:35,040 --> 00:08:38,800
Speaker 1: essentially those like let us supprise you restaurants which I

139
00:08:38,840 --> 00:08:41,080
Speaker 1: will not go to because the name drives me crazy.

140
00:08:41,160 --> 00:08:43,240
Speaker 1: You still love it as a kid, because Caroline, you

141
00:08:43,240 --> 00:08:45,400
Speaker 1: know I love puns. I know you do. And also

142
00:08:45,840 --> 00:08:47,560
Speaker 1: I wasn't there so much for the soup and salad,

143
00:08:47,559 --> 00:08:49,680
Speaker 1: but they would always have all you can eat frog

144
00:08:51,000 --> 00:08:55,800
Speaker 1: always in it for the froo and puns. What has changed, nothing,

145
00:08:56,040 --> 00:08:59,920
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah. So in the eighteenth century, after

146
00:09:00,160 --> 00:09:04,240
Speaker 1: those guilds legal structures relax, we get the first modern

147
00:09:04,440 --> 00:09:07,720
Speaker 1: Western restaurants, and of course they're run by guys, because

148
00:09:08,480 --> 00:09:11,720
Speaker 1: the world was run by guys. Uh So, in seventeen

149
00:09:11,800 --> 00:09:15,319
Speaker 1: sixty five we get the first restaurant, which is basically

150
00:09:15,360 --> 00:09:19,720
Speaker 1: just a soup place that sold restoratives, hence the word restaurant.

151
00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:22,840
Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting to note that that word

152
00:09:22,960 --> 00:09:28,480
Speaker 1: restaurant has been associated with restorative broths and stews since

153
00:09:28,559 --> 00:09:31,720
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. And this is followed by the first

154
00:09:31,760 --> 00:09:34,640
Speaker 1: fancy pants place with actual menus in seventeen eighty two,

155
00:09:34,640 --> 00:09:36,720
Speaker 1: which I would love to see a menu from the

156
00:09:36,760 --> 00:09:40,720
Speaker 1: eighteenth century. I bet it's heavy on the awful, you know.

157
00:09:41,600 --> 00:09:44,040
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until the beginning of the nineteenth century

158
00:09:44,120 --> 00:09:49,040
Speaker 1: that chefs became known as chefs, short for chef de cuisine.

159
00:09:49,400 --> 00:09:52,400
Speaker 1: That's right, and then still in France because it's like

160
00:09:52,440 --> 00:09:57,600
Speaker 1: the birthplace of cheffery as well well of everything Caroline

161
00:09:58,240 --> 00:10:03,600
Speaker 1: all culture, sue and tweeds and soups and poodles, yes,

162
00:10:03,600 --> 00:10:06,880
Speaker 1: and soups but yes. So it's in France that we

163
00:10:06,920 --> 00:10:10,360
Speaker 1: get the development of different types of chefs, and it's

164
00:10:10,400 --> 00:10:14,480
Speaker 1: where we start to see higher status and more professionalization

165
00:10:14,640 --> 00:10:18,679
Speaker 1: when these formerly known as cooks chefs start making their

166
00:10:18,679 --> 00:10:22,720
Speaker 1: own menus and supervising all aspects of kitchen management. So

167
00:10:22,760 --> 00:10:26,040
Speaker 1: it goes beyond making soups Kristen and into telling other

168
00:10:26,120 --> 00:10:28,800
Speaker 1: people how to make soups and take them out to

169
00:10:28,840 --> 00:10:31,240
Speaker 1: people at the dinner table. And the most famous one

170
00:10:31,320 --> 00:10:33,800
Speaker 1: the time was a guy named Anton and Karem, who's

171
00:10:33,880 --> 00:10:37,320
Speaker 1: credited with making the position of chef what we think

172
00:10:37,360 --> 00:10:42,960
Speaker 1: of it today. Karem was the original John Pafro. He

173
00:10:43,080 --> 00:10:47,520
Speaker 1: essentially worked up through an apprentice style hierarchy himself, and

174
00:10:47,559 --> 00:10:48,880
Speaker 1: then I guess once he got to the top, he

175
00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:51,800
Speaker 1: was like and now since I cannot be king, I

176
00:10:51,880 --> 00:10:57,280
Speaker 1: shall be chef. But it's really George Auguste Escoffier who's

177
00:10:57,280 --> 00:11:01,400
Speaker 1: often cited as the chef who applied military like structure

178
00:11:01,679 --> 00:11:06,320
Speaker 1: to the kitchen, and he also is credited with inventing

179
00:11:06,360 --> 00:11:09,079
Speaker 1: the fifth mother sauce. And Caroline just think it's kind

180
00:11:09,080 --> 00:11:11,560
Speaker 1: of funny that all of these guys who created these

181
00:11:11,600 --> 00:11:15,760
Speaker 1: like five basic sauces of French cuisine called the mother sauces,

182
00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:19,800
Speaker 1: because shouldn't they just be like father sauces instead saucy sauces,

183
00:11:19,960 --> 00:11:25,240
Speaker 1: sassy saucess. I actually hate French cooking. I'm dropping a

184
00:11:25,280 --> 00:11:28,120
Speaker 1: truth bomb. I'm I'm I My boyfriend and I went

185
00:11:28,160 --> 00:11:32,160
Speaker 1: to a like super hyper fancy, expensive, overpriced French restaurant.

186
00:11:32,360 --> 00:11:37,720
Speaker 1: We we we uh we know. It was terrible. It

187
00:11:37,760 --> 00:11:40,840
Speaker 1: was it was just like so heavy and and everything

188
00:11:40,920 --> 00:11:42,840
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is so good, but let's put

189
00:11:42,920 --> 00:11:46,000
Speaker 1: one weird ingredient in here to totally throw the taste off.

190
00:11:46,559 --> 00:11:51,480
Speaker 1: I just Antonin krem is rolling in his grave. I

191
00:11:51,520 --> 00:11:53,840
Speaker 1: know they both are. I'm I'm We're gonna get letters

192
00:11:54,320 --> 00:11:57,360
Speaker 1: um from from their ghosts, from their ghosts. Yeah, but

193
00:11:57,480 --> 00:12:00,800
Speaker 1: so we've only mentioned dudes so far. I would like

194
00:12:00,880 --> 00:12:05,200
Speaker 1: to know where the ladies are. And it turns out that, uh,

195
00:12:05,240 --> 00:12:08,199
Speaker 1: no surprise, women were basically at home. But even though

196
00:12:08,200 --> 00:12:10,160
Speaker 1: a lot of them were cooking at home from the

197
00:12:10,360 --> 00:12:14,280
Speaker 1: seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries were a very very long time.

198
00:12:14,720 --> 00:12:18,920
Speaker 1: That didn't mean they weren't necessarily making money off of it.

199
00:12:19,080 --> 00:12:23,200
Speaker 1: Some women would be caterers or confectioners, and as early

200
00:12:23,320 --> 00:12:27,240
Speaker 1: as the seventeenth century in England, women were instructing other

201
00:12:27,320 --> 00:12:30,360
Speaker 1: women in the art of baking, talk about a very

202
00:12:30,480 --> 00:12:33,360
Speaker 1: gendered culinary craft, so that they could earn a little

203
00:12:33,360 --> 00:12:36,880
Speaker 1: pocket change as well. Yeah, and they sometimes ran small

204
00:12:36,880 --> 00:12:40,040
Speaker 1: shops selling their own preserves and candies and ba goods,

205
00:12:40,200 --> 00:12:44,520
Speaker 1: and sometimes ran simple baking and catering operations out of

206
00:12:44,520 --> 00:12:47,280
Speaker 1: their home. And I think that it's an interesting side

207
00:12:47,320 --> 00:12:51,439
Speaker 1: note that in eighteenth century America, when you start to

208
00:12:51,480 --> 00:12:54,480
Speaker 1: see a couple of different types of cooking schools emerging,

209
00:12:55,160 --> 00:12:59,160
Speaker 1: you get the first public pastry lessons from a woman,

210
00:12:59,520 --> 00:13:02,680
Speaker 1: and this is Elizabeth Goodfellow, who opened her own pastry

211
00:13:02,679 --> 00:13:07,240
Speaker 1: shop in Philadelphia and eight and that's America's first cooking school.

212
00:13:07,280 --> 00:13:09,959
Speaker 1: Which that's not this episode. We're not talking about cooking schools.

213
00:13:09,960 --> 00:13:12,560
Speaker 1: But I do think it's interesting that so women have

214
00:13:12,640 --> 00:13:14,960
Speaker 1: always been cooking at home, except you know, in ancient Rome,

215
00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:17,079
Speaker 1: where it was the job of a team of slaves

216
00:13:17,200 --> 00:13:19,880
Speaker 1: and not the woman of the house. But it's always

217
00:13:19,920 --> 00:13:23,679
Speaker 1: traditionally been woman, the woman's role to cook for the family.

218
00:13:24,240 --> 00:13:27,160
Speaker 1: But here when it comes time to leave the house

219
00:13:27,240 --> 00:13:31,839
Speaker 1: and make an income, women are basically limited to this

220
00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:34,760
Speaker 1: baking realm. Baking realm, I mean, and the I think

221
00:13:34,760 --> 00:13:37,839
Speaker 1: it's notable too that we have it acceptable for them

222
00:13:37,840 --> 00:13:41,079
Speaker 1: being in the instructional role as well, which is still

223
00:13:41,120 --> 00:13:44,960
Speaker 1: distinct from being in the professional kitchen cooking for quote

224
00:13:45,040 --> 00:13:47,160
Speaker 1: unquote important mouths. I don't know why I put that

225
00:13:47,200 --> 00:13:51,000
Speaker 1: in quotes because those are just my own words. Um,

226
00:13:51,400 --> 00:13:54,480
Speaker 1: And that's something though. That instructional angle is something that

227
00:13:54,559 --> 00:13:59,040
Speaker 1: we'll talk about also in our Celebrity Slash TV Chef

228
00:13:59,080 --> 00:14:02,439
Speaker 1: episode meng Up next. But like you said, this whole

229
00:14:02,960 --> 00:14:07,480
Speaker 1: women as baker's trend never really stops. Even if we

230
00:14:07,559 --> 00:14:11,320
Speaker 1: look at the James Beard Awards for pastry in the

231
00:14:11,360 --> 00:14:15,480
Speaker 1: past ten years, seven women have taken it home while

232
00:14:15,520 --> 00:14:17,120
Speaker 1: three men have taken it home. And then there was

233
00:14:17,200 --> 00:14:20,560
Speaker 1: one husband and wife couple, which I thought was so precious.

