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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You. From House to works Nott, Come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Chris and and I'm Karl And. 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 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 list. It's just a list of name. I didn't prepare anything else. But of course we will talk about the amazing, influential Julia Child 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, but I don't. 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 bored 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, 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. Oh. Yeah. I similarly am not as draw on two instructional cooking shows, although fun fact slash weird fact slash signed that I was a home school 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 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, yeah, where 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, 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 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 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, Kristen and uh, he comes in and he's like, all right, you're cooking is awful. You're a jaunt 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 gonna 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. 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 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 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 Ramsey. And in Master Chef, Top Chef my fiance doesn't like him. You think it's because he thinks it's overproduced, and he isn't a fan of Padma, which interesting I know, which I give up a little side eye about. I was like, are you she she Yeah, yeah, you're 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 Rushtie's ex wife wife. Yeah, and then you've got Tom Khalikio, who's the other person on Top Chef, running the show. But since this is stuff I've never 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, but even now I think there's 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, 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 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 judgier 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 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 have a hit. Because there 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 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 it with cheese and oil. Yeah, 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 this 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, please alriny letters is Guillam tril 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 aim on a medieval recipe collection which is adorable, and the current modern fancy pants Parisian restaurant 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 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 my full 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 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 then 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 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 and 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. 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, 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 of how on many Sundays I will listen to Leon Rozetta Casper's Splendid Kitchen on pr Don't you love it? I completely forgot about that, Kristen, 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, totally unruffled. You can be like, hello, ma'am, I I only have strips of printer paper and some mustard, some ribbon fish. Yeah, and she's like, Oh, don't even worry about it. I've got you covered. And she's so soothing. Oh God, if anyone knows l r C, please give her some shout outs from scene and see yeah. Um. 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 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 our first two female celebrity cooks and quotes, we're fake and it's really not until the t V 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 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 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 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. 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, just 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. Who knew, who knew there was such a rule? Uh? And in March, by the way, the Office of Strategic Services is the precursor to the CIA, not the Color Institute of America, but the Central Intelligence Agency. UM. In March, she was dispatched to Sri Lanka, where she served as the chief of the OSS Registry. 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, 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 sese 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 was cooking up French cuisine, she was cooking up shark repellent. That's pretty interesting. Yeah, 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 means like, oh, we're not going to let those sharks explode, and then and then maybe painting it on 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 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 romance, it's how it was kind of a slow burn at first. They're both like, I don't know about this other person. But we'll like keep hanging out and their romance blossomed and they got married in and two years later, Paul gets assigned to France 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 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 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 in 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 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 on women and women's brands, especially in terms of celebrity chefs, and not so much for men. Well, then in nineteen 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 ex an 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 sixty three to nineteen sixties six, The French Chef aired one nine 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. 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, intive, she wants a Peabody. Nineteen sixty six snags and Emmy, I mean, the show itself is beloved by so many people, both the tastemakers and the audience, and thanks in part to her 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 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, 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 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 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 must enjoy, French cooking being part of that. But more importantly, as you were talking about Caroline, her 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 Stort Show and whatever they were cooking, it involved a degree of precision. And of course the quote was that Martha looked like she had worked with youklid 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 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 all sorts of patterned blouses, which I guess 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 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 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 and learning with something that she was just so passionate about. And another aspect of what 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 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 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 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 is Seremont, 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 I don't think it's very accurate, but I'm enjoying it in my head. Same with the whole image of the shark and her stirring 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 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 in six just to give us a little bit of a timeline. And in a New York Times profile of Rachel Ray, who will actually talk 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, 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 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 the educators. Of course, all of these networks were offering her Boku Bucks to cook for them and you know, attract all these advertisers. Obviously she already had the eyeballs to go with it, um, but now she was like, na, 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 a name that a number of Sminthy listeners suggested that we talked 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 Fortune Magazine, she talks about how she drove from her home in Jackson, Mississippi two 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. Fit advice for any industry, any for any job. It's a man's world. I think being strong, stubborn and persistence always good advice. Um. But yeah, so cat 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 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 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, in the trenches at a lot of fancy upscale restaurants and usually in the trenches is 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 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 to more of like the well using mees. 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 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 Friedman notes 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 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. I mean a huge political statement. It's while those orange crocs are just screaming all sorts of things at us. And scholar 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 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 TV chefs look and what they're wearing, what their figures look like, how busty or not busty they are. There's a lot of discussion about Nigella Lawson and Giada de Laurentis 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, 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 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 once described her two thousand cookbook How to Be a 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. M hm. So it's it's going back to what we've talked about with semphobia 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 and alleviate any tension over buying something titled how to Be a Domestic Goddess, which could be seen as a little regressive. Yes, yes, well then we get Rachel Ray's thirty minute Meals that she debuts on a new station out of Albany, New York, and Food Network just snaps her up. But the thing is like, she's no dummy, She's no just like talking cooking head. Uh. She developed the idea on her own and shopped it around, amassing a huge cookbooks worth of 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 too um publish her recipes and 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 and a magazine. I mean, Rachel rays R used to fame is incredible, but also the hate that that breeded was so 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 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 