The Secret Ingredient: Sexuality in Kitchen Culture and Traditional Gender Roles
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Authors
Casaperalta, Nadia
Issue Date
2009
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Recipes can be reproduced, altered, modified, and perfected. Some even have
secret ingredients that make them particularly special and unique. Those secret
ingredients are at times not shared, nor passed on, or not even mentioned until you dig
a little deeper or gain the trust and respect of those who hold them. The kitchen is the
center of all these questions and confusions about what it takes to create the perfect
recipe. Translating this into identities, it is in the kitchen where we learn about gender
roles and how to act as domestics or consume as non domestics. The expression "a way
to a man's heart is through his stomach" isn't just about the power and importance of
good food. Rather if we dig a little deeper, the secret ingredient there is being a good
housewife. The way we learn the recipe to gender roles is embedded in the labor that
we see being performed in the kitchen. Over time, gender roles in the kitchen have
transformed into recipes found in cookbooks on how to be a domestic rather than bake
a good pie. The focus of this essay is to look at the journey of the recipe of gender roles
and see it transform and reproduce through the different media. The maintenance still
holds today in different forms, however like recipes, they do get altered, and modified
and secret ingredients get added along the way. Sexuality in this case is the secret
ingredient that modifies the traditional gender roles recipe. More importantly how does
it challenge the existing recipe, and like all new ingredients added to a traditional recipe,
does it make it ready for people to digest?
Description
iii, 32 p.
Citation
Publisher
Kalamazoo, Mich. : Kalamazoo College.
License
U.S. copyright laws protect this material. Commercial use or distribution of this material is not permitted without prior written permission of the copyright holder. All rights reserved.