234
00:14:20,600 --> 00:14:23,400
Speaker 1: And women, though still make up a large majority of

235
00:14:23,520 --> 00:14:27,800
Speaker 1: culinary school pastry program and roll ees. It's the most

236
00:14:27,800 --> 00:14:32,920
Speaker 1: acceptable culinary course for women even today because ladies love baking, right,

237
00:14:32,920 --> 00:14:36,040
Speaker 1: we have these little delicate fingers that can make those

238
00:14:36,080 --> 00:14:40,160
Speaker 1: intricate suites. Yeah, it's basically the industrial Revolution for food,

239
00:14:40,280 --> 00:14:44,680
Speaker 1: with tiny child fingers making making cakes. And it is

240
00:14:44,680 --> 00:14:47,240
Speaker 1: that exactness that a lot of people site as a

241
00:14:47,360 --> 00:14:50,720
Speaker 1: reason for being attracted to baking. And it's interesting to

242
00:14:51,520 --> 00:14:55,360
Speaker 1: read interviews with people who are pastry chefs and bakers

243
00:14:55,360 --> 00:14:57,840
Speaker 1: and things like that, because they all they echo these

244
00:14:57,920 --> 00:15:03,880
Speaker 1: gendered ideas. Uh. Jersey Monthly talked to pastry chef Melissa Walknock,

245
00:15:03,920 --> 00:15:07,520
Speaker 1: and she says, um, she loves the precision and science

246
00:15:07,600 --> 00:15:09,320
Speaker 1: of it. She says, if something goes wrong, I can

247
00:15:09,360 --> 00:15:11,440
Speaker 1: backtrack and figure it out. And I've always been drawn

248
00:15:11,480 --> 00:15:15,080
Speaker 1: to the artistic element of pastry. A regular chef not

249
00:15:15,200 --> 00:15:17,480
Speaker 1: to demean what they do. They take a piece of

250
00:15:17,560 --> 00:15:20,040
Speaker 1: raw meat and cook it. I'm making a whole new

251
00:15:20,120 --> 00:15:24,760
Speaker 1: creation from scratch. Perhaps, she says, females have more patients,

252
00:15:25,320 --> 00:15:29,880
Speaker 1: enjoy working on intricate things, and are more organized, whereas

253
00:15:29,960 --> 00:15:32,520
Speaker 1: she says, guys take a monstrous animal like a three

254
00:15:32,840 --> 00:15:35,760
Speaker 1: pound pig and break it down. It brings out their manliness,

255
00:15:35,800 --> 00:15:40,600
Speaker 1: I guess. And Walknock also notes that the pastry departments

256
00:15:40,720 --> 00:15:44,360
Speaker 1: in the super fancy restaurants where she's worked are all guys.

257
00:15:44,440 --> 00:15:46,960
Speaker 1: So even though she says that, yeah, there's this total

258
00:15:47,040 --> 00:15:50,480
Speaker 1: gender division, like women maybe are more drawn to pastry

259
00:15:50,480 --> 00:15:53,920
Speaker 1: and men are more drawn to classic cheffery. Uh, even

260
00:15:53,920 --> 00:15:56,680
Speaker 1: when you get up in those higher echelons, it's still

261
00:15:57,200 --> 00:16:00,280
Speaker 1: dude driven and which is something kind of echoed in

262
00:16:00,440 --> 00:16:04,720
Speaker 1: our teaching podcast where it's like the higher up the

263
00:16:04,800 --> 00:16:07,400
Speaker 1: rank of what we consider a feminized profession you go,

264
00:16:08,080 --> 00:16:10,520
Speaker 1: you do tend to see more guys at the top.

265
00:16:10,640 --> 00:16:13,680
Speaker 1: But she also wasn't the only pastry chef that New

266
00:16:13,760 --> 00:16:19,320
Speaker 1: Jersey Monthly talked to who mentioned just like this assumption that, oh, yeah,

267
00:16:19,360 --> 00:16:23,800
Speaker 1: women are just innately drawn to pastry. One person said, yeah,

268
00:16:23,840 --> 00:16:29,000
Speaker 1: there's just you know, less testosterone involved in making pastry.

269
00:16:29,040 --> 00:16:31,880
Speaker 1: But perhaps it's not so much hormones attracting women to

270
00:16:31,920 --> 00:16:36,320
Speaker 1: pastry chefing as earlier and more regular hours. That was

271
00:16:36,360 --> 00:16:42,000
Speaker 1: something that the New Jersey Monthly reporter mentioned that pretty

272
00:16:42,080 --> 00:16:44,680
Speaker 1: much every woman they talked to sided in terms of

273
00:16:45,160 --> 00:16:49,200
Speaker 1: it just being something that they could do and also

274
00:16:49,560 --> 00:16:52,640
Speaker 1: have a family. Yeah, one woman they interviewed said that

275
00:16:52,720 --> 00:16:56,000
Speaker 1: I'm the pastry chef so I have my kids at night.

276
00:16:56,120 --> 00:16:59,720
Speaker 1: My husband's the classic chef and the restaurant he works nights,

277
00:16:59,760 --> 00:17:01,840
Speaker 1: and how the kids in the morning. Yeah. Oh, and

278
00:17:02,200 --> 00:17:05,320
Speaker 1: they also noted like cooler temperatures in the kitchen. It's

279
00:17:05,359 --> 00:17:07,520
Speaker 1: just let you go in at like six am, five

280
00:17:07,600 --> 00:17:11,760
Speaker 1: am and it's a quieter, it's cooler, and then you

281
00:17:11,840 --> 00:17:15,640
Speaker 1: leave probably when things are really heating up for dinner service. Well,

282
00:17:15,680 --> 00:17:18,320
Speaker 1: and that that can sound a little flip, but I mean,

283
00:17:18,520 --> 00:17:21,440
Speaker 1: we'll we'll touch on some issues, some more issues later

284
00:17:21,480 --> 00:17:25,959
Speaker 1: in the podcast about why women might feel unwelcome in

285
00:17:26,440 --> 00:17:30,960
Speaker 1: a kitchen if they're not a pastry chef but sweets aside.

286
00:17:31,280 --> 00:17:35,840
Speaker 1: If we go back to our women in restaurants timeline,

287
00:17:36,040 --> 00:17:40,000
Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century, there there weren't restaurants run

288
00:17:40,040 --> 00:17:44,120
Speaker 1: by women, but rather tea rooms and cafeterias which were

289
00:17:44,119 --> 00:17:48,200
Speaker 1: considered appropriate for women, that women usually staffed in terms

290
00:17:48,240 --> 00:17:51,320
Speaker 1: of like top down, every single position. Yeah. This is

291
00:17:51,359 --> 00:17:53,760
Speaker 1: coming from Jan Whittaker in an article for the Boston

292
00:17:53,840 --> 00:17:56,800
Speaker 1: Hospitality Review. I thought it was really interesting that it's

293
00:17:56,800 --> 00:18:01,320
Speaker 1: not that these things were these places were literally only

294
00:18:01,400 --> 00:18:03,600
Speaker 1: for women, but it had a lot more to do.

295
00:18:03,680 --> 00:18:06,919
Speaker 1: She wrote, with the fact that men didn't want to

296
00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:11,280
Speaker 1: eat at a feminine woman's staffed establishment, especially somewhere like

297
00:18:11,280 --> 00:18:14,800
Speaker 1: a cafeteria where it's like it's run by women and

298
00:18:14,880 --> 00:18:16,639
Speaker 1: I have to pick up my own tray of food,

299
00:18:16,960 --> 00:18:19,480
Speaker 1: Like this is ridiculous, This is not what a restaurant

300
00:18:19,520 --> 00:18:22,080
Speaker 1: is um And I thought it was interesting too that

301
00:18:22,160 --> 00:18:25,120
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta we've got Mary Max tea Room and

302
00:18:25,280 --> 00:18:27,960
Speaker 1: it wasn't started in the early twentieth century, was started

303
00:18:27,960 --> 00:18:31,240
Speaker 1: in the forties. It's one of Atlanta's only remaining tea rooms.

304
00:18:32,160 --> 00:18:34,119
Speaker 1: But it was started by a woman. And in the

305
00:18:34,200 --> 00:18:37,080
Speaker 1: history of the restaurant on the website, it talks about

306
00:18:37,119 --> 00:18:39,040
Speaker 1: how well, you know, a woman couldn't just walk in

307
00:18:39,080 --> 00:18:42,280
Speaker 1: and start a restaurant, so the owner started it as

308
00:18:42,280 --> 00:18:45,480
Speaker 1: a tea room. So when then did we get the

309
00:18:45,520 --> 00:18:51,680
Speaker 1: first professional chef who was a woman in a restaurant.

