Tag: Gender and Food Week

Gender & Food Week: ‘Simply Irresistible’

Guest post written by Janyce Denise Glasper.
Simply Irresistible was one forgotten film of the late 90’s. It’s bewitching story failed to spark box office or critical praise thanks to a weak script dropping many unexplained plot points — who the heck was Gene O’ Reily, why did Amanda buy expensive crabs from him, and what was up with the freaking animated crab?
And those were just the introduction problems. However, let’s forget about all that for a moment and talk about food romance.

At the film’s beginning, handed down the reins and lacking the expertise that her deceased mother had to make the restaurant Southern Cross thrive, Amanda Shelton (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a terrible chef (or in her words “shitty”) and because of that, the financially troubled restaurant will be closing.

Enter Harry Bendel’s savvy businessman Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery). Earlier introduced to Amanda by the strange Gene O’Reily who also moonlights as a taxi cab driver, Tom and his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, Chris (Amanda Peet) are unceremoniously dropped off at the Southern Cross.

Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Amanda Shelton (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Simply Irresistible
When he comes into the restaurant with the crisply dressed, superior quality female, suddenly jealous Amanda’s cooking skills come out to play. With the snap of a whip, she has the ability of a kitchen ninja making a fantastic crab napoleon and chicken paillard for the couple on her first try.
To the sounds of jazz and upbeat pop, soon after Tom’s visit and success at crafting a pleasant meal, Amanda looks very happy, bursting out deliciously appealing cuisine that have nothing to do with southern comfort. That “old black magic” is supposedly the reason for Amanda’s glory as the newly hopping restaurant has boasting customers shuffling in and out, possibly by word of mouth, claiming that she makes exceptional food.
Amanda thinks otherwise.

Tom, the commitment phobic rich man, is much too practical and considers dating a business deal, often relating the two together in a creepily obsessive manner. He takes an immediate shining to Amanda, complimenting that crab napoleon, but the magic starts to wear off fast.

Amanda (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Tom (Sean Patrick Flanery) in Simply Irresistible
For as Amanda and Tom discover each other in a magical way — imaginary dancing on a striped ballroom floor high on caramel éclairs, sharing kisses on a vanilla fogged ground, and unpeeling oranges that cause floating up to ceilings — she is stuck on him, he is bothered by it, dumps her, and she doesn’t take the “breakup” too well. In other words, she feels that he is responsible for her sudden rise to culinary fame. “I don’t know if I need you to keep that feeling,” she says wretchedly, desperate to keep him around.
The worst way to upset the female audience is to imply that a woman needed a man. Unless Judith Roberts is the new masculine name, I didn’t understand why the screenwriter had Amanda clinging to Tom in an almost sickening manner. She isn’t given an opportunity to truly relish in her food joy because she is constantly thinking about Tom. Yes, the viewers are aware that before Tom she lacked kitchen talent, but wouldn’t it have been far more amusing if Amanda’s bad cooking was just a mental barrier from her realizing her potential stemmed from trying to live up her mother’s expectations? Why else was her mother mentioned much, but not fully illustrated? 
But no. Tom is the reason Amanda can cook. 
That is what we and the two of them are supposed to get. If Tom left, Amanda’s passion would dwindle away and the Southern Cross would be back up on the reality market. Sadly enough, Amanda doesn’t have any female friends or a motherly figure to socialize with. Often she asks her sous chef, Nolan (Larry Gilliard Jr.) for advice, especially when it came to her relationship with Tom and that became a problem. Nolan didn’t even believe in her talents after the first meal, jokingly stating that she should stick with making sugar cookies.

Amanda (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Simply Irresistible
Oh, it was a beautiful sentiment that whatever feelings Amanda possessed came right into her food and emerged into other people — to the “simple” chicken paillard that had Chris acting like a crazy dish breaking diva to the sexually charged caramel éclairs that had everyone at Bendel’s acting on suppressed sensual impulses. However, towards the ending when she receives the offer of a lifetime cooking up a storm for the influential and the rich, she brings more emotional turmoil to the menu that gets to be a quite bizarre. 
Would anyone want someone drowning out their tears into their food? Highly doubt that. It wouldn’t be considered sanitary. 
As far as performances go, Gellar had a few gem worthy moments, but lacked a certain charismatic chemistry with Flanery, but the witty Patricia Clarkson presented a real scene treat that kept this film from being complete fluffy fodder.

Lois (Patricia Clarkson) in Simply Irresistible

Her supporting character, Lois, a feisty woman pining lustily after Bendel heir Jonathan (Dylan Baker), stole the show and Tom’s box of Amanda’s famous éclairs that he himself had snatched away from an old lady. In this hilarious scene, she relishes her thievery. “Gotta learn to share Tom,” she chirps, devouring the stolen dessert and moaning her pleasure while Tom is left to lick caramel residue from the empty box.

If Clarkson had more scenes with Gellar, Lois would have certainly been a beneficial female companion to naïve Amanda. It seems like the most important element of the film is that Tom’s confidante be a woman and that Amanda’s advisor be a male.

