SMNTY Classics: Cooking Shows

In 1963, Julia Child made an omelet on Boston public television and changed culinary history forever. Dive into the story of how television cooking gave rise to celebrity chefs who brought a new generation of cooking women into our homes for better -- or burnt.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to Stuff I've
Never Told You In case it wasn't obvious listeners, I
spend an embarrassing amount of time thinking about food, not

(00:28):
just because I work on a food podcast outside of
this UM, but recently, over on that podcast, which is
called Savor, we did an episode on the history of
food television, and I remembered that we had done this
episode about celebrity chefs on this show UM and Julia Child,
who figured prominently in that and whom I adore. I

(00:49):
dug up this classic episode for research and I wanted
to share it with you. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff Mom
Never Told You from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Chris and and I'm and.

(01:10):
Last time on Stuff I've Never Told You, we talked
about the masculine gendering of the chef profession, and this
time we're going to talk about celebrity chefs and TV
cooks because gender plays a different sort of role but
also kind of the same role. But you see lots

(01:30):
of women on our TVs cooking food for us, and
we're not gonna be able to mention every single woman
cooking food on television as much as we would like to. Oh,
my notes are just literally a lift. It's just a
list of names. I didn't prepare anything else. But of
course we will talk about the amazing influential Julia Child

(01:54):
and some women chefs today. But first, Caroline, I must
ask you, do you have a favorite man or woman
celebrity chef. I don't. Actually I have never been that
into watching TV cooking, and not not because I'm a jerk,

(02:15):
but I don't know about that, Caroline, but but because
I'm like, I want to eat it. I don't want
to watch it. I want to eat it, and um
so then I can I can get a little board
watching some of the cooking shows, specifically if they're the
ones where they're literally like on a TV set, standing
behind the counter in front of an audience, and like,

(02:36):
I don't know, this is kind of like a talk
show but with food, but it's not. But the food
isn't talking. I wish the food were talking. Yeah, that
could make it more fun. I could also indicate that
I'm on drugs I don't know, or the cook is
on drugs and you're just watching sober. Yeah, I similarly
am not as drawn to instructional cooking shows. Although fun

(02:58):
fact slash weird fact slash signed that I was a
homeschool or fact I loved cooking when I was a kid.
I still really enjoy cooking, and anytime I would cook,
especially if I was by myself, I would speak out
loud as though I were on a cooking show. And
there are some home movies of me hosting my own

(03:19):
cooking show, which my parents, UM will probably blackmail me
with at some point. It's amazing. So what did you cook?
A lot of cookies? I was a bit of a baker,
you know, sugar cookies, and actually these things called cowboy
cookies were my specialty. Cowboy cookies are just like chocolate
oatmeal cookies with pecans And then oh yeah, they're there.

(03:42):
You haven't made those for me? Well, you know, I've
been busy shooting my show and showing it to no one. Um.
But uh, but I also now have a kind of
guilty pleasure for cooking competition shows. I do. Oh yeah,
I do. That's not to say just because I've never
been super drawn a cooking shows doesn't mean I haven't

(04:04):
watched them. I do really like shows like Top Chef
and chopped. I also really like, if we're gonna just
go down this road, let's go down this road. I
really love Kitchen Nightmares, which is not a cooking show,
but it is a celebrity chef show. Gordon Ramsey is
um terrifying. He loves to yell at people. But the

(04:27):
thing is, you can tell he's got a heart. You
can tell he knows what he's doing. He's a smart guy.
He just gets real red in the face. So what
is he doing Kitchen Nightmares? So okay, Yeah, Basically, a
restaurant is in trouble. They're not running the business right.
Food is awful, the customers are unhappy. What are we
gonna do? And so Gordon Ramsey comes in and he's
got all the answers, all the solutions. He's a solutions guy,

(04:49):
Kristen and uh. He comes in and he's like, all right,
you're cooking is awful. Your restaurant is awful. You're awful.
And he's yelling and he's like, we're going to fix it.
And so he's like, here's how we're going to fix it.
And then typically what happens. I'm not sure why these
people email him or call him or whatever. Because then
what happens is the people are like, but I don't
want to do anything, and he's like, well, you're the worst,

(05:10):
and sometimes then he leaves, but a lot of times
then he fixes it. There's a restaurant here in Atlanta,
but I won't name because I'm not mean, but they
were on Kitchen Nightmares and they are no longer open,
so he couldn't save the kitchen then. Now I think
they reopened after his show was there, but not for
much longer. Oh man, Yeah, I gotta tell you. I

(05:32):
before I started watching his shows, I didn't think I
was a fan of Gordon Ramsay. I was like, how
what a rude men just going around making a career
yelling at people. But I am now a closet fan
of Master Chef. My fiance and I watch it and
there's nothing. I mostly do it for the entertainment of

(05:52):
watching my fiance pick his favorites and get very opinionated
about home chefs um and you see more of the
softer mentoring side of Gordon Ramsay. And in Master Chef,
Top Chef my fiance doesn't like so much. I think
it's because he thinks it's overproduced and he isn't a

(06:14):
fan of Padma, which interesting I know, which I give
him a little side eye about. I was like, are
you she she yeah, yeah, you just dismissing her because
you think she's just a pretty face. I mean, she's beautiful.
She talks about cooking and eating all the time. A
lot of people do dismiss her as just being just
being a model or a former model, just being Salmon