310
00:18:52,440 --> 00:18:54,399
Speaker 1: I don't know that she was necessarily the first, but

311
00:18:54,440 --> 00:18:59,240
Speaker 1: she was certainly the first famous one. In World War One,

312
00:18:59,720 --> 00:19:03,320
Speaker 1: we have an Attack Meyer who was appointed as chef

313
00:19:03,320 --> 00:19:07,960
Speaker 1: at E. M. Statler's Hotel Pennsylvania. Yeah, and this is

314
00:19:08,000 --> 00:19:10,040
Speaker 1: all A bunch of this information is also coming from

315
00:19:10,200 --> 00:19:14,720
Speaker 1: Jan Whittaker, but also a fabulous nineteen profile of tack

316
00:19:14,800 --> 00:19:19,560
Speaker 1: Meyer and Woman's Home Companion. Uh So, tack Meyer got

317
00:19:19,560 --> 00:19:22,640
Speaker 1: her start making sandwiches and other lunch goodies to sell

318
00:19:22,680 --> 00:19:25,320
Speaker 1: to employees at the Public Library on Fifth Avenue in

319
00:19:25,359 --> 00:19:27,200
Speaker 1: New York, and they liked her so much and liked

320
00:19:27,200 --> 00:19:29,480
Speaker 1: her food so much that they ended up giving her

321
00:19:29,520 --> 00:19:33,159
Speaker 1: a space for a lunch room. She switched things up

322
00:19:33,160 --> 00:19:35,600
Speaker 1: a little bit by working as a traveling saleswoman for

323
00:19:35,640 --> 00:19:40,120
Speaker 1: the General Chemical Company, but she apparently took this opportunity

324
00:19:40,200 --> 00:19:42,040
Speaker 1: in all of her travels of staying at hotels to

325
00:19:42,119 --> 00:19:46,080
Speaker 1: note how bland and boring much hotel food was, and

326
00:19:46,119 --> 00:19:49,680
Speaker 1: so she she basically approached E. M. Statler and told him,

327
00:19:49,720 --> 00:19:53,040
Speaker 1: what's what? Like, dude, you're cooking is like so dull.

328
00:19:53,760 --> 00:19:57,439
Speaker 1: So he ends up hiring her for his hotel. But

329
00:19:58,119 --> 00:20:03,199
Speaker 1: it's a separate woman only home cooking kitchen, as is

330
00:20:03,240 --> 00:20:09,280
Speaker 1: appropriate and should be, Caroline um So. In that Women's

331
00:20:09,320 --> 00:20:13,320
Speaker 1: Home Companion profile, though, it raves that tack Meyer has

332
00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:16,280
Speaker 1: quote pointed the way to a new field of woman's

333
00:20:16,400 --> 00:20:21,119
Speaker 1: endeavor and one which women can make peculiarly their own.

334
00:20:21,520 --> 00:20:23,639
Speaker 1: And the whole angle of it was like, well, you know,

335
00:20:23,640 --> 00:20:25,719
Speaker 1: what I'm just I'm just doing this home cooking. We're

336
00:20:25,720 --> 00:20:29,639
Speaker 1: gonna make lots of fried chicken and gravy and offer

337
00:20:29,800 --> 00:20:32,560
Speaker 1: weary travelers a kind of food that their wife might

338
00:20:32,560 --> 00:20:36,440
Speaker 1: be serving them at home instead. So we still have

339
00:20:37,200 --> 00:20:46,080
Speaker 1: that woman as nurturer, you know, replacing like the domestic role. Yeah,

340
00:20:46,160 --> 00:20:49,200
Speaker 1: and as um Whittaker points out, this ties in with

341
00:20:49,240 --> 00:20:52,640
Speaker 1: both tea rooms and cafeterias, and with tack Meyer's role

342
00:20:52,760 --> 00:20:56,520
Speaker 1: that for most of the twentieth century, she writes, women's

343
00:20:56,560 --> 00:21:01,040
Speaker 1: cooking was directly related to what was going on at home.

344
00:21:01,119 --> 00:21:04,000
Speaker 1: Women weren't coming in and taking apart those three hundred

345
00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:07,920
Speaker 1: pound pigs and cooking massive dinners of meat and potatoes

346
00:21:07,960 --> 00:21:10,679
Speaker 1: for an entire hotel of guests. There was just a

347
00:21:10,680 --> 00:21:15,080
Speaker 1: lot of boiling, baking, pan frying, and stewing, because, as

348
00:21:15,600 --> 00:21:19,240
Speaker 1: Whitaker says, the drama of big knives and high flames

349
00:21:19,320 --> 00:21:21,880
Speaker 1: was absent. A kitchen run by a woman was likely

350
00:21:21,880 --> 00:21:24,919
Speaker 1: to be staffed by women also, as men disliked taking

351
00:21:25,080 --> 00:21:28,520
Speaker 1: orders from the opposite sex, and they even asked in

352
00:21:28,600 --> 00:21:33,120
Speaker 1: this profile, this woman's companion profile. They asked Tackmeyer what

353
00:21:33,880 --> 00:21:36,000
Speaker 1: the male chefs thought of her, which I thought was

354
00:21:36,000 --> 00:21:38,560
Speaker 1: great because I was like, this is exactly what would

355
00:21:38,560 --> 00:21:42,840
Speaker 1: be asked in an interview in what do your male

356
00:21:43,000 --> 00:21:46,399
Speaker 1: colleagues think of you? And apparently she gave the reporter

357
00:21:46,520 --> 00:21:50,000
Speaker 1: a knowing smile and said, they have nothing to say,

358
00:21:50,040 --> 00:21:52,200
Speaker 1: but I know that they are keeping up a powerful

359
00:21:52,280 --> 00:21:55,159
Speaker 1: lot of thinking. We do not attempt to compete with

360
00:21:55,200 --> 00:21:57,640
Speaker 1: them in any way. We were specializing in a sort

361
00:21:57,680 --> 00:22:00,200
Speaker 1: of cooking which they do not do. I'm or that

362
00:22:00,240 --> 00:22:02,040
Speaker 1: when they get used to us, they'll see the matter

363
00:22:02,080 --> 00:22:05,320
Speaker 1: in the right light. And she she made it made

364
00:22:05,320 --> 00:22:07,119
Speaker 1: it a point to emphasize like, we're not trying to

365
00:22:07,119 --> 00:22:10,040
Speaker 1: compete with the men. We're not taking their jobs. We're

366
00:22:10,080 --> 00:22:13,320
Speaker 1: not doing any sort of man cooking. We're doing very

367
00:22:13,400 --> 00:22:18,000
Speaker 1: specific home cooking. And so that Woman's Companion piece encourages

368
00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:22,480
Speaker 1: women like, look, you two can maybe run your own

369
00:22:23,200 --> 00:22:28,160
Speaker 1: segregated woman's gravy cooking kitchen one day if you're lucky.

370
00:22:28,400 --> 00:22:33,040
Speaker 1: Listen and all ladies, gravy kitchen sounds amazing to me.

371
00:22:33,200 --> 00:22:34,720
Speaker 1: I'm going to open a bar and name it that

372
00:22:35,119 --> 00:22:37,640
Speaker 1: gravy kitchen, as long as there's like a little nap

373
00:22:37,720 --> 00:22:40,159
Speaker 1: room in the side, because gravy just sounds like a

374
00:22:40,200 --> 00:22:43,639
Speaker 1: real recipe for sleepy time. But if we fast forward

375
00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:48,800
Speaker 1: to ninety three, hotels reported that they had female chefs,

376
00:22:49,400 --> 00:22:52,960
Speaker 1: but that number didn't really last. It wasn't like the

377
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:55,560
Speaker 1: trajectory just went up, up, up, and now we have

378
00:22:55,840 --> 00:22:59,159
Speaker 1: parody in the kitchen. No, if we look at the

379
00:22:59,200 --> 00:23:03,880
Speaker 1: modern lady chef landscape today, we're still asking the same

380
00:23:03,960 --> 00:23:06,600
Speaker 1: questions that tack Meyer would have been asked in the

381
00:23:06,680 --> 00:23:09,200
Speaker 1: World War One era. And we're going to talk about

382
00:23:09,200 --> 00:23:24,040
Speaker 1: that when we come right back from a quick break. So,

383
00:23:24,160 --> 00:23:26,960
Speaker 1: like Christian was saying before the break, the lady chef

384
00:23:27,040 --> 00:23:32,879
Speaker 1: landscape today is really not that much better. According to Bloomberg,

385
00:23:34,440 --> 00:23:38,480
Speaker 1: there are more women's CEOs than there are head chefs.

386
00:23:38,520 --> 00:23:41,240
Speaker 1: What is going on? First, let's look at a couple

387
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:45,320
Speaker 1: of numbers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fifty

388
00:23:45,359 --> 00:23:48,040
Speaker 1: four point seven percent of food prep and serving related

389
00:23:48,040 --> 00:23:51,879
Speaker 1: occupations are filled by women, but that drops to for

390
00:23:52,040 --> 00:23:56,080
Speaker 1: chefs and head cooks, which itself ladies and gentlemen. Is

391
00:23:56,200 --> 00:23:58,800
Speaker 1: down from the two thousand six pre recession number of

392
00:23:58,800 --> 00:24:01,040
Speaker 1: twenty three point nine. So if we back up, though,

393
00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:06,080
Speaker 1: and look at cooking school, what's going on? Um, of

394
00:24:06,119 --> 00:24:12,040
Speaker 1: International Culinary Center Classic i e. Non pastry graduates are women.

395
00:24:12,119 --> 00:24:14,679
Speaker 1: So that's a healthy percentage, I mean, but it's still again,

396
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:18,959
Speaker 1: we have more men pursuing culinary arts than women. Uh

397
00:24:19,359 --> 00:24:22,639
Speaker 1: even fewer enrolled in the New York Culinary Institute of

398
00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 1: America's Culinary Arts Associate program, thirty of them being women.

399
00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:31,720
Speaker 1: In then, if you look at Johnson and Wales, female

400
00:24:31,760 --> 00:24:35,880
Speaker 1: graduates actually doubled from ninety two to two thousand twelve

401
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:39,760
Speaker 1: UM and there were two more women than men who

402
00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:43,720
Speaker 1: graduated in that year. And so we're starting to see

403
00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:46,760
Speaker 1: at least more women filling the second and third tier

404
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:51,280
Speaker 1: jobs like sush chef. But breaking that culinary ceiling and

405
00:24:51,320 --> 00:24:54,399
Speaker 1: getting getting that head chef hat on, because I'm just

406
00:24:54,480 --> 00:24:57,560
Speaker 1: imagining that once you are promoted to chef, they give

407
00:24:57,560 --> 00:25:00,800
Speaker 1: you a really fancy chef hat. That's still a big

408
00:25:00,920 --> 00:25:03,680
Speaker 1: question mark. I think that's a thing though, Like your

409
00:25:03,680 --> 00:25:06,639
Speaker 1: hat does designate who you are the height of it.