Though Simply Irresistible leaves on a clichéd note and more silly goofiness — like are we supposed to believe that a girl could have her makeup and hair done after hours? — it still serves up a dish of possibilities. Certainly not the best of the romantic genre nor the worst, this film’s minute charm and cheesiness is the stuff greasy pizza is made of.
Well, if women consumed pizza with their chick flick watching that is.
———-
Janyce Denise Glasper is a writer/artist running two silly blogs of creative adventures called Sugarygingersnap and AfroVeganChick. She enjoys good female centric film, cute rubber duckies, chocolate covered everything (except bugs!), Days of Our Lives, and slaying nightly demons Buffy style in Dayton, Ohio.

Gender & Food Week: ‘The Hunger Games’ Review in Conversation: Female Protagonists, Body Image, Disability, Whitewashing, Hunger & Food

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games

This Review in Conversation on The Hunger Games with Megan Kearns and Amber Leab previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on April 19, 2012.

Megan’s Take:
In a dystopian future, the nation of Panem stands where North America once existed. The government at the Capitol, which controls the country, mandates a girl and boy between the ages of 12 and 18 are selected by lottery in each of the 12 Districts as tributes to compete in a fight to the death called the Hunger Games aired on live television. 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen volunteers when her little sister Prim’s name is called. But in the Hunger Games, only one person can survive.

I devoured The Hunger Games trilogy, reading all 3 books in a matter of 2 days. Katniss descends from a line of strong literary female protagonists (Karana in Island of the Blue Dolphins, Miyax in Julie of the Wolves, Jo March in Little Women, Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables, Jane Eyre, Meg Murray in A Wrinkle in Time, Hermione Granger in Harry Potter) for young adult readers. The story echoes themes in The Lottery, The Most Dangerous Game, Gladiator, 1984, Island of the Blue Dolphins and Battle Royale, yet forges a new path. The female-centric series’ haunting themes – poverty, war, sacrifice, love, starvation, media influence, government control, class difference, and economic inequity – riveted me. The books’ memorable characters lingered long after I closed the pages. I didn’t want to say goodbye. So my expectations for the film were high when I saw the midnight premiere.
Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss
While other female film franchises exist, no female-centric movies aside from Twilight, Bridesmaids and Mamma Mia have experienced this meteoric success. Some people pit Katniss and Bella against each other as if there isn’t room in this world for both. While I’m no fan of the Twilight Saga (I’ll admit it makes me want to gouge my eyes out), putting them in a dichotomy implies girls and women can only identify with either Katniss OR Bella, not both or neither. Thankfully, others question this comparison.

I thought the movie was fantastic. I often lament the lack of strong female protagonists in film. We desperately need more characters like Katniss on-screen. A skilled archer, Katniss is smart, stubborn, brave, abrasive and self-reliant. She not only fights for her own survival; she’s compelled to protect her family. Living in the most impoverished neighborhood in the poorest of the 12 Districts, Katniss is the resourceful breadwinner, illegally hunting for food to feed her family. She’s a surrogate mother to her sister Prim and even her own traumatized mother, grief-stricken over the death of her daughters’ father. Despite her tough exterior, she possesses a vulnerability. What makes Katniss unique is that she “feels empathy when nobody else does.” She’s compelled to defend others, even her competition.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss

Jennifer Lawrence’s powerful performance as the “Girl on Fire” has been lauded by critics. And rightfully so. She’s stunning, perfectly conveying strength, rage, fear, and vulnerability through her body language, a flick of her eyes, never needing to utter a single word. She trained in archery, free running, yoga, climbing and combat. Regarding Lawrence’s casting as Katniss, director Gary Ross, moved by her powerful audition, called it “the easiest casting decision” of his life. Author Collins also fully supported Lawrence as Katniss. 
The casting call, however, wanted an “underfed but strong” actor, and was limited only to “Caucasian” women. What. The. Fuck. I mean really, Hollywood?? No, women of color could even audition?! Collins describes Katniss’ appearance in the book as olive skinned with black hair. Hello…that could be tons of female actors of color! Why the hell must she be white?! You’re going to exclude young women of color and, on top of that, you only want malnourished-looking women?! Yes, starvation is a vital issue in the series. But in the book, Katniss says she possesses lean muscles from hunting. 
Lawrence is receiving an assload of toxic bodysnarking from the misogynisitc media. The NY Times’ Mahnola Dargis claimed “her seductive, womanly figure makes a bad fit for a dystopian fantasy about a people starved into submission,”Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy commented on her “lingering baby fat,” Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells accuses Lawrence of being “big-boned” and “seems too big for Hutcherson” as male romantic partners should at least be as tall as their female counterparts (heaven forbid a woman is bigger or taller than her love interest…gasp!). The media constantly tells women we must be skinny. This toxicity destroys women’s body image.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss
Amber’s Take:
I agree with all your comments on Katniss being a strong female protagonist, and what a relief it is for a franchise fronted by a young woman to win the box office (as of this writing) four weeks in a row. Although the Twilight comparisons irk me, too, they almost seem inevitable, as so few big Hollywood releases have featured female protagonists. As with so many Hollywood franchises, however, this one takes a small step forward: a strong young woman is in the lead, but she is whitewashed to “play it safe” with the viewing public. Although the film is set in—and was filmed in–modern-day Appalachia, I see no reason why the lead needed to be “Caucasian.”
I have to talk about the “body snarking,” because while I would never call Jennifer Lawrence “too big” to play Katniss, she is older than Katniss. The 17-year-old Lawrence who starred in Winter’s Bone would have been a more convincing 16-year-old Katniss than the actor at age 21. Women in their 20s playing teenagers certainly isn’t a new thing (how many times have you watched a movie or TV show and noticed twenty-somethings playing high school students?), but the tendency for this to happen does create unrealistic expectations for teenage girls and conflate girlhood with womanhood. I think this problem will only become more apparent in the following two films of the series, too.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss

