February Blog Post

“Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch,” New York Times, by Michael Pollan

     “When I asked my mother recently what exactly endeared Julia Child to her, she explained that ‘for so many of us she took the fear out of cooking’ and, to illustrate the point, brought up the famous potato show (or, as Julia pronounced it, “the poh-TAY-toh show!”), one of the episodes that Meryl Streep recreates brilliantly on screen.”

         When reading over this sentence in the Pollan article, I almost took a double take to really understand what the author what trying to communicate. I was generally annoyed and slightly upset when I first read this sentence. During the time of Julia child, women were generally homemakers. So, when Julia Child came along with a different spin off cooking show on TV, the cooking channel culture has never been the same. Since Julia’s show was live which was completely different than other cooking shows during that time. You could see her goofy personality, how she would take risk on her shows, and even sometimes she would mess up by dropping the food. Which is what the author mother is referring to when Julia took the fear out of cooking. By Julia showing her imperfections it gave other women of this era confidence to cook like her. I mentioned that I was upset because, as a woman to get a confidence boost from cooking in present day it seems kind of pathetic.

            But now analyzing it deeper Julia was pushing through barriers for women of her era. She accomplishes this by not being the ideal cookie cutter women, but embracing herself. Before her cooking shows made the chef look perfect with edit clips it was women who never made mistakes and It all was pre-recorded and edited. So, Julia Child changing the cooking world help lead America’s culture norms for the better.