410
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 1: I mean, I would if I make it to chef,

411
00:25:08,880 --> 00:25:11,359
Speaker 1: I would want to really really like a ten gallon

412
00:25:11,440 --> 00:25:14,159
Speaker 1: chef hat. Yeah. I started to accidentally off ramp in

413
00:25:14,200 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 1: the research of this because I started reading about the

414
00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 1: hats and what they mean, and it's all a bunch

415
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:24,160
Speaker 1: of like mythology. Who e It's nobody can really pinpoint when,

416
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 1: where and why all of these hat traditions originated. I

417
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:29,960
Speaker 1: bet there are stuff I ever told you listeners to

418
00:25:30,040 --> 00:25:32,959
Speaker 1: who can give us chef hat insight. I bet. But

419
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:35,359
Speaker 1: you know, anytime I'm at a restaurant and I see

420
00:25:35,359 --> 00:25:37,040
Speaker 1: a chef come out of the kitchen with a big

421
00:25:37,240 --> 00:25:39,399
Speaker 1: top on his head, I'm always like, how do you

422
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:41,639
Speaker 1: keep that in your head? It's not win resistant. Maybe

423
00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:44,439
Speaker 1: do they have like a chintz strap, maybe like a

424
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:47,399
Speaker 1: marching band hat that they should and also they should

425
00:25:47,400 --> 00:25:50,199
Speaker 1: play marching band instruments or they should just wear marching

426
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:55,240
Speaker 1: band hats. Well, yeah, we are really solving a lot

427
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:59,160
Speaker 1: of problems. We're solving all the problems. But looking at

428
00:25:59,200 --> 00:26:04,360
Speaker 1: all of the relatively positive culinary school stats, it led

429
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 1: me to wonder if there's just a leaky pipeline like

430
00:26:06,720 --> 00:26:09,600
Speaker 1: there is any time we talk about STEM women in

431
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:13,719
Speaker 1: pursuing science, technology, engineering, and math careers. And the answer

432
00:26:13,760 --> 00:26:18,240
Speaker 1: is basically, yeah, it's not that women are dropping out

433
00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:21,040
Speaker 1: of culinary school. There are plenty of women who are going.

434
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:23,800
Speaker 1: There are more women than ever who are pursuing these careers.

435
00:26:24,000 --> 00:26:27,199
Speaker 1: But so, what then is stuck in the pipe that

436
00:26:27,320 --> 00:26:31,320
Speaker 1: is making women sort of fall back instead of pursue

437
00:26:31,359 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 1: a longer career in chefery. Well, some people think that

438
00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:36,879
Speaker 1: women just don't want the job. They don't want to

439
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:40,640
Speaker 1: have to pursue and go through all of the trouble,

440
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:42,880
Speaker 1: the literal kitchen trouble that you have to go through

441
00:26:42,960 --> 00:26:47,760
Speaker 1: to prove yourself in order to achieve the rank of chef.

442
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:50,640
Speaker 1: And this is something that Katie Grieko, who is head

443
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:55,600
Speaker 1: of human Resources at Craft Group and Craft for Top

444
00:26:55,720 --> 00:27:01,160
Speaker 1: Chef Fans is Tom Calichio's group. She's quote, there just

445
00:27:01,280 --> 00:27:04,120
Speaker 1: aren't as many women who want to do the jobs

446
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:07,400
Speaker 1: as men, and I think that executive chefing might be

447
00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:10,399
Speaker 1: one of them. So are like, why why wouldn't women

448
00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:14,880
Speaker 1: aspire to these kinds of jobs? Oh? Yeah, babies, Family,

449
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: The whole structure of working in a professional kitchen, especially

450
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:21,280
Speaker 1: if you are a chef, that means that you are

451
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,760
Speaker 1: working at night and really like all day. It doesn't

452
00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:27,920
Speaker 1: really leave much time at all if you want to

453
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:30,840
Speaker 1: be a parent as well. Yeah, and this is something

454
00:27:30,880 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 1: that Mary Blair Lloyd in her book calls the Family

455
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:41,040
Speaker 1: Devotion Schema. Basically, they're more societal expectations on women to

456
00:27:41,800 --> 00:27:44,240
Speaker 1: have a family raised that family, be home with a

457
00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:47,880
Speaker 1: family and rather than dedicating themselves to high power, high

458
00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:51,560
Speaker 1: stress careers that take them away from the home. Um.

459
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:55,160
Speaker 1: So yeah. Within within the restaurant industry, of course, it's

460
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:58,200
Speaker 1: not surprising that maternity and paternity leave are super rare.

461
00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:03,440
Speaker 1: Those long hour end up really requiring creative childcare options.

462
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:05,639
Speaker 1: Like that couple we mentioned earlier where the wife is

463
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 1: the pastry chef, she works early hours, the husband is

464
00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:11,480
Speaker 1: the classic chef, he works at night. They basically switch off.

465
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:13,720
Speaker 1: I wonder when they see each other. Now I'm worried

466
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:15,679
Speaker 1: about this couple that I don't know. I thought the

467
00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:18,000
Speaker 1: same thing Caroline when I was reading about them, Like,

468
00:28:18,200 --> 00:28:21,320
Speaker 1: but where's their couple times they have date nights? What

469
00:28:21,400 --> 00:28:24,920
Speaker 1: if they're one night off a week doesn't overlap? Um?

470
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 1: But so any who? Uh? The Delightful chef Jean George

471
00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:33,080
Speaker 1: von Richton, who runs twenty four restaurants in North America,

472
00:28:33,880 --> 00:28:37,119
Speaker 1: basically laid it out that Hey, by the time that

473
00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 1: it becomes Sioux Chefs and they're hitting almost thirty, they

474
00:28:40,560 --> 00:28:43,120
Speaker 1: want to have a family and it changes everything. He says,

475
00:28:43,160 --> 00:28:46,800
Speaker 1: the ticking clock makes a difference. Thanks Jean George for

476
00:28:46,880 --> 00:28:49,520
Speaker 1: your perspective. Well, we should also note though, to Carolina.

477
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:53,560
Speaker 1: In the same interview, Jean George commented that his sole

478
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:56,840
Speaker 1: female Sux chef is just she's very talented. Yes, yes,

479
00:28:57,000 --> 00:28:59,320
Speaker 1: but she's also so attractive she should be a model instead.

480
00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:02,280
Speaker 1: Ha ha ha. Well, I'm glad he has so many opinions. Well,

481
00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 1: and in that interview too, was cited in a number

482
00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:11,440
Speaker 1: of our sources we were reading as a snapshot of

483
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 1: sexism in professional kitchens. Well, and people might be wondering, well,

484
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:19,160
Speaker 1: where's the sexism in in women, you know, wanting to

485
00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 1: have children at or whatever. And it's like, well, no, no, no, no,

486
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 1: that's not sexist. You can want to have kids whenever,

487
00:29:25,560 --> 00:29:28,200
Speaker 1: never want them to happen at all. It's more of

488
00:29:28,280 --> 00:29:32,280
Speaker 1: the assumption from people like this guy that oh, well

489
00:29:32,360 --> 00:29:34,480
Speaker 1: you're just gonna leave, you're gonna I'm gonna hire you

490
00:29:34,480 --> 00:29:36,280
Speaker 1: as a Sioux chef, but you're never going to really

491
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:38,080
Speaker 1: rise up the ranks because you're gonna want to start

492
00:29:38,080 --> 00:29:41,560
Speaker 1: popping out babies. And he even continued on in his

493
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:44,160
Speaker 1: thought to say something like women just want more of

494
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:51,880
Speaker 1: a life. No, yeah, I mean no, George Um. Nicole Brisson,

495
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:57,320
Speaker 1: who's the executive chef at Mario Batali's Las Vegas restaurant, UM,

496
00:29:57,520 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 1: has talked about how she often works nineteen hour days.

497
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:04,080
Speaker 1: She's so tired of people assuming that she's the pastry

498
00:30:04,120 --> 00:30:08,560
Speaker 1: chef because gender again, and said that if she ever

499
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:11,880
Speaker 1: wanted to have kids, she'd probably have to quit her job. Yeah,

500
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:15,239
Speaker 1: because if you don't have the type of partner at

501
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:18,080
Speaker 1: home who can fill in that gap, or you don't

502
00:30:18,080 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 1: have those child care options, no matter who you are,

503
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:22,640
Speaker 1: that's gonna make you, know, man or woman, that's gonna

504
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:25,000
Speaker 1: make having kids and having a family pretty pretty tough.

505
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:28,920
Speaker 1: Not to mention, the money for the hours you work

506
00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:31,760
Speaker 1: is not great, and this is also coming from the

507
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:36,120
Speaker 1: Beer of Labor statistics. The average for US chefs and

508
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:40,400
Speaker 1: head cooks in general is just over forty six thousand,

509
00:30:40,840 --> 00:30:45,800
Speaker 1: five hundred a year, but women's median income is eighty

510
00:30:45,840 --> 00:30:48,560
Speaker 1: three and a half percent that of men's. But the

511
00:30:48,560 --> 00:30:50,960
Speaker 1: thing is, when you think about that, it gets even

512
00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:54,160
Speaker 1: worse because so restaurant industry jobs are already pretty tough,

513
00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 1: but women are concentrated at the lower ends. So when

514
00:30:58,120 --> 00:31:01,960
Speaker 1: people talk about why does women's representation at higher rungs

515
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:04,880
Speaker 1: of their industries matter, it's things like this, This is where,

516
00:31:04,920 --> 00:31:07,000
Speaker 1: if this is your passion, this is where you make

517
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:10,120
Speaker 1: the most money. But not as many women are rising

518
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:12,959
Speaker 1: through those ranks as men are cracking that culinary ceiling.