Much has been said about Lawrence’s body, but I’m not really interested in analyzing it—the incessant discussion of female bodies is part of the problem. What I do want to discuss is the film’s handling of food and hunger (a conversation I think many people are sincerely trying to have who end up derailing into critiques of Lawrence’s body). Everyone in District 12 is hungry, including Katniss. Winning the Hunger Games isn’t just about surviving; it’s also about bringing extra food home to your district—especially important for the poorer areas. The Capitol uses hunger as a political tool—a fact that doesn’t come through clearly enough in the movie. (An anecdote: The person who saw the movie with me didn’t understand why it was called The Hunger Games.)

In the book, Katniss eats and enjoys the plentiful food provided to her in the lead up to the game. She finds a particular lamb stew rich and delicious and she enjoys eating it until she’s full. For a girl who’s been hungry much of her life, the food available on that train trip would be irresistible. Yet in the movie, Katniss seems uninterested, even immune to the lavish spread. Is there a reason Katniss can’t enjoy a hearty stew to fortify herself for the impending game?  This de-emphasis of food changes the character of the story dramatically. Remember the moment when Gale presents a roll to Katniss in the woods and she exclaims “Is this real?!” and they break the roll to enjoy together? The berries Katniss and Peeta threaten to eat in their Romeo-and-Juliet-style sabotage of the game? The story of nourishment and consumption takes a major hit when the movie doesn’t permit Katniss to eat and enjoy food and, for me, this might trump whatever positive body-image message might be implied by the decision to cast Lawrence without regard to the “underfed” description in the casting call, and without regard to her adult status.

Megan’s Take:
I didn’t really have a problem with Lawrence being older than Katniss. Although I totally agree about the concern for girls “conflating girlhood with womanhood.” But I suppose it didn’t bother me so much because Katniss is never sexualized. She cares about archery, not what she’s wearing. While Katniss receives a pageant-style makeover, so do the male tributes. While it hints at it, I just wish the movie had conveyed the book’s satire of toxic beauty standards.
I could NOT agree more with you on the themes of hunger and food or rather how they’re severely diminished almost to the point of erasure in the film. As a feminist vegan, I’m passionate about food justice and our relationship with food. Food and hunger are vital themes in the trilogy. Food is used as a reward while withholding food a punishment wielded as a weapon against Panem’s citizens. While the movie hints at these themes through the Capitol’s citizens’ garish costumes versus District 12’s simple garb or the lavishness of food at the Capitol, it doesn’t fully capture the book’s themes of food justice, food shortages, hunger and class inequities.

Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket and Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen
It’s rare to see an impoverished protagonist and a film contend with economic inequities. Even within the impoverished District 12, there are class distinctions. In the book, Katniss tells Peeta he doesn’t understand her desire to not owe anyone anything because he’s not from the Seam, the poorest neighborhood in District 12. The reason Gale had his name in the Reaping 42 times was so he could obtain more rations for his family. Katniss continually describes food and she always gorges herself like she’ll never eat again…because she doesn’t know if she will. 
Jennifer Lawrence and Amandla Stenberg as Rue

I too didn’t understand the de-emphasis of food and hunger. In reality, 1 in 6 children suffer from hunger. And I too loved Collins’ descriptions of food, like Katniss relishing her favorite nourishing lamb (dislike) stew with dried plums (yum!) and the sweetness of hot chocolate touching her lips for the first time. And of course there was the continual symbol of bread — the warm and fragrant bread accompanied by Prim’s cheese Katniss eats with Gale, or Peeta’s burned bread that saves her life years earlier, or District 11 sending Katniss a loaf of bread for her alliance with Rue (who was from District 11) as a symbol of solidarity and quiet revolution, which the film eliminates, showing the citizens (many of whom are people of color) rioting instead. 

Society equates food with morality — healthy food is good, decadent food sinful. While eating should be a sensual experience, through diet ads the media constantly tells us that women shouldn’t enjoy food. Food is constantly a threat to women’s bodies and we must resist its seductive allure. That’s why it was so refreshing to read Katniss’ delight in savoring food.
Beyond nourishment, I saw hunger serving as a metaphor for consumption — consumption of merchandise and media with its gravitational pull of reality TV and celeb culture. To eliminate the message of food, hunger and consumption dilutes its powerful message.
Speaking of parts eliminated from the book, I was disappointed the film eliminated the leads’ disabilities. In the book, Katniss loses her hearing, becoming deaf in one ear, and Peeta has his leg amputated. The movie hints at her hearing loss with sound effects but doesn’t actually address it. People often say that losing their hearing would be the end of the world but Katniss must adapt as a hunter and survive. It’s also a powerful message that in the book the Capitol “fixes” people’s disabilities without their consent. Sadly, it says even more that the film erases disabilities altogether. The fact that a movie can’t have a disabled protagonist or a disabled love interest is pathetic.
Amber’s Take:
The film really diminished a lot of powerful themes and messages from the book, and I couldn’t agree more with you about minimizing injury, or what equates to erasure of disability. Ironic that the book has the Capitol “fixing” disability, but the film itself erases it–making the filmmakers the Capitol. We — the viewers — are already in the uncomfortable position of watching the Games much like the Capitol citizens (something else the film minimizes, I think).