(06:36):
Rushtie's ex wife wife. Yeah. And then you've got Tom Kalechio,
who's the other person on Top Chef, running the show.
But since this is stuff Mon ever told you, we
should mention speaking of Top Chef. For a while, there
was a lot of grumbling about how few female Top
Chef winners there were, and I don't have the count,

(06:58):
but even now I think they're still only a handful
of women who have won it. But you know what's
interesting about shows like Top Chef is that they always focus,
well mostly focus on the classic cooking, which is you know, savory,
savory meats and things um, And that it seems like
when there's a baking challenge, everybody, including some of the women,

(07:19):
are like, uh, baking, that's like a super hard like
thing for women to do like that's not cooking, and
so yeah, it's all of those shows do tend to
focus on more of the classic chefery rather than the
baking although there are of course baking competition shows too well.
This year also or this season on Master Chef, there's

(07:41):
a new judge, Christina Tosi, who runs Momofuko Milk Bar,
so there have been a lot more baking challenges and
I was really excited to see a woman judge on
Master Chef and kind of see her get her bearings
and become judge ear in the best sense of the word,
because at first I was a little nervous that it
was going to be fluffy fluffy, yeah, like, oh, she's

(08:04):
only going to talk about the cakes. But now she
was great and she could talk about the cakes with
me if she wants. I'm fine with just talking about
the cake and what cakes Christina Tosi can make. But Caroline,
we could seriously sit here and just talk about our
celebrities study chef habits for thirty more minutes. But we
have some history. Okay, let's do it hit Because there

(08:28):
have always been celebrity chefs of sorts. This is something
that Yale professor Paul Friedman has studied and discussed, but
it was mostly just way way way back in the day,
dudes cooking for other important dudes. A lot of it's
very reminiscent of our last podcast on chefs being a

(08:50):
traditionally and historically male profession. Yeah, in ancient Greece, we
do get one celebrity chef by name Medicus, who was
mentioned by Plato and other important folks, but there's only
one surviving recipe of his, and it's a Christian. This
is a recipe I can follow. It's how to make
ribbon fish and uh, it's basically just instructions to cook

(09:14):
it with cheese and oil. That's it. Have at it
exclamation point. But Freeman goes on to talk about how
in fourteenth century France we get the first celebrity chef
we really know anything about, because you know, Medicus only
has his little ribbon fish recipe. But we have this
guy whose name, Caroline, I'm gonna let you pronounced because
we all know I'm not great with French pronunciations. His name,

(09:39):
please a rimy letters, is Guillam trel a k a
tayvon h. And he's such a big deal, or he
was such a big deal because he did. He was
such a big deal that he ended up becoming ennobled,
and he got his name on a medieval recipe collection
which is adorable, and the current modern fancy pants pre restaurant,

(10:00):
Taivan is named after him. And it's gonna be a long, long,
long time post Taivan that we get celebrity women chefs
much much less women chefs in general, because of course,
women tend to do the cooking at home. Even today. Um,
I believe you have a stat in front of you
about how as egalitarian as we like to think our

(10:23):
society is, women still do a majority of the cooking
off screen. Yeah. Yeah, And this is something that we
touched on in that episode we did a while back
now which I find myself referencing a lot still, which
is the Egalitarian Household episode we did. Um that women
still do at least five hours usually five hours plus

(10:45):
of food prep a week versus men's two hours. And
that's coming from the American Time Use Survey. So despite
the fact that women do more of the cooking and
more of the food prep at home, we're still not
giving them the same type of respect of chefs. On
the one hand, but also respect in terms of like

(11:07):
airtime on TV and being celebrity chefs. Yeah, I mean,
and it's not so surprising that women even today do
a majority of the cooking in the home because homemaking
and cooking have been ingrained in our American female culture.
These are traits that even government propaganda has targeted at us.

(11:32):
And the first so called celebrity female cooks not chefs,
were invented partially to sell products, but also to teach
women proper homemaking and proper cooking, the right way to
take care of her family, which involved cooking. So in
n we have the debut of the fictional Betty Crocker,

(11:54):
who was a mascot created by the Washburn Flower Company
who goes on the radio to answer home cook's letters
about baking quandaries. So she was voiced by various actresses
on the radio. I love that, and I don't even
I don't know if I knew that Betty Crocker wasn't real.
I mean, I think I assumed she wasn't. Is this
your Santa Claus moment? Although the Betty Crocker reminds me

(12:20):
of how on many Sundays I will listen to len
Rozetta Casper's splendid kitchen on pr Don't you love it?
I completely forgot about that. Kristen's I don't. I don't
seek it out, but when I catch it, I love it.
Because the thing is that woman is so I want
to use a curse word. She is so freaking like amazing, warm, funny,

(12:45):
totally unruffled. You can be like, hello, ma'am, I I
only have strips of printer paper and some mustard and
ribbon fish. Yeah, and she's like, oh, don't even worry
about it. I've got you covered. And she's so you think,
oh God, if anyone knows l r C, please give
her some shout outs from sea and see yea um.