519
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:17,120
Speaker 1: But also when they do, they're still making slightly less. Yeah,

520
00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:21,800
Speaker 1: and not to mention the scarce health benefits or insurance vacations,

521
00:31:21,840 --> 00:31:24,960
Speaker 1: sick time, et cetera. I mean this, this puts our

522
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:28,920
Speaker 1: maternity leave episode UM in a different light where it's

523
00:31:28,960 --> 00:31:31,800
Speaker 1: just like it just seems impossible. You know, you are

524
00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 1: either going to be a chef and that is it,

525
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:38,640
Speaker 1: or you're going to be something else. You figure out

526
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:40,640
Speaker 1: another way to make it work and try to have

527
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:43,800
Speaker 1: a life around that UM. And if you want to

528
00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:45,400
Speaker 1: be a chef, if you really want to try to

529
00:31:45,560 --> 00:31:48,880
Speaker 1: bust through that culinary ceiling, then there's a very good

530
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:51,200
Speaker 1: chance that you're going to have to deal with some

531
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:55,600
Speaker 1: hostility in general and possibly sexual harassment. This is something

532
00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:59,800
Speaker 1: that a lot of women in very important kitchens around

533
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 1: the world have talked about, and some women who don't

534
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:05,920
Speaker 1: want to talk about it at all. There was an

535
00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:10,640
Speaker 1: interview in Fortune magazine with a chef whose name I'm

536
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:13,440
Speaker 1: forgetting at the moment. She um at the time though,

537
00:32:13,920 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 1: was became the third woman in the US to receive

538
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:21,080
Speaker 1: two Michelin stars, and the interviewer asked her if she

539
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:24,920
Speaker 1: had ever experienced sexual harassment, and she said, well, of

540
00:32:24,960 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 1: course I have, but I don't want to talk about it. Yeah,

541
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 1: and and it's something that dep Tran, who's the chef

542
00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 1: owner of The Good Girl Dinette in Los Angeles, talked

543
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 1: about that she basically did not let stuff like that

544
00:32:40,360 --> 00:32:43,720
Speaker 1: dissuade her, but she says that she has watched other

545
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:47,480
Speaker 1: women stay away because of it, which she says, quote,

546
00:32:47,520 --> 00:32:51,000
Speaker 1: they shouldn't have to do, that these are unacceptable conditions,

547
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:54,120
Speaker 1: and that she makes sure that in her restaurant, uh,

548
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:57,000
Speaker 1: people are outright fired if they won't cut out the

549
00:32:57,280 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 1: Not only is sexual harassment behavior, but really any sort

550
00:33:00,960 --> 00:33:05,880
Speaker 1: of racist, sexist, any type of phobic behavioral language. She

551
00:33:05,920 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 1: just doesn't tolerate it. Well, I wonder if that generally

552
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:12,840
Speaker 1: hostile which someone just called macho environment and a lot

553
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:16,440
Speaker 1: of these kitchens goes back to a scophier and the

554
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:22,160
Speaker 1: militarization of the kitchen hierarchy and the entire way that

555
00:33:22,320 --> 00:33:25,600
Speaker 1: kitchens are run. And I'm also thinking about just watching

556
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:29,640
Speaker 1: episodes of Gordon Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen where he's just screaming

557
00:33:29,680 --> 00:33:32,239
Speaker 1: at people and the assumption that if you are going

558
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:34,360
Speaker 1: to work in a kitchen, then you need to be

559
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:38,960
Speaker 1: ready to be cursed that continually and hear all sorts

560
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:41,800
Speaker 1: of awful things and to just be sweating constantly. I mean,

561
00:33:41,800 --> 00:33:46,040
Speaker 1: it just seems like a very unpleasant place. I mean,

562
00:33:46,040 --> 00:33:48,120
Speaker 1: but that just makes me think of so many other

563
00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 1: career type topics that you and I have talked about

564
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:53,640
Speaker 1: where it's like, it doesn't have to be like that.

565
00:33:53,800 --> 00:33:56,600
Speaker 1: You know, people are like, well, women can't stand the pressure,

566
00:33:57,120 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 1: so they just shouldn't even bother. You know, women obviously

567
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 1: aren't cut out for this environment because this is the

568
00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 1: environment that kitchens have. And it's like, well, I mean,

569
00:34:05,560 --> 00:34:08,719
Speaker 1: obviously not all kitchens function like that. Obviously there are

570
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:12,839
Speaker 1: restaurant owners who don't tolerate this crap. So why don't

571
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:16,399
Speaker 1: we just agree to change the environment. Yeah, I mean,

572
00:34:16,440 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 1: you can influence the you can build whatever kind of

573
00:34:19,520 --> 00:34:22,279
Speaker 1: workplace culture you probably want to have, even if you

574
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:25,399
Speaker 1: are in a high pressure environment. But I wonder too

575
00:34:25,440 --> 00:34:30,400
Speaker 1: if there's that almost locker room esque resistance embedded within

576
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:34,839
Speaker 1: an institutionalized within this industry to not want that many

577
00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:36,800
Speaker 1: women in the kitchen and certainly not wanting them to

578
00:34:36,840 --> 00:34:39,160
Speaker 1: call the shots, because if you have women in there,

579
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:41,120
Speaker 1: then you're gonna have to watch what you say. You're

580
00:34:41,160 --> 00:34:44,040
Speaker 1: gonna have to watch who you might smack from time

581
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:46,440
Speaker 1: to take the same thing we talked about in our

582
00:34:46,440 --> 00:34:50,680
Speaker 1: pin up episode about like, well, we can't fart in

583
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:53,600
Speaker 1: front of people anymore, we can't have our kel are

584
00:34:53,640 --> 00:34:56,480
Speaker 1: dirty calendars in front of people anymore. What is the

585
00:34:56,520 --> 00:34:59,600
Speaker 1: world coming to? But it's that idea that we need

586
00:34:59,640 --> 00:35:02,000
Speaker 1: to change the people instead of the culture that has

587
00:35:02,040 --> 00:35:03,920
Speaker 1: a lot of women feeling like they have to walk

588
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:07,520
Speaker 1: this fine line in terms of fitting in. Sociologist Debra

589
00:35:07,600 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 1: Harris and Patty Geoffrey, uh we're writing a guest post

590
00:35:10,600 --> 00:35:12,560
Speaker 1: over the Feminist Kitchen, and these are two women whose

591
00:35:12,640 --> 00:35:14,440
Speaker 1: names you'll see a lot when you start reading about

592
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:17,560
Speaker 1: issues of gender and cooking. Um. But they talked about

593
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:21,680
Speaker 1: the fact that the women they have interviewed really report

594
00:35:21,719 --> 00:35:25,200
Speaker 1: this pressure to conform to that macho environment. They end

595
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:29,600
Speaker 1: up feeling like invaders and have to constantly fight against

596
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:33,880
Speaker 1: managers and higher ups ideas that women cannot physically or

597
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:37,960
Speaker 1: emotionally handle higher pressure and higher status jobs. But then

598
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:42,759
Speaker 1: on the flip side, you act to masculine and you'll

599
00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:48,320
Speaker 1: get labeled a bit or someone who is undermining authority.

600
00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:50,640
Speaker 1: So it does become a bit of this catch twenty two.

601
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:53,239
Speaker 1: It seems like, yeah, you've either got to like fit

602
00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:57,759
Speaker 1: into the sexual harassment joking culture basically and be like, yeah,

603
00:35:57,800 --> 00:35:59,840
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make all of these jokes to whether it

604
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:02,600
Speaker 1: makes me uncomfortable or not, or I'm just gonna like

605
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:05,520
Speaker 1: be cut and dry. I'm just gonna give orders, and

606
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:08,080
Speaker 1: when I do, people are gonna, you know, ask me

607
00:36:08,080 --> 00:36:10,160
Speaker 1: where my sense of humor is. Yeah, like have to

608
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:13,880
Speaker 1: desex yourself almost. Um. But as Laura to day Know,

609
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:16,759
Speaker 1: who is a well known chef de cuisine, told The

610
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:20,120
Speaker 1: New York Times, it all depends on the kitchen, she says,

611
00:36:20,120 --> 00:36:24,240
Speaker 1: in a good kitchen, male and female really doesn't matter anymore.

612
00:36:24,320 --> 00:36:27,840
Speaker 1: You get the work done, you handle yourself professionally, because

613
00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:30,880
Speaker 1: kitchens can still be crazy places, and you go home

614
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:33,319
Speaker 1: and a lot of people say that us I've seen

615
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:36,239
Speaker 1: a lot of quotes about like, gender doesn't matter. Male

616
00:36:36,360 --> 00:36:39,000
Speaker 1: versus female doesn't matter. It's your passion for the cooking,

617
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:41,680
Speaker 1: it's your passion for the craft. And yeah, sure, I

618
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:46,080
Speaker 1: agree with that genders shouldn't matter, but it obviously does,

619
00:36:46,200 --> 00:36:49,040
Speaker 1: and it even affects well in a cyclical way. It

620
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:53,640
Speaker 1: affects how women chefs are then covered in the media,

621
00:36:53,719 --> 00:36:58,480
Speaker 1: which then affects the trajectories of a lot of people's careers. Yeah.

622
00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:01,960
Speaker 1: There there's a lot of concern and conversation within the

623
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:07,000
Speaker 1: culinary industry over the ghetto wising of female chefs, of

624
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:12,719
Speaker 1: whether it is useful at this point to spotlight female

625
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:17,239
Speaker 1: chefs and whether that's just again continuing the cycle of oh, look,

626
00:37:17,280 --> 00:37:21,360
Speaker 1: it's a woman who can cook. Yeah, the editors in

627
00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:24,479
Speaker 1: chief of both gourmet and food and Wine magazines who

628
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:28,800
Speaker 1: are both women, basically we're saying no, no way, because

629
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:32,640
Speaker 1: once you start doing those like top women lists, that's

630
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:36,920
Speaker 1: just another way of pointing out differences or emphasizing that

631
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:40,279
Speaker 1: male and female are inherently different. When they're saying no.