In a way, it’s funny that we haven’t really talked about violence, and how — in order to get a PG-13 rating — the film sanitized violence. The books are intended for a Young Adult audience, but are filled with brutal murders. The movie is, too, and I think we could see the de-emphasis of violence as either positive or negative: Positive in that the movie doesn’t glorify violence, or depict it graphically (which movies do too much of in general), but bad in that the movie isn’t as dark or complex as it could have been. While I realize that a filmmaker must make difficult choices when adapting a book (series), every choice made about The Hunger Gamesmade it safer — and more likely to not put off, offend, or disturb mainstream viewers. In essence, making it a successful blockbuster.

———-  
Amber Leab is a writer living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a Master’s degree in English & Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati and a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature & Creative Writing from Miami University. Outside of Bitch Flicks, her work has appeared in The Georgetown Review, on the blogs Shakesville, The Opinioness of the World, and I Will Not Diet, and at True Theatre.

Megan Kearns is a Bitch Flicks Editor and Staff Writer. She’s a feminist vegan blogger and freelance writer living in Boston. Megan blogs about gender, media, food and politics at The Opinioness of the World, a feminist vegan site she founded. She writes about gender, media and reproductive justice as a Regular Blogger at Fem2pt0. Megan’s work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Everyday Feminism, Feminist Magazine on KPFK radio, Feministing’s Community Blog, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, A Safe World for Women and Women and Hollywood. You can follow her on Twitter at @OpinionessWorld.

Gender & Food Week: A Woman’s Place in the Kitchen: The Cinematic Tradition of Cooking to Catch a Man

Meryl Streep and Steve Martin in It’s Complicated
This guest post is written by Jessica Freeman-Slade.

Early in the 1954 film Sabrina — the original, starring Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart — the titular ingenue finds herself at a cooking school in Paris. Sent over as a gift from her father’s employer, the wealthy Larabee family, Sabrina continues to nurse her crush on the younger Larabee son, David (William Holden), even from Paris, and it shows in her cooking. The head chef inspects her souffle, and declares it “Much too low.” “I don’t know what happened,” she moans pitifully to herself. “I know what happened,” her colleague, a much older French gentleman, says, “You forgot to turn on the oven.” She cries out, and he guesses that she is in love—unhappily in love. “A woman happily in love, she burns the souffle. A woman unhappily in love, she forgets to turn on the oven.”

Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina
As centuries of unequal domestic duties have shown us, women who are happy in the kitchen must, by extension, be happy in love. Having fallen in love with the 1995 version of Sabrina long before seeing the original, I had assumed that Sabrina’s (Julia Ormond) maturity and allure upon returning from Paris were indebted to a haircut, long walks by the Seine, and a new passion for photography — not a new talent at whipping up souffles in perfect capris and ballet flats. The ascription of her romantic desirability to her talent with food is an uncomfortable, backward narrative, one that’s hard to escape from even in modern cinema.Young women have heard throughout time that “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” and film and television have done an excellent job of backing up this assumption. Not all women who can cook were taught to do so at the behest of future matchmakers, but the prevailing attitude, taught to us in women’s magazines and through the constant refrain of mainstream narratives, is that if you catch a man, you’d better make a decent meal. The loathsome popularity of dishes such as “engagement chicken” carry with them the promise that women need only master the kitchen to hook a man. DIY domesticity, maybe, or just cooking to couple up, but either way, it’s an uncomfortably old-fashioned message.

Cooking has always been a creative act, no matter who’s doing the dishes — it requires careful thought, imagination, and precision. It is, in short, one of the most skilled professions that anyone can take on, and also one of the most generous professions, because it requires thinking deeply about another person’s needs and desires. However, when a woman cooks for a man, and in doing so wins his heart, the woman appears conventionally domestic and feminine — traditional in her skill sets, understanding of her appropriate role in the house and in the relationship, and so subservient to the man’s needs. When a woman cooks on film, even when she cooks something extraordinary, there’s something profoundly submissive when she does it to please a man.

Ruth Younger (Ruby Dee) and Walter (Sidney Poitier) in A Raisin in the Sun

In the very beginning of the 1961 film A Raisin in the Sun, Ruth Younger (Ruby Dee) is trying to stir her husband Walter (Sidney Poitier) to start his day — he wants to talk about his dreams, his ambition, and she keeps reminding him to eat his breakfast. He lambasts her for her intolerance, but her means of affecting change — and her means of keeping the family together — have been limited to the kitchen.