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 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, 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 right too, 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 seven, which was all about fashion. That's not surprising, what's so so weird about that? And it's because it literally was an entire style piece about how lady chefs on TV, lady 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 short for cleavage are the new quote unquote uniform of female cooking show stars. And it attributes this safer for 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 and 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. And it cites people like Giada, Sandra Lee and also Rachel Ray who are all wearing I mean, when they did the side by side photo, it was convincing because all of them were wearing tasteful 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, 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 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 they're so only 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 maximum 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 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, 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 for now Allie's, but their whole thing is like, these are home cooks. They're not 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 whites, 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 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 Nda Garden at all. Really only this mentioned, but to Da Garden fans. I'm thinking of her. I like her, and my boyfriend has a weird opinion on her and 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. My boyfriend is partially convinced that Aina's like trapped in the kitchen and that she's got some weird relationship with her husband, and he's like that man, he just like expects her 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 a 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? Iinah looks like she's having so much fun and she's so pleased to bring out the tray at the end of the cooking to feed the people. Super tangent. One of my favorite things on Twitter is Rock sand Gay live tweeting Barefoot Contessa Listeners, if you have not a followed Rock sand Gay, do that and then please tune in for her just tweeting about Aina. It's amazing. Well, and Iina Garden is another person who it's not about her sex appeal. It's not about whether she's a girl next door or not. It's a woman who's a really gray eight 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 she'd we do something on Julia Child or maybe un A Garden. Someone sneered Hinda Gardens 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 I don't know these things, but it seems like a little harsh to dismiss Na 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 there is that SnO abbery where it's like 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 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, 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 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. And you have a little bit of diversity here and there, but I don't. I would be very surprised if it were at 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 repper presentative of how we look at people who cook. Yeah, where it's still guy is chef and woman is cook. She's nourishing and she's homemaking. Still Yeah, like a guy who cooks and his pack and 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. Whereas women are like, well, that's just what you're supposed to do. You're not like cool because of it. And 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 of the aspirational self in there, where maybe TV executives are simply putting forth what they think people want. Very now, I would love to see, uh, lady Anthony Bourdaine. You know you've got 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 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 don't smoke, but we will drink on camera in the 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 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 podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got 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, but spoke of them as 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, 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 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 low G I smoothie ps. And this is in reference to me being like, I think a juice could be a good addition to my grano LaVar breakfast. Katie says grano lavars 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 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 an 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 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 linky, 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, until even standing for five minutes 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, 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 do 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 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, 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 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 social media as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcast with our sources. So you can read more in this instance about women cooking on television, head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics because it how stuff works. Dot com fashion
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You. From House to works Nott, Come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Chris and and I'm Karl And. 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 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 list. It's just a list of name. I didn't prepare anything else. But of course we will talk about the amazing, influential Julia Child 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, but I don't. 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 bored 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, 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. Oh. Yeah. I similarly am not as draw on two instructional cooking shows, although fun fact slash weird fact slash signed that I was a home school 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 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, yeah, where 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, 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 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 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, Kristen and uh, he comes in and he's like, all right, you're cooking is awful. You're a jaunt 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 gonna 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. 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 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 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 Ramsey. And in Master Chef, Top Chef my fiance doesn't like him. You think it's because he thinks it's overproduced, and he isn't a fan of Padma, which interesting I know, which I give up a little side eye about. I was like, are you she she Yeah, yeah, you're 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 Rushtie's ex wife wife. Yeah, and then you've got Tom Khalikio, who's the other person on Top Chef, running the show. But since this is stuff I've never 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, but even now I think there's 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, 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 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 judgier 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 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 have a hit. Because there 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 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 it with cheese and oil. Yeah, 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 this 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, please alriny letters is Guillam tril 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 aim on a medieval recipe collection which is adorable, and the current modern fancy pants Parisian restaurant 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 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 my full 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 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 then 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 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 and 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. 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, 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 of how on many Sundays I will listen to Leon Rozetta Casper's Splendid Kitchen on pr Don't you love it? I completely forgot about that, Kristen, 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, totally unruffled. You can be like, hello, ma'am, I I only have strips of printer paper and some mustard, some ribbon fish. Yeah, and she's like, Oh, don't even worry about it. I've got you covered. And she's so soothing. Oh God, if anyone knows l r C, please give her some shout outs from scene and see yeah. Um. 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 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 our first two female celebrity cooks and quotes, we're fake and it's really not until the t V 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 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 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 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. 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, just 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. Who knew, who knew there was such a rule? Uh? And in March, by the way, the Office of Strategic Services is the precursor to the CIA, not the Color Institute of America, but the Central Intelligence Agency. UM. In March, she was dispatched to Sri Lanka, where she served as the chief of the OSS Registry. 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, 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 sese 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 was cooking up French cuisine, she was cooking up shark repellent. That's pretty interesting. Yeah, 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 means like, oh, we're not going to let those sharks explode, and then and then maybe painting it on 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 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 romance, it's how it was kind of a slow burn at first. They're both like, I don't know about this other person. But we'll like keep hanging out and their romance blossomed and they got married in and two years later, Paul gets assigned to France 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 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 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 in 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 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 on women and women's brands, especially in terms of celebrity chefs, and not so much for men. Well, then in nineteen 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 ex an 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 sixty three to nineteen sixties six, The French Chef aired one nine 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. 