632
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:42,920
Speaker 1: Once you're holding the knife, you're holding the knife. It

633
00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:44,840
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. But

634
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:47,359
Speaker 1: then you have the issue of what happened with Time

635
00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:51,360
Speaker 1: magazine a couple of years ago when they put together

636
00:37:51,440 --> 00:37:56,120
Speaker 1: this Gods of Foods spread, you know, showcasing whom they

637
00:37:56,160 --> 00:38:01,120
Speaker 1: selected to be the most influential chefs and toural tastemakers

638
00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:03,600
Speaker 1: in the US, and I don't know, it might have

639
00:38:03,640 --> 00:38:07,640
Speaker 1: also been around the world and people were not too

640
00:38:07,640 --> 00:38:11,840
Speaker 1: pleased with it because the Gods of Food, as God's implies,

641
00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:16,200
Speaker 1: we're all dudes. It was like that Vanity Fair photo

642
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:18,520
Speaker 1: not too long ago that came out where it was

643
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:21,319
Speaker 1: like the new face of late night TV and it

644
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:25,080
Speaker 1: was just all dudes and suits, mostly white dudes. Yeah. Yeah,

645
00:38:25,160 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 1: it was Trevor Noah in that picture. Yes, okay, well

646
00:38:27,600 --> 00:38:30,520
Speaker 1: there we go. There we go, Trevor Noah, diversity, here

647
00:38:30,520 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 1: we go. Um and a lot of people of course

648
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:34,960
Speaker 1: then called for well, if you're going to only feature dudes,

649
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:37,200
Speaker 1: we need to have a Goddesses of Food thing. And

650
00:38:37,200 --> 00:38:40,440
Speaker 1: then that again was like you said, Kristen criticized, is

651
00:38:40,520 --> 00:38:43,680
Speaker 1: just ghetto izing female chefs. It would be like saying, oh, well, yeah,

652
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:47,400
Speaker 1: these are good for girls, like good for them. But

653
00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: Amanda Cohen, who's the chef owner of Dirt Candy, which

654
00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:54,480
Speaker 1: is a vegetarian restaurant, which I was like dirt Candy, vegetables.

655
00:38:54,480 --> 00:38:56,360
Speaker 1: I get it. I know I had the same moment

656
00:38:56,480 --> 00:38:59,239
Speaker 1: at the exact same moment, like dirt Candy. All right,

657
00:39:00,120 --> 00:39:02,919
Speaker 1: she said on Twitter, as long as women are under

658
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 1: recognized by most mainstream awards, they need their own awards

659
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:11,920
Speaker 1: hashtag necessary evil. She went on to blog that press

660
00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:16,600
Speaker 1: gives disproportionate attention to men, which means quote deadline oppressed.

661
00:39:16,680 --> 00:39:20,400
Speaker 1: Nomination committees and food writers focus on just those people,

662
00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:26,040
Speaker 1: creating a cycle of recognition, reward, and fame. Well, speaking

663
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: of Twitter and this whole question, Anthony Bourdain tweeted out

664
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:38,239
Speaker 1: something in response to theteen S Pellegrino Award for World's

665
00:39:38,320 --> 00:39:43,840
Speaker 1: Best Female Chef, whom that year was Italian chef Nadia Santini,

666
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:46,920
Speaker 1: and when it was announced, he tweeted out something along

667
00:39:46,960 --> 00:39:52,560
Speaker 1: the lines of do we seriously need a female chef category?

668
00:39:52,680 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 1: Isn't that kind of demeaning hashtag? Which I really appreciate

669
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:01,319
Speaker 1: that he hashtag that, um and it sparked a lot

670
00:40:01,360 --> 00:40:04,000
Speaker 1: of conversation yet again, but it was also kind of

671
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 1: funny because initially it was a lot of prominent male

672
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:11,560
Speaker 1: chefs like tagging all of their other dude chef friends

673
00:40:11,600 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 1: trying to have this conversation about whether female chef categories

674
00:40:16,040 --> 00:40:20,239
Speaker 1: are helpful or hurtful designations, to which a lot of

675
00:40:20,239 --> 00:40:23,080
Speaker 1: female chefs were like, seriously, this, this, this is it.

676
00:40:23,239 --> 00:40:26,640
Speaker 1: This is what we're talking about, guys. And I mean,

677
00:40:26,920 --> 00:40:29,680
Speaker 1: and it is a good question to raise, Like does

678
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:32,280
Speaker 1: and this has come up in so many of our podcasts,

679
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:37,880
Speaker 1: a question of whether you know female director or female doctor,

680
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:39,359
Speaker 1: which kind of just makes it sound like a kind

681
00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:44,800
Speaker 1: of collegist is progressing anything at all. Yeah, No, I

682
00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 1: absolutely get the idea. I get the gist you need

683
00:40:48,080 --> 00:40:50,320
Speaker 1: to be like, hey, no, seriously, guys, there are women

684
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:52,759
Speaker 1: who are chefs and they're amazing, and they're at these

685
00:40:52,840 --> 00:40:55,280
Speaker 1: wonderful restaurants and you need to go eat their food

686
00:40:55,280 --> 00:40:57,359
Speaker 1: and recognize them and give them awards just the same

687
00:40:57,360 --> 00:40:59,360
Speaker 1: as you do men. And I mean, I think Cohen

688
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:03,720
Speaker 1: was right in saying that, like, hey, some media people

689
00:41:03,719 --> 00:41:05,879
Speaker 1: are not going to dig down deep enough to get

690
00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:09,040
Speaker 1: these names. We need to put them out there. But yeah,

691
00:41:09,120 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 1: it's that, it's that idea of inserting differences between male

692
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:17,920
Speaker 1: and female chefs because, of course, there is no gender

693
00:41:17,920 --> 00:41:20,640
Speaker 1: difference when it comes to how you cook or how

694
00:41:20,719 --> 00:41:24,279
Speaker 1: you taste, although some would say that there is a

695
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:27,399
Speaker 1: difference in how men and women cook at least when

696
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:32,320
Speaker 1: you look at how the media does cover male versus

697
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:37,040
Speaker 1: female chefs, because even when female chefs get great attention,

698
00:41:37,080 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 1: which is critical for their careers. Of course, if you

699
00:41:41,080 --> 00:41:44,880
Speaker 1: look at how men are covered, they're usually given credit

700
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:49,800
Speaker 1: for intellectual and technical work in producing dishes, their masters

701
00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 1: who dominate the food, their rule breakers. I'm thinking of

702
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:57,120
Speaker 1: David Chang and Anthony Bourdain now, um, and they're usually

703
00:41:57,120 --> 00:42:00,120
Speaker 1: seen as these like culinary empire builders, whereas women in

704
00:42:00,760 --> 00:42:04,040
Speaker 1: usually get little mention of technical skill, and they're likelier

705
00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:08,640
Speaker 1: to be praised for being hard workers, following tradition and

706
00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:11,520
Speaker 1: cooking from the heart, you know. They just want to

707
00:42:11,520 --> 00:42:14,399
Speaker 1: feed people. They just want to nourish as women do. Yeah,

708
00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:16,480
Speaker 1: and like we'll talk about in our next episode, they're

709
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:23,760
Speaker 1: frequently portrayed as either mothers or sex objects. So comfort food.

710
00:42:24,200 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 1: But Harris and Jeoffrey, those sociologists mentioned earlier, wrote that

711
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:32,840
Speaker 1: our research on media definitions of great chefs tends to

712
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:36,800
Speaker 1: reaffirm the cooking and career choices made by men, even

713
00:42:36,840 --> 00:42:40,239
Speaker 1: though our interviews with women chefs show that they face stereotypes,

714
00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:43,839
Speaker 1: sometimes even hostility and family demands that make it very

715
00:42:43,880 --> 00:42:46,319
Speaker 1: hard for them to reach the same levels as their

716
00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:49,839
Speaker 1: male colleagues. And so basically looking at art, they looked

717
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:51,799
Speaker 1: at a bunch of articles and how men and women

718
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:55,879
Speaker 1: are written about and how we define success, and it's

719
00:42:55,960 --> 00:43:00,120
Speaker 1: so often from the male point of view talking about

720
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:02,920
Speaker 1: those empires. Why haven't you built an empire yet? How

721
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:06,120
Speaker 1: many restaurants do you own? Where are they? Where As

722
00:43:06,520 --> 00:43:09,600
Speaker 1: women who don't get the same type of media attention

723
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:11,600
Speaker 1: and who then don't end up winning the same types

724
00:43:11,640 --> 00:43:14,480
Speaker 1: of awards, they don't get the same platform that a

725
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:16,600
Speaker 1: lot of these famous mail chefs do in terms of

726
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:19,239
Speaker 1: people even knowing who they are so that they can

727
00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:22,960
Speaker 1: go buy their branded cookwear or watch their television show

728
00:43:23,040 --> 00:43:26,200
Speaker 1: or eat at one of their fifteen restaurants. Well, and

729
00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 1: a couple of examples of how this works if we

730
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:35,600
Speaker 1: look at Lydia Boston. She's the owner of four restaurants

731
00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:37,920
Speaker 1: and a partner in a number of others. She's a

732
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:42,360
Speaker 1: cookbook author, she's a TV host. Um I was personally

733
00:43:42,440 --> 00:43:46,160
Speaker 1: introduced to Lydia, not on PBS as I probably should

734
00:43:46,160 --> 00:43:48,959
Speaker 1: have been, which I believe she got her start TV

735
00:43:49,080 --> 00:43:53,359
Speaker 1: wise on on PPS, but rather as the mother of

736
00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 1: Joe Boston, who was a former Master Chef judge um.

737
00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:03,160
Speaker 1: But because she is an Italian cook, partially because she's

738
00:44:03,160 --> 00:44:05,800
Speaker 1: an Italian cook, I think it also because she's a woman,

739
00:44:05,960 --> 00:44:11,560
Speaker 1: she's often framed as cooking, comforting, nurturing food. The food

740
00:44:11,600 --> 00:44:14,200
Speaker 1: is always being linked to her family, to her grandmother,

741
00:44:14,400 --> 00:44:16,360
Speaker 1: even though I mean, this woman is a winner of

742
00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:20,120
Speaker 1: multiple James Beard Awards, means she's a legit chef, but

743
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:28,960
Speaker 1: it's usually always she's always framed as mother, wife, nurturer. Yeah,

744
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:31,279
Speaker 1: and and same thing kind of with Alice Water. So

745
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:34,200
Speaker 1: she's a self taught chef who was at the forefront

746
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 1: of the organic food movement in California. She started the

747
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:41,359
Speaker 1: restaurant Cha Pennice and Berkeley in the seventies. Gourmet named

748
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:43,520
Speaker 1: it America's best restaurant two thousand one. It earned a

749
00:44:43,560 --> 00:44:47,000
Speaker 1: Michelin star in two thousand and six through two thousand nine.