(13:06):
But then a couple of years after Betty Crocker makes
her radio debut, I gotta kick out of this. I
hadn't heard of it before, the U. S. Department of
Agriculture cooks up what I did there? Aunt Sammy? And
who is Aunt Sammy? Listeners Uncle Sam's wife who knew
he was married? I know, why? Why don't we ever

(13:29):
see Aunt Sammy with Uncle Sam? Uncle Sam? Is he
running around on Aunt Sammy? But Aunt Sammy was busy
on the radio dispensing tips to American homemaker's courtesy of
the US government. Interesting. So, I mean, our first two
female celebrity cooks and quotes were fake and it's really

(13:53):
not until the TV age do we get our breakout
star Julia Child. Yeah. And that kitchen that I worked
in in northern Michigan during the summers that I referenced
in our episode on waitressing, Uh, the chef in the
kitchen was also a very tall lady who worshiped the

(14:13):
ground that Julia Child walked on. So even from being
like fourteen years old, maybe fourteen year olds don't really
know who Julia Child was, but I was very aware
because this woman that I worked with was obsessed. Do
you think it was partially because she was a fellow
tall lady? I wouldn't doubt it. Well, one thing I
really love about Julia Child is it's not only her

(14:37):
beloved and iconic television career, but how she was a
woman who found her passion and professional success a little
bit later in life. Just like, generally speaking, this is
not relevant to TV cooking at all. Really, um, it's
so comforting in today's environment where everything career wise feels
very high pressure of if you haven't hit big success

(15:01):
by thirty, then all of your time is wasted in
its downhill from there. But it was something that Julia
really kind of grappled with for a while. She grew
up in moderate wealth and she attended Smith College. But
she once wrote in her diary, I'm sadly an ordinary
person with talents I do not use. I can't believe that.

(15:22):
Can you imagine someone like Julia Child saying that? Just
goes to show you never know, you never know what's
going on with people. Yeah, your path is all right,
keep on keep on going, You'll find your passion. Uh.
And what I love is this bit of trip about
Julia is that during World War Two she gets a
job at the Office of Strategic Services because at six
ft two she was too tall to join the military.

(15:44):
Who knew? Who knew there was such a rule? Uh?
And in March nine, Oh, by the way, the Office
of Strategic Services is the precursor to the CIA, not
the Culinary Institute of America, but the Central Intelligence Agency UM.
And March ninety four, she was dispatched to Sri Lanka,
where she served as the chief of the OSS Registry

(16:05):
and She ended up having top security clearances because she
handled all these super highly classified documents that discussed the
invasion of the Malay Peninsula and fun tangent time because
I know stuff I've never told you. Listeners would be
remiss to not learn a little bit more about her
work with the OSS. Before she went over to Sri Lanka,

(16:30):
she worked with the Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment Section to
develop shark repellent because during World War Two, you know,
the the U S would their naval ships would really
seese torpedoes, but if sharks got in the way, they
would bump them and it would accidentally detonate the explosive shark.
Pink shark missed, Yes, pink shark missed. So before she

(16:53):
was cooking up French cuisine, she was cooking up shark repellent.
That's pretty interesting. Yeah, Oh, I like going down that
little mental rabbit hole of imagining like Julia in the
kitchen with a bowl, like mixing up this chemical compound
and he's like, oh, we're not going to let those
sharks explode, and then and then maybe painting it on

(17:15):
with like a pastry brush. And but she, to be fair,
this is all in my weird, twisted brain because she
hadn't discovered her passionate yet. But I would like to
watch that episode of Julia's Child in your brain, Caroline.
But if we hop back to Sri Lanka, that's where
I believe she meets fellow OSS officer Paul Child, where

(17:37):
she gets Julia Child and they travel around and the
great thing about there, well, I don't know it's it's great,
but but something that's often repeated about their romances that
was kind of a slow burn at first. They're both like,
I don't know about this other person, but we'll keep
hanging out, and their romance blossomed and they got married
in and two years later, Paul gets assigned to France,

(18:00):
where he takes Julia out to eat at the country's
oldest restaurant and she falls in love. She has the
food and she's like, this is amazing. I have to
learn how to make this. And it inspires her to
take classes at lacord On Blue and this is when
she starts her collaboration on a cookbook with French friends
Simquebec and Louisette Batol and in one of her letters

(18:24):
to Simca during this collaboration, process. She writes, Really, the
more I cook, the more I like to cook. To
think that it has taken me forty years to find
my true passion. Cat and husband accepted, and I do.
I love that idea that you will find you will
find your thing. You've just got to keep at it.
You just have to keep eating. Yes, finally someone's given

(18:47):
me permission. Uh. In nineteen sixty one, finally, after a
couple of years of collaborating, the book Mastering the Art
of French Cooking is published, and one bit there that
she writes that jumped out to me was that the
most important ingredient you can bring to it is the
love of cooking for its own sake. And I wanted

(19:10):
to mention that quote in the context of us talking
about TV and celebrity chefs, because that is a sentiment
that was at such a core of her career. That
is something that might not be quite as present for
cooking empires today. Yeah, it's something that's constantly uh put

(19:32):
on women and women's brands, especially in terms of celebrity chefs,
and not so much for men. Well, then in nineteen
sixty three, history is made with an omelet. So Julia
goes on the w g b H Boston public TV
show called I've Been Reading, which sounds like a show
that I would really love. Um and she makes an

(19:54):
omelet and it very much impresses the twenty seven people
who watched the show at time? Is that literal? Yeah? Really,
just twenty seven people? Was public TV? All right, Julia?
And w g b H was like, you know what,
we gotta give this woman a show. So from nineteen

(20:14):
sixty three to nineteen sixties six, the French Chef aired
one episodes on nineties six PBS stations. She became a hit,
and one TV critic called her television's most reliable female
discovery since Lastie, which is perhaps the most backhanded compliment.

