Chef Appeal
11
The equally recent tendency for more men to watch chefs on the Food
Network could be attributed, in part, to the Network’s concerted effort in recent
years to market to them by recalibrating its format with more broadly
entertaining devices, such as competition. The popularity of Iron Chef among
men suggested its effectiveness, and has undoubtedly encouraged the subsequent
frequency of Food Network Challenge shows, featuring everything from
national barbecue cook-offs to international sugar-sculpture championships. But
the increased chef appeal among men, I suspect, has been in the making for
several decades. Most probably, it follows the home kitchen’s declining
identification with only women. The American kitchen has been gradually degendered by the rising frequency of the dual-income household. In 1940, only
25 percent of American women had full- or part-time jobs away from home. By
1974, almost 50 percent of those married with children did. The ranks of women
working outside the home continued to rise, as the climb in the cost of living
that began with the inflationary 1970s made the two-income household ever
more common. Women became Just as too-busy-to-cook on a regular basis as
men. Men became more likely than previously to prepare, microwave, or order
out some of their own or their families’ food. By the 1990s, it was not unusual to
find any family member at some point doing any one of the household chores,
including preparing meals.
The normalcy of men in the kitchen is also, however, the product of a
counter-trend: the longer spans that both men and women spend single. By the
turn of the twenty-first century, the median marriage age had gone up to 27 from
22 among men of the 1950s and to 25 from 20 among women of that decade.
Since these figures represent the total American population, it is reasonable to
infer that those who have prioritized the completion of higher degrees or career
advancement have tended to delay marriage even further. The rising divorce
rate, too, has left more men and women on their own. In The Substance of Stymie
(2003), Virginia Postrel compellingly suggested that, if men and women are
making their own lifestyle decisions over a longer period—and these would
have to include choices in food and cooking—it is inevitable that they more
fully develop their tastes and competencies in these matters independently.
Under these conditions, it is just as likely for a man as for a woman to learn how
to cook from cooking shows, and thus to end up admiring chefs. Hence, perhaps,
the recent rise of the “metrosexual,” why cooking classes have become the latest
in date fads, and the otherwise improbable Enieril Live spectacle of a roomful of
dudes cheering for a lasagna.
So it became historically possible for the public in question to idolize
chefs. By tracing the whens, hows, and whos of chef appeal, it has become
evident that the trend coincides with an historically unprecedented disparity
between the experiences and conditions of food production and those of
consumption. The pattern suggests a broader principle: The less people are
required to produce, or are acquainted with the realities of producing what they
have an inverse means and desire to consume, the more possible it becomes for