750
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:52,600
Speaker 1: But still she's typically portrayed as this nurturer, educator, caretaker,

751
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:57,719
Speaker 1: you know, adorable small businesswoman, rather than the culinary powerhouse

752
00:44:57,760 --> 00:45:01,080
Speaker 1: that she really is. Well, it's probably because with her

753
00:45:01,160 --> 00:45:03,040
Speaker 1: and a lot of others. I think this is particular

754
00:45:03,120 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 1: two women chefs on the West Coast, which some of

755
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:09,800
Speaker 1: the I think it was Gastronomica was suggesting, is friendlier

756
00:45:09,840 --> 00:45:13,680
Speaker 1: in general to women chefs versus the East Coast. A

757
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:17,719
Speaker 1: lot of those female West Coast chefs like Waters are

758
00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: more interested in having this one amazing restaurant that they

759
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:25,240
Speaker 1: cultivate and have a strong hand and rather than building

760
00:45:25,239 --> 00:45:28,880
Speaker 1: out a franchise. Yeah, we did read uh several different

761
00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:32,080
Speaker 1: sources that said that that women tend to be thriving

762
00:45:32,120 --> 00:45:37,640
Speaker 1: today in the smaller standalone restaurants scene rather than those

763
00:45:37,640 --> 00:45:42,319
Speaker 1: empires like your gravy kitchen, Caroline, Exactly what kind of

764
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:48,480
Speaker 1: gravy do you want today? It's just just bacon meat gravy,

765
00:45:48,600 --> 00:45:52,400
Speaker 1: feminist gravy. It would not be bacon pour it on everything.

766
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:56,520
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be no, would it be uh, I don't know,

767
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 1: unicorn something menstral lord. Uh. Well, so what can help

768
00:46:04,280 --> 00:46:08,279
Speaker 1: us get over this hump of not being able to

769
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:12,640
Speaker 1: recognize more women as the incredible chefs that they are.

770
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:17,239
Speaker 1: One commenter on that feminist kitchen post that we referenced

771
00:46:17,719 --> 00:46:21,280
Speaker 1: was talking about how when you just continue to talk

772
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 1: about how bleak the landscape is for lady chefs, it's

773
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 1: not really going to help us. She said that what

774
00:46:28,080 --> 00:46:30,160
Speaker 1: I'd like to see is less focus on how awful

775
00:46:30,160 --> 00:46:32,160
Speaker 1: and hard kitchens are for women and more focus on

776
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:35,080
Speaker 1: building networks of female cooks and chefs who can support

777
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:38,360
Speaker 1: each other in material ways. Now, if you're talking about

778
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:41,200
Speaker 1: separating women out from men, I think this is an

779
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:44,040
Speaker 1: actual smart, productive way to do it. Maybe not having

780
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:46,839
Speaker 1: the fifty Best Chefs list and then the fifty best

781
00:46:46,880 --> 00:46:50,080
Speaker 1: women chefs like that sucks. But to have women forming

782
00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:53,440
Speaker 1: their own networks, whether they're huge corporate things or more

783
00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:57,720
Speaker 1: grassroots efforts, that is a great, I think, way to

784
00:46:57,719 --> 00:47:00,759
Speaker 1: to spend your energies in whatever industry you're in. Yeah,

785
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:04,080
Speaker 1: and that's something that's happening with the Toklist Society, which

786
00:47:04,120 --> 00:47:06,840
Speaker 1: is a networking group for women in the restaurant industry,

787
00:47:06,840 --> 00:47:11,719
Speaker 1: which was founded by Momofuko Group brand director Sue chan

788
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:15,640
Speaker 1: Um and I love it's it's named for Alice by Toklist,

789
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:19,600
Speaker 1: who was Gertrude Stein's partner who would stay home and

790
00:47:19,640 --> 00:47:21,359
Speaker 1: take care of the house and cook the meal as

791
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:26,399
Speaker 1: while Stein was out being you know, out being Gertrud. Yeah,

792
00:47:26,400 --> 00:47:29,600
Speaker 1: and there's also mentorship programs available within the Women Chefs

793
00:47:29,600 --> 00:47:34,840
Speaker 1: and Restaurants Network and the group she Chef and slowly,

794
00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:38,400
Speaker 1: very slowly, so slowly that there are a handful of examples.

795
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:42,400
Speaker 1: Um restaurant groups are seeing the need for better insurance

796
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:46,960
Speaker 1: and vacation policies and better maternity and paternity leave options

797
00:47:47,320 --> 00:47:50,080
Speaker 1: because I'm sure that we're, you know, at a point

798
00:47:50,120 --> 00:47:52,600
Speaker 1: in history maybe where I don't know, men also want

799
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:55,799
Speaker 1: to take time off for their families, and so I

800
00:47:55,840 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 1: think people are starting to realize the need for better policies.

801
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:01,080
Speaker 1: For instance, in that Momo Fud group that you just mentioned,

802
00:48:01,160 --> 00:48:03,680
Speaker 1: Kristen employees who are with the company for a year

803
00:48:03,760 --> 00:48:08,040
Speaker 1: get free health insurance, paid vacations, and maternity and paternity leave.

804
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:12,000
Speaker 1: The Altimira group offers medical, dental and vision insurance plus

805
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:14,040
Speaker 1: paid holidays. And I know people are like, what's the

806
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:16,000
Speaker 1: big deal. That's a huge deal for the for the

807
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:19,680
Speaker 1: restaurant industry. And Alice Waters. Speaking of Alice Waters, shee

808
00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:24,400
Speaker 1: pioneer job sharing programs between parents, instituted a six months

809
00:48:24,440 --> 00:48:28,360
Speaker 1: off furlow system for head chefs and developed this roster

810
00:48:28,760 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 1: of impressive cooks and chefs which allowed all of this

811
00:48:32,160 --> 00:48:35,239
Speaker 1: allowed chefs to have that flex time to spend with

812
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:37,799
Speaker 1: family as needed, to take time off if you're sick.

813
00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:40,800
Speaker 1: Can you imagine, oh my god, someone working in a

814
00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:43,880
Speaker 1: kitchen gets to take sick time as it should be

815
00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:46,880
Speaker 1: thinking of a sick person making food. There was just

816
00:48:47,000 --> 00:48:50,279
Speaker 1: an article the other day that I saw online that

817
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:53,239
Speaker 1: was talking about how nobody in the restaurant industry takes

818
00:48:53,360 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 1: enough time off for for sick time because because you

819
00:48:56,960 --> 00:48:59,640
Speaker 1: could lose your job so easily, you know, the job

820
00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:01,960
Speaker 1: of a chef. I know we're talking about chefs specifically,

821
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:05,320
Speaker 1: but if you can't show up for your shift for

822
00:49:05,480 --> 00:49:08,160
Speaker 1: multiple nights, like they still need to cook the food

823
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:13,120
Speaker 1: and beyond that too. One thing that Alexandra Gorna Shelley,

824
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:16,440
Speaker 1: who's the executive chef in New York City's Butter Restaurant

825
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:20,279
Speaker 1: said was quote, when women chefs get media attention, it's

826
00:49:20,320 --> 00:49:23,160
Speaker 1: for bucking the norm. How about we just become part

827
00:49:23,239 --> 00:49:27,080
Speaker 1: of the norm. Can we qualify for norm status? And

828
00:49:27,080 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 1: that's an excellent point. I mean, male chef is normative

829
00:49:30,840 --> 00:49:34,640
Speaker 1: at this point, female chef is the other. She's in

830
00:49:34,640 --> 00:49:39,320
Speaker 1: the gravy kitchen. When you heard about the movie Chef,

831
00:49:39,560 --> 00:49:42,960
Speaker 1: I bet you didn't picture a lady chef. No, And

832
00:49:43,040 --> 00:49:46,600
Speaker 1: you know what, speaking of chef movies, I don't know

833
00:49:46,640 --> 00:49:48,920
Speaker 1: if it's his next role, but an upcoming role for

834
00:49:49,239 --> 00:49:53,080
Speaker 1: Mr Bradley Cooper, who just made waves on the Internet

835
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:56,759
Speaker 1: and the media cycle in general for UM saying that

836
00:49:56,800 --> 00:50:00,160
Speaker 1: he would be sharing his salary infoe with female co

837
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:03,120
Speaker 1: stars to make sure they're getting equitable pay in Hollywood

838
00:50:03,160 --> 00:50:04,719
Speaker 1: for all of his upcoming films. And he will be

839
00:50:04,760 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 1: doing that, I hope on his upcoming film Burned, where

840
00:50:08,040 --> 00:50:11,239
Speaker 1: he plays a chef. But you know if if he

841
00:50:11,520 --> 00:50:16,080
Speaker 1: is um making grilled cheese sensually, I might tune in.

842
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:21,600
Speaker 1: And with that, we got to close out this podcast

843
00:50:22,200 --> 00:50:26,319
Speaker 1: because I think it just got hot in here, all

844
00:50:26,360 --> 00:50:29,439
Speaker 1: that melty cheese. Well, so we have, We've talked about

845
00:50:29,480 --> 00:50:32,600
Speaker 1: a lot. We we started talking about ancient soups and

846
00:50:32,719 --> 00:50:37,239
Speaker 1: now and now we're talking about ancient beat coops. Not

847
00:50:37,360 --> 00:50:42,200
Speaker 1: so ancient, No, no, handsome, handsome though hot and fresh. Okay, So,

848
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:45,319
Speaker 1: so I would like to hear because I know you're

849
00:50:45,320 --> 00:50:49,800
Speaker 1: out there chefs, lady chefs and and and gent chefs alike.