(20:36):
I can't imagine. Yeah, you better believe I made a
face when I read that. Well, are you kidding? I
think that's the best kind of compliment a guy could
give a woman. Though in the mid sixties she's better
than a loyal dog. Yeah, in X five she wants
a Peabody nineteen sixty six snags and Emmy, I mean,
I mean, the show itself is beloved by so many people,

(20:58):
both the eastmakers and the audience, and thanks in part
to our popularity. We have to mention. Joyce Chen Cooks
also debuts in nineteen sixty six and Joyce Chen becomes
the first non white cook in a televised kitchen. And
it was the same set, the same original set that
Julia Child used, and Joyce Chen Cooks introduced the US

(21:23):
to Chinese cooking. So already we're seeing the Julia Child
affect happening. Yeah, the Julia Child effect is so important,
and I'm sure the Joyce Chin effect is important too,
because for the longest time in this era, you had
people just relying on you know, cooking was just something
like you had to do. Just do it, just you know,

(21:44):
get your TV dinner. Were in the atomic age, just
pop your dinner, your your fast dinner in the oven um.
And she was really the one who's like, let's slow
it down, Let's give ourselves the power and the time
over what we eat and what we put in our bodies,
and let's really enjoy this process. It's not just about
throwing something on the table, It's about creating something amazing

(22:06):
with fresh ingredients. And speaking of fresh caroline in v
the French chef comes back in color. Who I can
finally see the food she she gets the reboot. But
what was it though, that made Julia Child such an
instant icon almost Well, first, we have to understand that

(22:30):
French food was just very chic in the US at
the time. America was brimming with Francophelia in the early sixties.
You have Jackie Kennedy dressed in Chanel and Dior, and
anything French associated was just considered, you know, something that
you you must enjoy, French cooking being part of that.
But more importantly, as you were talking about Caroline, her

(22:51):
approachability told women watching that they could cook what they
wanted and be proud of it and make mistakes. They
didn't need to be perfect. Yeah. I love the anecdote
about Julia Child going on Martha Stewart Show and whatever
they were cooking, it involved a degree of precision. And
of course the quote was that Martha looked like she

(23:13):
had worked with you, glid to create her culinary creation,
whereas Julia's was tilted. And it's like, we all know
knew that Julia could make this perfect food item. I
can't remember what it was, but she purposely made it
look a little wonky so that people at home knew Hey,
you don't have to be perfect, Like cooking is something
that you can do with love and passion and really

(23:34):
enjoy it. It doesn't have to be about the whole
perfectionist aspect and also to thinking about and I don't
want to I might be jumping ahead a little bit,
but just the image of Julia Child on screen contrasted
to a lot of the more Food Network air brushy
kinds of stars that we see today, where you have
this like very tall, not so conventionally attractive woman and

(23:57):
all sorts of patterned blouses, which I guess, Oh, I
guess we're popular at the time. Um, But but it
wasn't like we were watching her for her personality and
not so much because she was easy on the eyes. Yeah,
she she was a reassuring but authoritative personality. I mean

(24:17):
you you really trusted that Julia knew what she was
doing and you got to watch this really quirky person
really enjoy the heck out of what she was doing
well because she was so food first. Um. I was
reading an account from one of the women who helped
collaborate with her on cookbooks, talking about how she and

(24:38):
Julian and Paul would be in their test kitchen essentially,
and just the painstaking degree of learning that Julia Child
would always be constantly undergoing to try to perfect and
communicate these recipes and and learning with something that she
was just so passionate about. And another aspect of what

(25:00):
makes Julia Child so fascinating is that she was an
early celebrity chef, sort of in every sense of the word,
because nowadays we're so used to hearing what celebrity chefs
think about everything, not just what they're cooking in front
of them, but like social and political issues too, and
Julia Child was no different. She used her platform to
help destigmatize breast cancer. She herself had a mistectomy and

(25:23):
she talked about it. It wasn't a shameful thing to
be hidden away. And she also, and this could be
a newsy item today, used her platform to also stump
for planned parenthood, not to mention. When it came to
the culinary industry, she used her voice to call for
it becoming more accessible and sustainable for women. She especially

(25:51):
targeted the Culinary Institute of America, saying you need to
attract more women, you need to get more women in
your kitchens. Sexism in this industry isn't necessarily okay, although
she was very like, this is just the way it's
going to be, ladies. But speaking of that, one ripple
effect of Julia Child was her mentorship. She helped groom

(26:14):
some of the household celebrity chef names that we know today.
And we'll talk about that when we come right back
from a quick break. So one of Julia Child's mentees

(26:36):
is Seremontin, who herself is a big name these days.
She's the former Gourmet magazine executive chef, and she met
Julia back in nineteen seventy nine working on the set
of Julia Child and More Company. I really like your
Julia Child in front of Carol. I don't think it's
very accurate, but I'm enjoying it in my head. Same
with the whole image of the shark in her stirring

(26:57):
up the repellent. I love all of it. I'm having
a great time in my brain. But it was during
Molten's culinary rise in the mid to late eighties, kind
of assisted by Julia, really, that chefs culturally transitioned into
more celebrity status, thanks in part to Julia Child's astronomical

(27:18):
success and influence which helped lead to twenty years of
PBS cooking shows, and you have these cooks and chefs
starting to become household names. So, for instance, Holiday Entertaining
with Martha Stewart launches on PBS, just to give us
a little bit of a timeline. And in the New
York Times profile of Rachel Ray, who will actually talk

(27:41):
about a little bit more in just a second, very
divisive figure. Yes, uh, it notes that there was an
American food revolution happening in the nineteen eighties, with quote
a proliferation of celebrity chefs, designer kitchens, and expensive artisanal
ingredients which moved into the middle class by the nineteen nineties,

