Cooking is Anti-Feminist

I read an article, critiquing another article about a study, about how cooking is anti-feminist. While the author of the article I read was a feminist, she disagreed with the concept of cooking being anti-feminist and pointed out good and true (and obvious) problems that were the actual problems with 'cooking' that the authors of the study were too narrow-focused to notice.

To set the stage I will state that while I still disagreed a lot with the author's view and understanding of certain concepts, that she was still able to understand many complex and true and obvious things. I'm not really responding to HER or her article, but rather the original concept of "something [like cooking] being anti-feminist because it can be hard".

The base concept of the study was that because of various roadblocks to cooking, it oppresses women specifically, and is therefore anti-feminist. The author correctly pointed out that those various roadblocks were actually the problem, as you are basically saying (for example) "low wage working mothers with no time to do anything don't have the resources or money to cook for their families, therefore cooking is anti-feminist." I should not have to dissect why this is poor argument.

However, what stuck out to me the most was the idea that, because some thing is hard to do under certain circumstances, it is bad. Or perhaps, doing it, and not enjoying it, means it is bad. Or even, wanting to be able to do it but not being able to, means it is bad. All of these concepts were attributed to 'cooking' as a whole.

Being able to cook for your family is good. If you are able to do so, buying ingredients to prepare food is cheaper and healthier (most of the time). Cooking with your children is good for their development for many reasons, not just that they would learn a skill, but children who help their parents cook are by and large less picky and more interested in eating different foods (which is good). Enjoying family meals together is a bonding activity and it is good. Large portions of cooking are good. There are cons, but by all measures, the pros are overwhelming - cooking for your family is good.

Now, to be clear, just because something is good doesn't mean you have to do it perfectly and constantly under all circumstances. But it would be folly to say cooking is not good just because it can be very hard to do. If it is difficult to cook for your family because of your circumstances, that doesn't make it not good. The problem is when you look at cooking - a good thing - and say, this is hard for me, so it is a bad thing. That would be like saying brushing your teeth is a bad thing because you are disabled, and using a toothbrush is very difficult. Brushing your teeth is still a good thing, it is just hard for you to do. So what should you do?

You should still believe cooking, and brushing your teeth, are good things. But if you cannot do them under your normal circumstances, you should find ways to do them. Perhaps unconventional ways, innovative, unexpected, new, unusual ways. Why is this not considered? People hear things, for example, like "fresh food is expensive," and look at something like zucchini, and go, "behold, I am vindicated, for a single zucchini is two entire dollars, thus healthy fresh food is expensive." Well, don't buy zucchini. There are other foods, just like there are other ways to do things.

Sure, not everyone is very clever, and being under enormous stress makes simple things harder. I'm not saying, "you are unskilled and stupid for not figuring out how to cook for your family." I am saying, most certainly, that if you have the time and energy to write an entire study critiquing cooking as an oppressive activity because it can be hard to do under certain circumstances, then you have plenty of creativity to figure out how to make cooking work for you under your circumstances. You have time to provide avenues for people to cook more easily and for less money, instead of attempting to tell them they should not cook. What do they do instead? They must eat. Not cooking for yourself is far more expensive, or if you go the cheap route, incredibly destructive. Poor diet will make everything else difficult, not just cooking. To try and dismantle cooking using the argument that it is oppressive is short-sighted.

It is this short-sightedness that truly plagues ideologies like feminism. The obvious is skirted around in order to classify it in feminist terms, when in reality, life's not like that. Some things are not that complicated. Feminism comes around and tries to complicate it, in order to vindicate women who say they do not like cooking because deep down, their real problem is that they want to be perceived a certain way or make a certain point. They don't truly have any beef with cooking, they have beef with concepts and views surrounding it. Instead of addressing those problems littered all around the border, they toss the whole thing out and dismiss it as oppression. This study was a step away from saying, eating is oppressive! It is useless to approach these issues this way.

On days where I feel too tired to cook three separate items in three separate vessels, knowing I have to clean them later, I find a way to cook all those ingredients together in the same pot. I cook extra of something one day, planning to use the remainder in another dish on the following day, like rice. I make several quarts of one food inside of a crock pot (incredibly common, easy to find cheap new and cheaper used, best investment you'll ever make if your main complaint is time) to eat for multiple days.

Just like the easy to learn fact that frozen vegetables are both cheaper and just as nutritious as fresh, there are an overwhelming number of ways to cook for your family under time constraints and unpredictability. The base argument that cooking is bad because certain lifestyles - chosen and unchosen - make it difficult is simply too narrowly focused.

These bizarre kinds of objections to wonderful things like cooking stem from other problems. I would never attempt to argue that it is not hard to cook from scratch while working full time with several children, but you can't look at good and arguably necessary things like, heaven's sake, cooking and eating food, and say, "this entire concept must be destroyed because it is hard." Everything is hard. Life is hard.

I began doing something that required more time and energy because the alternative was more expensive. I didn't stop doing something else or somehow find more time and energy to do this thing, I merely decided it had to be done because the monetary attribute was weighted more heavily than the time or energy attribute. I had some time and energy to spare, and needed to alleviate cost. Everything we do is a balancing act between time, energy, and costs. Money is, at least in my opinion, the more difficult one to stretch, as things have specific costs and you either have the money or you do not have the money. You can't need something for $10 and somehow stretch, through effort and force of will, $7 to purchase it. I can, however, perhaps wake up earlier, stay up a moment later. Simply barrel through sleep deprivation, actively force myself to overextend my personal resources, in order to use more energy than I have. I can work faster - expending more energy - to squeeze out extra time. I can't turn $7 into $10.

Some people cannot squeeze out extra energy. They may be at the entire end of their energy rope. They, personally, have to weigh their cost, energy, and time variables against each other and decide what needs to be done. Some people are at the end of all three ropes, and surely there is not much to do there except seek outside assistance. But if you are not at the literal end of your ropes, you cannot in good conscious sit there and say, "this thing that forces me to choose between my time, energy, and cost constraints and possibly utilize more of them than I currently have, is oppressive and must be dismantled." It's possible that some of those types of things could be better off going away, but - and I cannot stress this enough - making food to eat is not one of those things.