Like Water for Chocolate
But cooking for a man, as shown on film, isn’t without its rewards — for good food is one of the best (and cheapest) means of seduction. When someone takes you into their kitchen, hands you a glass of wine, and promises you a delicious meal, it’s a method of flirtation that’s hard to resist. The pairing of womanly passion and culinary skills has been present as long as women’s emotions were captured in fiction: because a woman’s place has been primarily in the kitchen, her expression of whatever feelings or agency she may have comes by way of what she cooks. Look at the way Tita expresses her passion in Like Water for Chocolate, her emotions dripping into the food and infusing each bite with lust, sorrow, and joy. Her desires, forbidden by her family, cannot help but find their way into her cooking.(When this is later adapted into the romantic comedy Simply Irresistible, Sarah Michelle Gellar’s restaurant chef is accused of being a witch, manipulating her love object with the delicious meals she prepares. Just as women would be kept out of the boardroom for fear of their emotions, so too is she kept from running her own kitchen.)

This impulse, to cook to incite pleasure and admiration, even surfaces in more modern films when women would be seemingly more self-sufficient. As recently as 2011’s It’s Complicated, Meryl Streep’s pastry chef gets to be the object of two men’s lusts, in part, in no small part because she’s a spectacular cook. The scene of her late-night date with a new love interest (Steve Martin), where she makes him chocolate croissants from scratch, shows her at her most ebullient (and sexiest) throughout the film. And it’s only a few scenes later that her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) tells his kids that their mother is the “best cook in the world.” Her talent equals her desirability, displayed in her gift to create a warm, indulgent space for the men in her life.

These scenes aren’t so disquieting on their own—after all, who wouldn’t want to be served a meal infused with lust, or have Meryl Streep bake you croissants at 2am? But the inverted message also comes that, when a woman lacks warmth or compassion, it shows in her cooking.

In Clueless, as Cher (Alicia Silverstone) prepares for a date, her voiceover tells us that “When a boy is coming over, you should always have something baking.” The punchline is then seeing her unwrap an entire roll of frozen cookie dough and dropping it onto a baking sheet. (No surprise later that the entire roll burns to a crisp. “Aw, honey, you baked,” her date condescends. “I tried,” she whimpers.)

The heroine in Mostly Martha, the spectacular 2001 German film, is a good cook, the head chef of a great restaurant, but her cooking doesn’t translate when she has to take care of her niece, Lina. It takes a more genial Italian sous-chef (and Martha’s future love interest) to get the child to eat, and instead of a sophisticated dish, it’s a simple plate of spaghetti that does the trick.

Where Martha’s ambition is rewarded in the restaurant world, it’s punished when she has to act as a surrogate mother (and potential girlfriend). Only once she’s later softened in the film does her cooking — and her parenting — relax to the point of acceptance. But in reality, women don’t just cook for themselves — most of the time, the act of cooking is done as an expression of survival, rather than seduction. Preparing a meal is one indication that a person is fully self-sufficient. It’s a biased opinion, I know, but I raise an eyebrow at anyone, male or female, who tells me that they don’t ever cook for themselves. While making boeuf bourguignon or baking a seven-layer cake takes a greater level of culinary ambition, preparing a series of simple, satisfying dishes show the difference between someone who can take care of themselves, and someone who requires a babysitter.

Amelie (Audrey Tautou) in Amelie

The brief scene in Amelie of the heroine preparing her dinner shows us what adulthood looks like — even when adulthood also comes with skipping stones and playing pranks on the local butcher. And no model proves more inspiring than Janette deSautel, the female chef from HBO’s Treme, whose narrative about her New Orleans’s restaurant is entirely without romantic motivation. Even when her restaurant crumbles due to the post-Katrina economy, she rebuilds her reputation in the hard-scrabble New York restaurant scene. By bringing her New Orleans roots to bear in standout dishes at David Chang’s fictionalized restaurant Lucky Peach, she reestablishes herself as a chef to watch — and finds a new avenue toward her culinary career back in her hometown.

Chef Janette deSautel (Kim Dickens) in Treme
Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and Eric Powell (Chris Messina) in Julie & Julia

And finally, there is Julie & Julia, the story of a modern-day woman (Julie Powell, played by Amy Adams) finding inspiration in Julie Child (Meryl Streep, yet again), and using cooking to dig herself out of her personal and professional ennui. Cooking in this story threatens to tear Julie’s marriage apart — not for her lack of skill, but her preoccupation with what the cooking might mean. Her husband (Chris Messina) doesn’t mind being fed, but he does mind her obsession with letting her cooking skill transform her life. When redemption comes, you know it’s arrived when her husband gives in, asking with a smile “What’s for dinner?” Food becomes a means of personal empowerment, rather than seduction…even if it’s ultimately the husband being fed. And, at least in Julie & Julia, it puts the husband in the role of the sous chef, the kitchen support system, even when the cook is melting down over her lack of trussing ability.

So we’re getting a lot of mixed messages here — can a woman ever cook on film without it looking old-fashioned? Will preparing a meal ever been completely self-satisfying, for the benefit of the chef rather than the diner? Or, like an apron, will the function of cooking on film be forever tied to an expression of gender norms and traditional divisions of domestic labor? I don’t know if we can ever really have much of a distance from Sabrina’s souffle, for depictions of cooking will almost always be expressions of generosity, love, and compassion, no matter who holds the whisk. But for now, I’m hoping for more characters like Janette and Julie, cooking for their own satisfaction and survival rather than someone else’s. That, at least, is a dish that can be served any time of the year.
Jessica Freeman-Slade is a cookbook editor at Random House, and has written reviews for The Rumpus, The Millions, The TK Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Specter Magazine, among others. She lives in Morningside Heights, NY.