850
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:52,400
Speaker 1: What's it like working in the kitchen? Does any of

851
00:50:52,480 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 1: us resonate with you? Are you sick of hearing about

852
00:50:55,480 --> 00:50:57,680
Speaker 1: the gender division in the kitchen or do you think

853
00:50:57,680 --> 00:50:59,880
Speaker 1: this is still a conversation worth having. I hope so,

854
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:02,080
Speaker 1: because we just had it, and I think it's worth

855
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:04,359
Speaker 1: remembering too, especially if you're listening to this as someone

856
00:51:04,360 --> 00:51:06,400
Speaker 1: who works in a kitchen, You're like, that's not the

857
00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:08,759
Speaker 1: way it is at all. What we're pulling from is

858
00:51:09,200 --> 00:51:12,400
Speaker 1: media portrayals of what is going on in kitchen. So

859
00:51:12,520 --> 00:51:16,200
Speaker 1: I'm really curious to know how this where are the

860
00:51:16,239 --> 00:51:20,960
Speaker 1: women chefs angle headline that's repeated over and over and

861
00:51:21,000 --> 00:51:23,960
Speaker 1: over again, how that does compare to the day to day.

862
00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:26,759
Speaker 1: So mom Sabit, House Stuff works dot com is our

863
00:51:26,840 --> 00:51:29,279
Speaker 1: email address for letters. You can also tweet us at

864
00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:32,480
Speaker 1: mom Stuff Podcasts or messages on Facebook. And I've got

865
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:40,120
Speaker 1: a couple of messages to share with you right now. Well,

866
00:51:40,120 --> 00:51:42,280
Speaker 1: we've got a couple of letters here from our Couple

867
00:51:42,360 --> 00:51:45,960
Speaker 1: Speak episode, and this one from Brianna not only references

868
00:51:46,040 --> 00:51:49,440
Speaker 1: couple Speak but also friends Speak, which I love, and

869
00:51:49,480 --> 00:51:52,360
Speaker 1: so I wanted to read it, she says, Oh my gosh,

870
00:51:52,400 --> 00:51:55,000
Speaker 1: I have never related to an episode more. My whole

871
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:57,000
Speaker 1: life feels like it's centered on speaking to people I

872
00:51:57,040 --> 00:51:59,520
Speaker 1: love and baby talk. My husband and I who also

873
00:51:59,600 --> 00:52:02,000
Speaker 1: called each other boyfriend and girlfriend when we dated Caroline

874
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:04,080
Speaker 1: and do husband and wife now, but not boyfriend and

875
00:52:04,080 --> 00:52:07,680
Speaker 1: girlfriend dog, which is way too adorable thanks, she says.

876
00:52:07,680 --> 00:52:10,760
Speaker 1: We talk in high baby voices at home constantly. Words

877
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:13,360
Speaker 1: are mushed together and mispronounced. We throw around sweetie and

878
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:15,320
Speaker 1: baby and the like all the time, and it's definitely

879
00:52:15,400 --> 00:52:17,920
Speaker 1: nauseating for anyone around us. We've done it pretty much

880
00:52:17,920 --> 00:52:20,959
Speaker 1: since we started dating. The weirdest part is we often

881
00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:23,799
Speaker 1: communicate and baby speak through our dog, speaking as if

882
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:26,560
Speaker 1: we were announcing the thoughts of our Boston terrier Luna

883
00:52:26,640 --> 00:52:28,920
Speaker 1: Love Good. We refer to each other as mommy and

884
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:31,480
Speaker 1: daddy when we were talking for her and mentioned us both.

885
00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:35,200
Speaker 1: It's always mommy daddy, never mommy and daddy. But it's

886
00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:37,680
Speaker 1: usually things like mommy, I love you, but also I

887
00:52:37,719 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: love daddy, or when she's snuggling between us, I love

888
00:52:40,040 --> 00:52:42,919
Speaker 1: cuddling Mommy daddy. Who are we talking to? It has

889
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:45,360
Speaker 1: me very very concerned about our future children and what

890
00:52:45,480 --> 00:52:48,040
Speaker 1: voices and terms will use. But after the podcast, it

891
00:52:48,080 --> 00:52:50,919
Speaker 1: made me feel pretty good about our relationship. I also

892
00:52:51,040 --> 00:52:53,560
Speaker 1: use this with my best girlfriends from elementary and high school.

893
00:52:53,800 --> 00:52:56,040
Speaker 1: My friend Ashley has always been my little red haired

894
00:52:56,040 --> 00:52:58,160
Speaker 1: girl because I called her a little red haired girl

895
00:52:58,160 --> 00:53:00,480
Speaker 1: in second grade before I learned her name. My friend

896
00:53:00,560 --> 00:53:03,120
Speaker 1: Danielle is my kindred because when we met, we felt

897
00:53:03,200 --> 00:53:06,480
Speaker 1: very much alike. My friend Abby, who unfortunately passed away

898
00:53:06,520 --> 00:53:11,000
Speaker 1: in April eleven, was always Abigail last syllable said with emphasis,

899
00:53:11,080 --> 00:53:13,880
Speaker 1: or Babs, a nickname of her own choosing and junior high,

900
00:53:13,920 --> 00:53:17,000
Speaker 1: and she always told us you're my best brand or

901
00:53:17,040 --> 00:53:20,120
Speaker 1: best friend. In texting and Facebook messages, all of us

902
00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:23,799
Speaker 1: called each other visps or very important sexy people. From

903
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:26,000
Speaker 1: the summer after high school to today. It is so

904
00:53:26,080 --> 00:53:30,360
Speaker 1: serious that our holidays are vispmas visps giving and the like.

905
00:53:30,600 --> 00:53:36,520
Speaker 1: Boyfriends are visbos and husbands are vicious. I used to

906
00:53:36,520 --> 00:53:38,360
Speaker 1: think all of this stuff was just goofy names and

907
00:53:38,400 --> 00:53:40,560
Speaker 1: patterns of speech left over from our younger years, but

908
00:53:40,600 --> 00:53:43,520
Speaker 1: after your podcast, I realized how it's bonded us. People

909
00:53:43,520 --> 00:53:45,160
Speaker 1: I've run into from high school have said, oh, I

910
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:47,240
Speaker 1: love seeing you girls hang out on Facebook through photos.

911
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:49,239
Speaker 1: It's so great to see you all together. I mean,

912
00:53:49,239 --> 00:53:51,320
Speaker 1: of course we do, why wouldn't we, But I wonder

913
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:53,560
Speaker 1: how our pet group naming is played into that. It

914
00:53:53,680 --> 00:53:55,640
Speaker 1: certainly worked as a way to strengthen our bond and

915
00:53:55,640 --> 00:53:58,120
Speaker 1: help us cope while grieving Abby's death, for sure, and

916
00:53:58,160 --> 00:54:00,200
Speaker 1: that has only made our friendship deeper. I don't care

917
00:54:00,239 --> 00:54:02,680
Speaker 1: if people think we're ridiculous, because I wouldn't have my

918
00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:06,560
Speaker 1: visps any other way. So thank you, Brianna, and I

919
00:54:06,600 --> 00:54:09,960
Speaker 1: love all of that so much, um as much as

920
00:54:10,040 --> 00:54:13,080
Speaker 1: I love this letter from Katie, who wrote, I just

921
00:54:13,160 --> 00:54:16,040
Speaker 1: finished listening to your most recent podcast, Couples Speak, and

922
00:54:16,040 --> 00:54:18,080
Speaker 1: it made me smile to hear Caroline say she and

923
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:21,040
Speaker 1: her boyfriend called each other girlfriend and boyfriend because an

924
00:54:21,200 --> 00:54:23,560
Speaker 1: X and I used to call each other girlfriend and girlfriend.

925
00:54:24,040 --> 00:54:27,440
Speaker 1: Also because same sex couples are often referred to as partners,

926
00:54:27,800 --> 00:54:30,239
Speaker 1: and we both found that a bit I roll inducing,

927
00:54:30,560 --> 00:54:32,799
Speaker 1: we began to refer to each other as partners in

928
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:34,920
Speaker 1: different law firms as a way to poke fun at

929
00:54:34,920 --> 00:54:39,680
Speaker 1: the terminology. She became girlfriend of girlfriend, girlfriend and girlfriend,

930
00:54:39,960 --> 00:54:43,239
Speaker 1: and I was girlfriend of girlfriend and associates When we

931
00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:45,440
Speaker 1: called each other. We would often play out a kind

932
00:54:45,440 --> 00:54:49,279
Speaker 1: of long winded salutation, thank you for calling girlfriend and associates,

933
00:54:49,320 --> 00:54:51,600
Speaker 1: this is girlfriend speaking. How may I ussist you with

934
00:54:51,640 --> 00:54:54,799
Speaker 1: your girlfriend needs. It all sounds so silly and a

935
00:54:54,800 --> 00:54:57,760
Speaker 1: bit iroll inducing, but it's something that makes me smile

936
00:54:57,840 --> 00:54:59,880
Speaker 1: so to think about, and I thought you too, My

937
00:55:00,120 --> 00:55:02,279
Speaker 1: also get a kick out of it. In the end,

938
00:55:02,320 --> 00:55:05,200
Speaker 1: our two firms never did merge, but we've remained the

939
00:55:05,320 --> 00:55:07,759
Speaker 1: best of friends and still maintain a unique way of

940
00:55:07,760 --> 00:55:10,560
Speaker 1: speaking to each other and so many inside jokes that

941
00:55:10,560 --> 00:55:14,399
Speaker 1: others often feel like we're speaking a different language. So

942
00:55:14,520 --> 00:55:16,920
Speaker 1: thanks so much, Katie and listeners, I have to tell

943
00:55:16,960 --> 00:55:19,960
Speaker 1: you that a couple speak. Letters have been so fun

944
00:55:20,560 --> 00:55:22,560
Speaker 1: to get um and if you would like to send

945
00:55:22,680 --> 00:55:25,920
Speaker 1: us your letter, you can do that. Mom stuff at

946
00:55:25,920 --> 00:55:28,080
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and links to all of

947
00:55:28,080 --> 00:55:31,400
Speaker 1: our social media as well as all of our blogs, videos,

948
00:55:31,440 --> 00:55:34,360
Speaker 1: and podcasts, including this one with links to our sources

949
00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:38,280
Speaker 1: so you can learn more about gender and chefs. Head

950
00:55:38,280 --> 00:55:45,120
Speaker 1: on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com

951
00:55:45,239 --> 00:55:47,640
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

952
00:55:47,680 --> 00:55:56,919
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com