(28:02):
so we were starting to see this entire shift in
culinary going pop culture. So speaking of that, I mean
Sarah Malton is one of the early chefs who benefits
from this because Julia Child had Moulton assist her during
Good Morning America appearances, which eventually led her to becoming

(28:25):
one of Food networks first stars, and Food Network launched
in And I mean, I feel like Food Network is
so responsible for a bulk of our celebrity chef culture today. Yeah,
but I love that Julia got her start on PBS,
because her whole thing was I want to stick with

(28:46):
the educators. Of course, all of these networks were offering
her Boku bucks to cook for them and you know,
attract all of these advertisers. Obviously she already had the
eyeballs to go with it, Um, but now she was like, nah,
I'm I'm big into teaching and supporting men and women
who want to learn to cook. And one of those
men and women who wanted to learn to cook was

(29:08):
a name that a number of Sminthy listeners suggested that
we talk about when we announced that we were going
to do an episode on cooking and celebrity chefs cat
cora Um. She cites Julia Child as a direct influence,
and she recently came out with a memoir, and in
an interview about that in Portune magazine, she talks about
how she drove from her home in Jackson, Mississippi, two

(29:33):
Natchez to get advice from Julia Child at a book reading,
and she said that Julia Child told her to go
to the Culinary Institute of America. Remember, Julia Child had
been essentially lobbying them to get more women in their doors,
and she said, quote it was a man's world, and
I had to be strong, stubborn and persistent could advice

(29:54):
for any industry, any for in a job that it's
a man's world. I think being strong, stubborn and persistence
always good advice. Um. But yeah, So kat Cora has
a really incredible story too. She I mean, she graduated
from the culinary institute. She ends up going to Europe,
where she says it was unheard of for women, especially
for women in the US, to hop on a plane

(30:16):
and go to work in a three star Michelin restaurant. Yeah,
it's interesting now because along her trajectory she actually ended
up turning down a couple of different jobs because, for instance,
one chef who wanted to hire her wanted her to
be his sautee chef, and she's like, ah, I had
to have that moment of weighing my options, like do
I want to take not only a couple of steps

(30:37):
back on where I planned to be at this point
in my life, but do I also want to take
such a step back financially? And so she ended up
telling the guy like, I can't make seven dollars an
hour and still live the life that I need to live.
Like to actually live somewhere I can't make seven dollars
an hour. She ended up making the right choice for her.
She passed on that particular job and worked, as she says,

(30:58):
in the trenches at a lot lot of fancy upscale
restaurants and usually in the trenches as code for working
with a lot of dudes. Um. And she said that
was one of the reasons why the Food Network picked her,
you know, to kind of groom her as one of
its stars. And in two thousand five she was named
the first female Iron Chef. As a number of stuff

(31:20):
I've never told you listeners also noted to us. But
speaking of Food Network, Iron Chef and this whole TV
ification to make up a word of cooking that starts
to really explode in the late nineties and early two thousands,
because remember we have that higher class quote unquote food
revolution in the eighties that then sort of trickles down

(31:41):
to more of like the well used and mese. In
the nineties and two thousands, we see some patterns starting
to emerge and how famous female cooks slash chefs post
Julia Child are presented. There's something that kind of kind
of shifts and it's not that Julia Child cooked in
chef whites and in industrial settings and wasn't very homey

(32:05):
in her approach, but it was still a lot more
about the food. It was about her obviously her winning
personality and charm, but still about the food. Yeah, and
then we start to get cooking shows that are way
more about that big personality. And this is also where
we start to see as that Yale professor Freedman notes

(32:25):
the thing that I mentioned earlier of suddenly we're getting
celebrity chef's opinions on things going on in the world
beyond what's happening in their kitchen. Jamie Oliver, who's the
brit who had that big school lunch push to make
school lunch is healthier. Suddenly we're also really concerned with
what Paula Deene may or may not be saying it's

(32:46):
horrific about people who work at her restaurants. You have
Emerald Lagazzi spinning off from doing a cooking show and
doing an eco show looking at food and sustainability. Mario
Batali is getting in the car with Gwyneth Paltrow mean
a huge political statement. It's while those orange crocs are
just screaming all sorts of things at us and scholar

(33:07):
Lucy Shoals describes in a paper on gender and celebrity
TV chefs. She describes these chefs as figures who assimilate
within his her towering persona, the authority, charisma and responsibility
of the journalist, the activist, and the parent all rolled

(33:28):
into one. We're juggling a lot of rolling pins and
whisks metaphorically at this point that that is a lot
to put onto to one aproned person or no apron
at all. Aprons are frumping out, Caroline, Oh no, but
I love a good apron. Uh. Yeah, this is we
start to see a lot about how certain uh lady

(33:53):
TV chefs look and what they're wearing, what their figures
look like, how busty or not bust do they are.
There's a lot of discussion about Nigella Lawson and Giada
de Laurentus, a lot of people just focusing on the looks.
So you're saying that the big shift in the early
two thousand's with TV cooks, cooking presenters, chefs is sex appeal. Yeah,

(34:20):
there's definitely less of the Julia Child quirkiness. Well, Rachel
Rise a little bit quirky, but way more focused on like,
here's a beautiful woman cooking you a sandwich. Well there's
also two they're attractive, but they can't be overtly sexy
so as to turn off a female audience either, so
they have that kind of BFF approach as well. They're