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, intive, she wants a Peabody. Nineteen sixty six snags and Emmy, I mean, the show itself is beloved by so many people, both the tastemakers and the audience, and thanks in part to her 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 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, 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 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 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 must enjoy, French cooking being part of that. But more importantly, as you were talking about Caroline, her 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 Stort Show and whatever they were cooking, it involved a degree of precision. And of course the quote was that Martha looked like she had worked with youklid 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 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 all sorts of patterned blouses, which I guess 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 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 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 and learning with something that she was just so passionate about. And another aspect of what 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 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 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 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 is Seremont, 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 I don't think it's very accurate, but I'm enjoying it in my head. Same with the whole image of the shark and her stirring 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 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 in six just to give us a little bit of a timeline. And in a New York Times profile of Rachel Ray, who will actually talk 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, 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 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 the educators. Of course, all of these networks were offering her Boku Bucks to cook for them and you know, attract all these advertisers. Obviously she already had the eyeballs to go with it, um, but now she was like, na, 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 a name that a number of Sminthy listeners suggested that we talked 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 Fortune Magazine, she talks about how she drove from her home in Jackson, Mississippi two 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. Fit advice for any industry, any for any job. It's a man's world. I think being strong, stubborn and persistence always good advice. Um. But yeah, so cat 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 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 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, in the trenches at a lot of fancy upscale restaurants and usually in the trenches is 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 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 to more of like the well using mees. 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 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 Friedman notes 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 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. I mean a huge political statement. It's while those orange crocs are just screaming all sorts of things at us. And scholar 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 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 TV chefs look and what they're wearing, what their figures look like, how busty or not busty they are. There's a lot of discussion about Nigella Lawson and Giada de Laurentis 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, 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 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 once described her two thousand cookbook How to Be a 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. M hm. So it's it's going back to what we've talked about with semphobia 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 and alleviate any tension over buying something titled how to Be a Domestic Goddess, which could be seen as a little regressive. Yes, yes, well then we get Rachel Ray's thirty minute Meals that she debuts on a new station out of Albany, New York, and Food Network just snaps her up. But the thing is like, she's no dummy, She's no just like talking cooking head. Uh. She developed the idea on her own and shopped it around, amassing a huge cookbooks worth of 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 too um publish her recipes and 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 and a magazine. I mean, Rachel rays R used to fame is incredible, but also the hate that that breeded was so 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 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 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 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, 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 right too, 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 seven, which was all about fashion. That's not surprising, what's so so weird about that? And it's because it literally was an entire style piece about how lady chefs on TV, lady 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 short for cleavage are the new quote unquote uniform of female cooking show stars. And it attributes this safer for 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 and 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. And it cites people like Giada, Sandra Lee and also Rachel Ray who are all wearing I mean, when they did the side by side photo, it was convincing because all of them were wearing tasteful 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, 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 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 they're so only 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 maximum 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 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, 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 for now Allie's, but their whole thing is like, these are home cooks. They're not 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 whites, 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 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 Nda Garden at all. Really only this mentioned, but to Da Garden fans. I'm thinking of her. I like her, and my boyfriend has a weird opinion on her and 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. My boyfriend is partially convinced that Aina's like trapped in the kitchen and that she's got some weird relationship with her husband, and he's like that man, he just like expects her 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 a 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? Iinah looks like she's having so much fun and she's so pleased to bring out the tray at the end of the cooking to feed the people. Super tangent. One of my favorite things on Twitter is Rock sand Gay live tweeting Barefoot Contessa Listeners, if you have not a followed Rock sand Gay, do that and then please tune in for her just tweeting about Aina. It's amazing. Well, and Iina Garden is another person who it's not about her sex appeal. It's not about whether she's a girl next door or not. It's a woman who's a really gray eight 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 she'd we do something on Julia Child or maybe un A Garden. Someone sneered Hinda Gardens 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 I don't know these things, but it seems like a little harsh to dismiss Na 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 there is that SnO abbery where it's like 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 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, 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 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. And you have a little bit of diversity here and there, but I don't. I would be very surprised if it were at 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 repper presentative of how we look at people who cook. Yeah, where it's still guy is chef and woman is cook. She's nourishing and she's homemaking. Still Yeah, like a guy who cooks and his pack and 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. Whereas women are like, well, that's just what you're supposed to do. You're not like cool because of it. And 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 of the aspirational self in there, where maybe TV executives are simply putting forth what they think people want. Very now, I would love to see, uh, lady Anthony Bourdaine. You know you've got 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 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 don't smoke, but we will drink on camera in the 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 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 podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got 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, but spoke of them as 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, 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 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 low G I smoothie ps. And this is in reference to me being like, I think a juice could be a good addition to my grano LaVar breakfast. Katie says grano lavars 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 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 an 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 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 linky, 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, until even standing for five minutes 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, 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 do 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 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, 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 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 social media as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcast with our sources. So you can read more in this instance about women cooking on television, head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics because it how stuff works. Dot com fashion
