An introduction to The Riveter’s new column that dissects the female food experience.
Column Jamie Hausman
Illustration by Grace Molteni
I’m a woman who loves food. Despite the food shaming that occurs on social media, which Emma Winsdor Wood discussed in her column “Who Cares If You Ate That?”, I proudly declare an uninhibited love of all things covered in cheese, loaded with carbohydrates and based in butter. That’s not to say I eat in an unhealthy manner. I love my veggies, too, and I strive to live a balanced life without limiting myself via rules. Everything in moderation, right? I am here to introduce my column for The Riveter as one seeking to discover how women relate to food.
A recent article in New York Times Magazine featured Barbara Lynch, an acclaimed Boston chef who has made waves by promoting other women to run her kitchen. In the piece, Marnie Hanel referenced a Bloomberg News report that found it was less likely for a woman to be hired as a head chef than as C.E.O. When I read that statement, I thought, but all of the food blogs I follow are run by women, like Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen fame, all of the cookbooks I own are written by women, like Candice Kumai who is a model and a foodie, and I am a woman who loves to cook and write about restaurants. How can this be?
Hanel continued listing statistics, citing that only 12 percent of James Beard award winners for Outstanding Chef have been female and only 16 percent of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs have been women. But instead of biting off the James Beard Foundation’s head, I began to examine the best food blogs and the women behind them. Not Without Salt was named Best Cooking Blog by Saveur magazine in 2013, and its founder began as a pastry chef at Spago in Beverly Hills. She left her job in that renowned kitchen when she discovered she was pregnant with her first child. She now has three young children and the bounty of her blog posts feeds them and her husband; it doesn’t look like she aims to return to the bustling restaurant kitchen any time soon. Helene Dujardin, the writer behind Tartelette (a finalist for Saveur’s 2013 best cooking blog award), left her job as a pastry chef in a French restaurant to discover a new path. Now she is Senior Photographer at Oxmoor House and blogs on the side. There is no doubt that these women have the talent to survive in a tense restaurant kitchen, but they gave up their positions for love, other passions and alternative opportunities.
Out of the 12 awards Saveur gave out for their Best Food Blog competition in 2013, five of those blogs were founded by women, and at four of those blogs, a husband and wife team was at the helm. This contradicts my original thought about food blogging as a female world. Blogging is a lot of work; it involves immense planning, shopping, prepping, cooking, styling, editing and writing, as well as scheduling. The same team effort is found in restaurant kitchens on every street in the world. The difference: bloggers cook in the solitude and safety of their own home where their worst critics are family members, while restaurant cooks have management and a hierarchy to answer to, not to mention media and patrons who don’t hold back. Are bloggers insecure about staying in their own kitchens instead of professional ones? Is this similar to the insecurity diners feel when they eat donuts or poutine and post it on social media? I’m not sure, but it’s something I’ll explore in this column.
At Food & Wine magazine, editor-in-chief Dana Cowin leads a team of executive editors who are all women except one. However, the editor-in-chief of Bon Appétit magazine, Adam Rapoport, is male. There is no hard and fast rule or ratio for magazine editors, and there’s no genetic code between the sexes that makes one more inclined to cooking than the other. I aim to explore this gray area and discover what it is about food that makes it a passion for all types of people.
As a woman who intensely loves food in all its forms, I’ve never worked in a professional kitchen and have only toyed with the idea of culinary school. Judging from Barbara Lynch’s success and devotion to a restaurateur career, she’s made of tougher stuff than I, but for the women who bowed out of their jobs, it’s for the same reasons as any other industry: they wanted to start a family or they began to burn out. I don’t have the answer for why fewer women are achieving the awards that male chefs take home. I live in Atlanta, where many women helm kitchens and are renowned for it. I’ll feature some of them in this column and try to answer these questions as I go. I won’t always talk about women as they relate to food, but I will try to bridge the gap whenever possible. By default, I am a woman who writes about food, and I hope you enjoy. Bon Appétit!
Jamie Hausman is a Chicago native, Mizzou graduate and a resident of Atlanta, Ga. She adores her adopted home and spends her time writing, editing and pitching stories to local and national online publications, as well as exploring new neighborhoods and restaurants. Check her out on Twitter @jamiehausman.
Grace Molteni is a Midwest born and raised designer, illustrator, and self-proclaimed bibliophile, currently calling Chicago home. For more musings, work, or just to say hey check her out on Instagram or at her personal website.