(34:41):
just like, you're very attractive friend, like Nigella Lawson, whose
Nigella Bites was a huge hit and also very much
focused on her attractiveness. And and notably she she was
a journalist before she turned to cooking, and she wants
to described her two thousand cookbook How to Be a

(35:02):
Domestic Goddess, Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking as
quote a very important feminist tract in its own right,
because she said it celebrates the type of kitchen activity
that's typically derided for its feminine associations, i e. Baking.
Mm hmm. So it's it's going back to what we've

(35:23):
talked about with femphobia new domesticity, reclaiming womanly things as
a feminist act. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, personally, I think
it might have also been a little bit to just
sell cookbooks and not and and and alleviate any tension
over buying something titled How to Be a Domestic Goddess,
which could be seen as a little regressive. Yes, yes,

(35:48):
well then we get Rachel Ray's thirty Minute Meals that
she debuts on a news station out of Albany, New York,
and Food Network just snaps her up. But the thing
is like, she's no dummy, She's know, just like talking
cooking head. Uh. She developed the idea on her own
and shopped it around, amassing a huge cookbooks worth of

(36:10):
recipes along the way. I mean, this woman did put
out a cookbook that was like three d and sixty
five Days of Cooking. So well, I mean, and that
was when she was knee deep in empire building. Even
before that, she had started self publishing sort of like
she had like a very very very small press that
she was working with to um publish her recipes. And

(36:31):
she straight up acknowledges like, yeah, no, I'm not a chef.
I'm just a really hard worker. And thirty Minute Meals
debuted in two thousand one. Four years later, she has
four point five million books in print, a six million
dollar book contract, and four shows in regular rotation. Oh

(36:51):
and a magazine. I mean Rachel Ray's rise to fame
is incredible, but also the hate that that breeded was
also incredible. Yeah. I never I can't say that I
ever had much of an opinion on Rachel Ray. I
didn't watch her because I did think she was a
little bit like overly spunky, and it kind of drove

(37:11):
me crazy, and as someone who didn't really watch cooking
shows anyway, I was like next. But I do have
to admire her for all that lies behind that spunkiness,
which is really just pure strength and determination. Yeah. And
in that New York Times profile addressing all of the
haters because there were and still are, I'm sure so many,

(37:35):
she said I never said I was the greatest thing ever.
I just think people should be able to cook, even
if they don't have a bunch of time or money.
And I think that did mark a big shift in
our pop culture approach to cooking, where everything did become timed,
even if it is in more of an elevated but
still time competitive setting like a Top chef, which is

(37:58):
which is interesting because so here's Rachel Ray, who has
the same idea as Julia Child of like cooking should
be accessible and women should be able to do it
and you should be able to enjoy it and have
fun with it. But she's approaching it from the opposite
way of like take less time, whereas Julia was like,
let's invest more time and really enjoy what we're doing. Yeah, yeah,

(38:20):
I mean like even thinking about their presentation where they are.
Both their sets are in homey places unless it's one
of Rachel's travel shows, but their main sets are very domestic.
They both have the quirky appeal, you know, so they
seem very down to earth, but they are coming at
it from exact opposite vantage points. But Rachel ray Too

(38:45):
was one of the women who was featured in what
is possibly the most ridiculous article I've ever read, which
was in the New York Times in two thousand and seven,
which was all about fashion. That's not surprising. What's so
so weird about that? And it's because it literally was

(39:06):
an entire style piece about how lady chefs on TV
Ladies Celebrity Chefs where v NEX shirts period. Yeah, so
they declared chef whites and aprons are out and v
NEX show just a little bit of cleave. That's shark
for cleavage are the new quote unquote uniform of female

(39:29):
cooking show stars, and it attributes this safer work sexy
V neck trend to Nigella. I would just like to
say that I have been rocking a V neck shirt
for a very long time. It had nothing to do
with Nigella Lawson. Well, Caroline, that's great for you. You
can have your own cooking show now. That man wait um.

(39:50):
And it cites people like Giada, Sandra Lee and also
Rachel Ray who are all wearing I mean, when they
did this side by side photo, it was convincing because
all of them were wearing sfull v NEX three quarter
length sleeves. You could tell that the fabric had a
little bit of a little bit of spandex in it
for shape. And it quotes Vogue Features director Sally Singer

(40:13):
who says to wear an apron now looks old fashioned,
although for a man it can look endearing. And this,
to me, did highlight the major contrast to industrial kitchen
environments where dude chefs in their aprons, in their chef
whites are still seen yes as sexy rock stars, they

(40:33):
are Sally Singer approved, but women chefs in front the
aprons or genderless chef whites are seen as sex less
and sweaty because it's hot. Yeah, and and a woman
being in an apron that just hearkens back to like
your grandmother at the stove. You know, there's nothing like

(40:53):
there's certainly nothing sexy about that. Sorry, I don't know
your grandmother. I remember at the height of Rachel Ray fame,
there were some guys that I knew who did like her.
I mean, she did the Maxim spread, and there were
some guys who, secretly, I don't know that they watched
the show, but they definitely found her whole like cute

(41:16):
girl cooking thing very attractive. Well yeah, I mean she's
the girl next door. She's probably gonna have a beer
with you while she's cooking you whatever, like thirty minute chili. Yeah.
And that was the thing too. She got slammed on.
People are like, it doesn't really take thirty minutes, and
she's like, I know, I know. If you're not like,
you haven't prepped everything, and if you're not Rachel Ray,