Gender & Food Week: ‘Life is Sweet’

Guest post written by Alisande Fitzsimons.

Trigger warning: A large part of this post discusses a character who is suffering
from Bulimia.
In many ways Mike Leigh’s 1991 film Life is Sweet should not be extraordinary. An almost entirely improvised piece, it takes place in a working class family home in the unremarkable London suburb of Enfield.
The preparation and consumption of food is a running theme throughout the film. Family man Andy (Jim Broadbent) is a chef in a large, anonymous corporation who, at the start of the film, buys a fast food van* in order to fulfill his ambition to work for himself. Soon after that, his buoyantly optimistic wife Wendy (played charmingly by Alison Steadman) takes a waitressing job at the Regret Rien, a Parisienne-themed eatery that a friend of the couple has recently opened.
The couple’s twin daughters also demonstrate an interest in food, albeit in very different ways. Nicola (Jane Horrocks), a tiny chain-smoking bulimic, binges and purges sweets and chocolate every night, seemingly punishing herself for a crime that’s never revealed. Her sister Natalie has a stereotypically normal relationship with food — managing to sit and eat with her parents, when her sister never can — but works as a plumber, something which was still seen as a bit icky, and not a suitable job for a woman in Britain in the early 90’s. And yes, that was because she may have had to come into contact with human waste.
In spite of its seemingly mundane subject matter, Leigh’s film is superb. Naturalistic to the point where it could be a fly-on-the-wall documentary, it’s also brilliant in its depictions of parts of the female experience that many films approach in ways that make them seem gimmicky.
A young woman with an eating disorder lashing out at everyone around her but never hurting them more than she does herself? Check. A mother desperately trying to stay strong and support her mentally ill child, in spite of the frustration that child’s self-destructive tendencies cause? Check. A closeted lesbian dreaming of escape but ultimately remaining stable and strong for everyone around her? Check.
And that says nothing of Andy, the hard-working but mildly baffled father figure. And yet, despite the tropes and the presentation of these character’s lives as “tragi-comic” none of it is tacky, or even remotely depressing. It is in fact an unusually uplifting watch.
[*Fast food vans may be a British phenomenon. They are mobile kitchens, which park on the side of busy roads and serve snacks such as burgers, bacon sandwiches, baked potatoes and hot dogs to passers-by. Considered low-class, their offerings are typically delicious.]
Family Dynamics
L-R: Nicola (Jane Horrocks) and Wendy (Alison Steadman) in Life is Sweet
To my mind, this film’s main characters are Wendy and Nicola. Although she is undoubtedly a loving mother to both her girls, most of Wendy’s time and energy is taken up by Nicola, and Nicola’s seemingly needless rage at the world around her.
Natalie, though often present — and an interesting depiction of a lesbian who remains closeted — is side-lined while the film-maker and characters concentrate on her sister’s struggle with an eating disorder. Her apparent contentment with her life and realistic ambitions (she wants to take a holiday in America) mean that she does not demand a lot of attention from anyone, including the viewer. Readers who’ve lived with such an illness, or someone suffering from one, may recognise the reality of this on-screen scenario.
Andy, despite being the one family member who gets to fulfill an ambition in the film, also plays second fiddle to his wife and mentally ill daughter. It’s possibly because he spends much of his time either daydreaming or at work, and is thus unaware of the extent of Nicola’s misery, and his wife’s increasing concerns about it.
Wendy and Andy, it’s revealed, struggled to raise their children. There was never enough money, forcing Andy to remain in a job he “hated” for years to support them, while his wife could not pursue her goal of completing a university education. That one of their children reacts to her life – which is, after all, largely funded by her parents’ catering jobs – by developing bulimia nervosa is an obvious manifestation of self-loathing.
Nicola becomes increasingly reclusive and agitated throughout the film, abusing her father for being a “capitalist” when he invests in the fast food van, and refusing to sit with her family at meal times or even mix with anyone outside the family home.
Throughout the film she conceals her bulimia from both of her parents, only agreeing to tell her parents about it in the film’s final scene. Her twin has known about it – and about the locked suitcase full of sweets and chocolate she keeps under the bed – because she hears her bingeing then purging each night, a painful secret she keeps not simply because she loves her sister, but because she also has no idea what to do.
In one scene, Nicola has a blazing argument with Wendy that indicates that she may finally be ready to recover. Shame-faced, Nicola screams that she knows how much the whole family hates her, and that is why they’re trying to force her to eat with them/ mix with other people/ live her life.
Exasperated, her mother snaps, “We don’t hate you! We bloody love you, you stupid girl!” reducing Nicola to tears.
It’s an exchange that cuts to the core of their relationship, and to the thinking of an eating-disorder sufferer. If they loved her, Nicola thinks, they’d let her fulfill the death wish the disease implants in sufferers. Her family, though not entirely aware of what’s going on, love her too much to let her fulfil that particular ambition.
Nicola’s Behaviour
Nicola (Jane Horrocks) in Life is Sweet