(41:36):
of course it's not going to take just thirty minutes. Relax.
But it is interesting to think about that that shift
in how we portray these women. I mean, they really
they aren't chefs. I mean a lot of times they
are cooks. Yes, she'll see Chef Whites on Top Chef,
you'll see it on the Master Chef finales. But their
whole thing is like, these are home cooks, they're not

(41:56):
really chefs. Um and you'll see it on Iron Chef,
but you'll also see it more often on people like
Bobby Flay and Emeral mostly Bam Dudes and and Food Networks.
And Barrel still wears her Chef White's, but I've also
seen her doing the V neck thing. If you start
looking for the V neck, Caroline, it's everywhere, but once

(42:18):
you get inside all of us, it's true until you
hit over fifty and then you get a crisp button down.
Allah in a garden and Martha Stewart, Yeah, iina garden, oh,
I know which. I was sad that we are not
going to get to talk much about Unda Garden at all,
really only this mentioned, but to Da Garden fans, I'm

(42:43):
thinking of her. I like her, and my boyfriend has
a weird opinion on her and listeners. I don't watch
Enah enough to know exactly what he's talking about, So Kristen,
I don't know. Maybe you do. But my boyfriend is
partially convinced that Aina's like trapped in the kitchen and
that she's got some we your relationship with her husband.
And he's like that man, he just like expects her

(43:03):
to do all the cooking. He just leaves her alone
in there. I'm pretty sure she's chained up, and you know,
maybe he's gay. I don't know what's going on between them,
but like, I feel like we need to set Dinah free.
I think Barefoot Contessa is living her best life. I
do too. I was just entertaining all the time. I
was like, boyfriend, how can you think this? Iina looks
like she's having so much fun and she's so pleased
to bring out the tray at the end of the

(43:24):
cooking to feed the people. Super tangent. One of my
favorite things on Twitter is Rock sand Gay live tweeting
Garefoot Contessa. Listeners, if you have not a followed Rock
sand Gay, do that and then please tune in for
her just tweeting about Eina. It's amazing. Well, and I
know Garden is another person who it's not about her

(43:48):
sex appeal. It's not about whether she's a girl next
door or not. It's a woman who's a really great
chef making really relatable meals. Oh but that reminds me
though you say she's a really great chef. When I
mentioned on stuff, I never told you social media that
we were thinking about doing this episode and asking should

(44:09):
we do something on Julia Child or maybe und a
Garden someone sneered in a Garden is just a caterer, which, yeah,
she did start a massively successful catering business and that
is how she got her start. But come on, now,
well okay, I mean I don't know did she go
to culinary school and attain the status of chef? I mean,

(44:32):
I don't know these things, but it seems like a
little harsh to dismiss n a Garden as a caterer
when like, obviously she's an amazing businesswoman and an amazing
cooker of food. Well, and it just gets to the
whole point of these past this episode, in the last
episode that we did on chefs in professional kitchens, where

(44:53):
there is that snobbery where it's like if if you
aren't a chef, if you're just a cook or a caterer,
then you are not worthy of as much respect. Even
if you are incredibly successful, which stinks because I mean traditionally,
as we talked about in our last episode, especially when
you go back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, like

(45:13):
that's how women got their starts, where it was like
home based catering and confectioneries. Well, one thing too, I
did want to mention in this episode is how there
there might be a little bit better representation of women
in cooking on television as opposed to in professional kitchens

(45:34):
where it's what of women are chefs in restaurants, So
regardless of whether they are cooking, catering, or outright chefing,
there is a little bit more gender parity on screen
in terms of who's doing the cooking, who is guiding
us through this meal preparation, compared to the paltry of

(45:57):
women who are head cooks and chefs in restaurants. There
isn't that much diversity. Though. Um that was something that
really was not highlighted in most of the things we read.
But as I was reading and observing and looking at
photos like that New York Times v neck side by
side comparison, I was like, Oh, all these women are white, huh,

(46:23):
and you have a little bit of diversity here and there,
but I don't I would be very surprised if it
were anywhere on par with like our population statistics. Like
it's not representative. No, And and if anyone ever tries
to insert some diversity into any of these networks, it's
always with sort of an eye toward almost stereotyping. Uh.

(46:47):
Tanya Holland was talking to the Chicago Tribune and she says,
even on Food Network, they were dumbing us down. I
was in the soul kitchen, so they wanted me to
act sassy. I'm from suburbia, I'm educated, I have this
plethora of experience. That was not the way I was
going to act. And I will give a shout out
to Top Chef and Master Chef because I do think
those cooking competition shows, probably due to production, have more

(47:12):
diversity within their ranks. But when it comes to those
more Food Network stars, yeah, I mean it's it's pretty
pretty white. Um. I do want to give a quick
shout out though, to Carla Hall, who was on Top
Chef and It's now on. Isn't she the one who
said hoodie who to her husband? Yeah, she's a lady

(47:33):
and she has a cookie business and she is delightful,
and she has parlayed her top chef career into um
TV hosting as well, which is great. But still, I mean,
it's like a handful of examples. So overall, Caroline, considering
all the things we've talked about, We've talked so much

(47:54):
about cooking this week, if we look on screen versus
taking a peek inside brick and mortar kitchens, what do
we think about the gender portrayal. Well, I mean, I
do think it's interesting when you have examples like Nigella Lawson,
Rachel Ray, Sandra Lee, and then you look at people

(48:15):
like Anthony Bourdain Andrew Zimmer and people like guys tend
to be these rugged, kind of snarky adventurer types, um
bad boys of the kitchen, like I'm going to smoke
and get wasted and then talk about food, whereas the
women tend to be very like welcoming and nurturing and