Like many bulimics, Nicola hides much of her illness from her family. Its most obvious manifestation is probably her refusal to eat with them at mealtimes, which could easily be taken for rudeness rather than any kind of secretiveness.
One of the more interesting — or just salacious — quirks of her disorder is that food is essential to her sexuality. She cannot become aroused unless her lover (David Thewlis) ties her up and licks chocolate spread from her chest. It’s as if even when in the middle of sex with a man who genuinely cares about her, when she should finally be able to indulge herself without punishment, she is still determined to deny herself. Granted, the metaphors in this film aren’t particularly hard to decipher.
I’ve already mentioned that she keeps a locked suitcase full of sweets and chocolate under her bed, which she uses to abuse her body with each night, stuffing herself full of them before plunging her fingers down her throat in order to bring all that food back up. It’s not until one has had an illness that causes repeated vomiting (this is my last reference to puke, I promise) that one realises how much bulimia nervosa is an act of self-abuse.
To deliberately and repeatedly purge day-in-day-out for months or even years at a time is to truly hate oneself because it is such a horrible experience. Jane Horrocks’ depiction of this level of self-hatred and the harm a person can do to their own body is truly insightful.
I don’t want to recommend this film to anyone who’s suffering or is in recovery from an eating disorder in case it is triggering, but I have heard sufferers say that Horrocks’ performance helped their loved ones to understand the realities of their disorder. I thought that was worth mentioning.
The Regret Rien
L-R: Aubrey (Timothy Spall) and Wendy (Alison Steadman) in Life is Sweet

A little way into the film, Wendy takes a job at the Regret Rien, a restaurant that’s just been opened by a family friend. Parisienne-themed and — there’s no way around this — as clichéd as fuck, the Regret Rien is also in possession of one of the most revolting menus in modern cinema (and I’m including films in which

characters cannibalise each other in that).
A quick sample of what’s on the menu: Saveloy on a Bed of Lychees, Liver in Lager, Pork Cyst, Prune Quiche, King Prawn in Jam Sauce, Tongues in a Rhubarb Hollandaise, Tripe Soufflé, Chilled Brains, Prune Quiche, Grilled Trotter with Eggs Over Easy.
Pork cyst, for God’s sake. And Tripe Souffle.
Apparently meant as a parody of the nouvelle cuisine trend that swept British restaurants in the early 1990’s, it’s not much of a surprise the venture looks set to fail. Its pretentious menu and clichéd décor are directly contrasted with the plain and much more popular food served up by Andy’s fast food van.
By the end of the film the viewer comes, in no uncertain terms, to like the family depicted in it (even Nicola), and a lot of their likeability comes from the fact that they are “salt of the earth” people who aren’t pulled in by gimmicks such as the push bike that sits in the bay window of the Regret Rien.
That’s not to put down working class people with a love of French cuisine, and a dislike of fast food. It’s just to point out that when it comes to cooking, the simplest recipes — like the simplest people — are often the best.
Conclusion
There’s a lot of food in Life Is Sweet, most of it — from the chocolate that Nicola purges to the burgers Andy cooks up, to the vile cuisine Wendy is meant to be serving — bad. But there’s also masses of love.
As I’ve admitted, the metaphors Mike Leigh employs aren’t particularly hard to decipher. But this is a lovely film, a film that takes a mostly realistic look at the difficulties life throws at us and points out that as long as we ignore the pretentious, over-complicated rubbish in favour of the people who love us enough to support us through them, we will be okay.
———-
Alisande Fitzsimons likes to eat. She blogs regularly at xoJane.co.uk and tweets about it @AlisandeF.

Gender & Food Week: Pop-Tarts and Pizza: Food, Gender, and Class in ‘Gilmore Girls’

Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) in Gilmore Girls

Guest post written by Brianna Low.

Throughout Gilmore Girls’ seven seasons, mother and daughter duo Lorelai and Rory Gilmore are often seen eating vast quantities of junk food and ordering copious amounts of take out, which they consume together, often in front of the TV. From the series’ pilot episode it is made clear that neither Lorelai nor Rory have any interest in cooking, and the only things in their refrigerator are frozen fish sticks and leftover take out boxes. Their idiosyncratic approach to food is framed as just another endearing quirk instead of irresponsible, unhealthy, or an example of bad parenting.
While it could be argued that it is somewhat progressive of the Gilmore Girls series to portray two women who have no hang-ups about publicly consuming large amounts of food, it is important to remember that despite their voracious appetites, Rory and Lorelai are still conventionally attractive, thin, white women. Living in the quirky, depoliticized utopia of Stars Hollow, there is no real examination of the way in which the Gilmore’s racial and class privilege exempt them from the social condemnation that is frequently directed at poor single mothers and women of color whose food choices or weight are often criticized without any real consideration to the inequalities in accessibility to healthy, affordable food. Poor single mothers who rely on social programs like food stamps and have children who suffer from obesity and other related health problems are often publicly vilified for being irresponsible, unfit mothers despite the well-documented structural inequalities in food access and affordability.
Despite their objectively unhealthy diets, Rory and Lorelai manage to escape this specific stigma, both within the context of the show and in its outside criticism; this is due largely, I would argue, to their privilege and even the size of their bodies. While I don’t personally find it problematic that Rory and Lorelai are allowed to eat whatever they want with relative impunity, I do think it is important to place their unhealthy-diet-as-plot-device into a larger social and political context when critically examining the relationship between gender and food within the series.

Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) in Gilmore Girls; image via Emily Grenfell
Lorelai and Rory are not the only ones in the Gilmore Girls universe that have well-documented relationships with food. The diets of many of the supporting cast are intrinsic parts of their identities and function as important aspects of their characterization. The mother of Rory’s best friend Lane, Mrs. Kim, is a strict vegan who makes her daughter drink salad water instead of soda. Michele Gerard, concierge of the Independence and Dragonfly Inn, is a health nut that exhibits an almost fanatical devotion to calorie counting and exercise. The diets of these characters in contrast to Rory and Lorelai’s junk food addiction seem to highlight the drastic differences in the way the Gilmore girls like to eat.

Of all of the supporting characters that are connected in some way to food, two of the most notable examples are Lorelai’s best friend and business partner, Sookie St. James, and Lorelai’s friend and romantic interest, Luke Danes. Sookie, played wonderfully by Melissa McCarthy, is the head chef and co-owner with Lorelai of the Dragonfly Inn. She is an extremely talented cook and a compassionate and loyal friend to Lorelai. Her scenes often take place in the kitchen, where she is seen cooking and dispensing advise to Lorelai. While the kitchen has always been a stereotypically feminine space, Sookie’s fixture there does not come off as regressive. Socially, the world of cooking has been sharply demarcated along gender lines, with the personal and domestic sphere belonging to women and the public and professional sphere being dominated by men. Sookie, a master chef and a woman, is portrayed as a highly skilled and respected cook who demands perfection from herself and her employees.

Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy) in Gilmore Girls

Much has been said about the fact that the character of Sookie, a fat woman who is often surrounded by food, is never reduced to her body-size. It’s true that Sookie is never once shamed for her size or subjected to lazy fat jokes, nor does she express any self-hatred or desire to lose weight. It is somewhat sad and telling that Gilmore Girls has received so much praise for treating a plus-sized character with humanity and compassion, but Sookie’s portrayal is indeed remarkable in a popular culture landscape that almost always essentializes fat women to their bodies and positions those bodies as barriers to happiness and love. Sookie is portrayed as an attractive, confident, and competent woman who is deserving of both romantic attention and respect. Her burgeoning relationship and eventual marriage to Jackson, a vegetable farmer, is fully explored and is not framed as some sort of miracle or only chance at love.

Luke Danes, the gruff and grumpy owner of the local diner, possesses many stereotypical markers of traditional masculinity. Seemingly unsentimental, he is often shown shouting angrily at his neighbors and even his customers, he never changes out of his flannel shirt and backwards baseball cap, and often escapes Stars Hollow on fishing and camping trips in order to relieve his stress. Despite this potentially flat characterization, Luke emerges as a complex character that does in fact care deeply about his friends and his community despite his gruff exterior. Luke is an interesting study when looking at the presentations of masculinity and food in the fictional world of Stars Hollow, particularly in the way he is cast as a nurturer who uses food in order to reach out to and comfort his friends and neighbors.

Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) in Gilmore Girls

Throughout all seven seasons Luke is often shown bringing food to the Gilmore’s when they are in need. For example, when Lorelai’s father is hospitalized after a heart attack, Luke brings food to Lorelai and her family at the hospital. Inasmuch as food can be gendered, diners and diner food fare with its burgers, fries, and malts often tend to be coded as masculine, however Luke is an interesting case in that he refuses to eat his own food. Although he is never explicitly referred to as a vegetarian, Luke is shown refusing to eat hamburgers and often refers to meat as “dead cow”. When Luke and Lorelai start dating and eventually move in together, Luke is decidedly more active in their domestic affairs, taking charge of the cooking and their home remodel. While this might not be the most shocking or unheard of example of stereotypical role reversal in heterosexual relationships, it’s definitely interesting when examining Luke and Lorelai’s relationship with food and each other.

Luke’s Diner itself is also integral to the series as it serves as the physical and communal space in which much of the community gathers. Episodes often open with Lorelai and Rory sitting and eating together in Luke’s Diner. Throughout the series, food serves as the unifying agent that brings people together. When Lorelai is unable to afford private school tuition for Rory, she goes to her wealthy parents, Emily and Richard, in order to ask them for a loan. The elder Gilmores agree to the loan, their only stipulation being that Lorelai and Rory attend weekly “Friday night dinners”. These dinners are an attempt to fix the strained relationship between Lorelai and her parents.
Gilmore Girls
Like their daughter, neither Emily nor Richard Gilmore are ever shown cooking, instead the extremely wealthy Gilmore’s have their food prepared for them by personal chefs. The class distinctions between Lorelai and her parents are blatantly obvious and are exhibited in the type of food they consume and the way in which they consume it.

Throughout its seven series run, food plays an integral role in the Gilmore Girl’s universe. While representations of food within the context of the show seemingly transcend stereotypical gender division, food and diet choice are still used to identify and characterize the different personalities that make up the world of Stars Hollow. In the words of Lorelai herself, “It takes years to learn how to eat like we do.”
———-
Brianna Low is currently a student living in Chicago. She enjoys watching movies and reading about feminism.