(48:36):
all of the stereotypical stuff that we talked about in
our first episode. Yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways,
I agree. I don't know that it's um challenging gender
roles all that much, not that it necessarily needs to, no,
but I think it it is representative of how we
look at people who cook. Yeah, where it's still guys

(49:00):
and woman is cook she's nourishing and she's homemaking. Still Yeah,
like a guy who cooks and his packing a knife
like he's he's dangerous. He you know, he can do
something amazing, which is be a man with a penis
and cook a meal where his penis with his penis,
whereas women are like, well, that's just what you're supposed
to do. You're not like cool because of it. And

(49:22):
maybe that's part of the appeal. I mean, there is
something soothing about watching some of these shows. There's something
soothing about joining Aina in her garden or in her
kitchen and just watching her prepare food and talk calmly
to the camera. I mean, I don't I don't know.
I mean maybe it's more of like a Pinterest effect
where it's like this is just there's a little bit

(49:44):
of the aspirational self in there, where maybe TV executives
are simply putting forth what they think people want now,
like I would love to see uh oh, Lady Anthony Bourdain,
you know you've got you Well, you had Samantha Brown
who also did travel stuff, but she was so Sacharin,
I would like, Yeah, I'd love to see a lady

(50:05):
Anthony Bourdain. Until then, I guess I'll just watch Anthony
Bourdaine and TV developers. If you're listening, we know a
couple of ladies. You don't smoke, but we will drink
on camera in exotic locations, any food. We can be
real snarky. You haven't heard anything, Well, now I want
to hear from listeners. Really curious to know your favorite
celebrity chefs. Do you love Julia Child as much as

(50:29):
we do? And what do you think about the portrayal
of women cooking on TV? Is it just same old,
same old? Or do you think that it is challenging
our notions of women being in the kitchen and what
that means. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot Com
is our email address. You can also tweet us at
mom stuff podcasts or messages on Facebook. And we've got

(50:51):
a couple of messages to share with you Right now.
I have a letter here from Katie about our juicing episode.
She has a couple of items to put things in perspective.
She says, you didn't make a distinction between juice and smoothies,

(51:14):
but spoke of them is interchangeable. Most of the time.
Smoothies blend the whole fruit and veg so they include
all that lovely fiber, which is great for your intestines,
makes you feel fuller for longer, Plus it slows down
the sugar absorption, so it keeps your blood sugar more stable.
Juicing removes all the fibers, so you get a really
high blood sugar spike, which is no different from eating chocolate,

(51:35):
and it makes your liver work really hard to store
all that excess blood sugar. So stick all that great
fruit and vegetables in your nutribullet or a much cheaper
alternative blender at a scoop of protein power some nuts
or seeds, and a splash of nut or oat or
rice milk to enjoy a feeling healthy lo g I
smoothie ps. And this is in reference to me being like,

(51:56):
I think a juice could be a good addition to
my granola bar break Katie says granola bars can be sugar,
so they aren't a healthy breakfast. Also, you mentioned cost,
making juicing an upper class thing. Classes are a bit
different here. She's over in England. You talked about seven
dollar juices from the shops, or two juices in the
time taken two juice, but not the cost of all

(52:17):
the fruit and vegetables, of which half the goodness, all
that fiber ends up in the bin. Maybe that's the
cheap bit in the US, but soon gets really expensive here.
And yeah, buying all of those fresh fruits and veggies,
and especially if you accidentally let and even go to spoil,
that can add up. So anyway, thank you, Katie. Well,
I've got a letter here from Amy and she was

(52:37):
writing about our women weightlifting episode. She says, I have
a condition where my kneecaps are unstable and occasionally partially
dislocate ouch. I was a lanky, awkward teenager and never
did any exercise, so when I started experiencing knee problems
in my first year of university, I reacted by just
restricting what I did out of fear of provoking a dislocation,

(52:58):
until even standing for five minute knits or walking for
fifteen was a challenge. Eventually, I saw a great physiotherapist
who suggested I get a gym membership rather than boring
repetitive physiotherapy exercises. In addition to low impact cardio she
told me the most important thing for me to do
was build up my leg muscles. I've now been exercising regularly,

(53:18):
including resistance training, for around three years, and Halloween will
mark three years without a dislocation. More than anything else,
resistance training has made a huge positive change in my life,
and I was shocked to hear that such a small
proportion of women didn't. Not only did my kneecap stay put,
but it's also helped hugely with managing my anxiety and
improving sleep. I really think that if I hadn't been

(53:40):
socialized away from exercise gyms and weights and intimidated by
them when I was younger, I would have sought help
for my knees much earlier. And if I'd had a
regular exercise regime to begin with and stronger muscles, my
knees might never have gotten so bad. Thanks for talking
about resistance training, and I hope that more women start
to do it. I still feel like I'm a super
unlikely candidate, but if I can do it and love it,

(54:03):
anybody can. Yeah. I just started doing my first strength
training classes. How did it go. It's going really well.
It's like a lot of circuits, you know, not a
bunch of huge weights. Everybody was really excited to hear
that you and I had done the strength training podcast.
Did you tell them that you don't poke up? Yes,
we told them that you don't poke up. It's true

(54:23):
and all of our listeners have written in to confirm
that too. Yeah. So, if you have let us to
send us mom stuff at how stuff works dot com
is our address and for links to all of our
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and podcast with our sources. So you can read more.
In this instance about women cooking on television, head on

(54:44):
over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for
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