For women, the kitchen has been an ambivalent place for many years, of submission but also of freedom. It was the place where they were relegated by patriarchy – men to work and women to cook – but also where they made decisions and developed their creativity. In the domestic sphere, of course, because the man touched the pots for different purposes and, as a general rule, outside the home. Feminism has contributed to changing this paradigm, but not always with the aim of recovering this space for women but rather with the aim of breaking the chains that bind them to it. María Arranz has explored the relationship between different feminist theories and the kitchen, which has materialized in the essay The apron and the masspublished by Col&Col Ediciones.
The author herself was surprised when she decided to dedicate herself to cooking while studying art history. He liked the career, but not the professional opportunities it offered him. What she liked was writing and cooking, so she started with the latter. “Added to this is the fact that at that time, when I was 20, I wanted to leave home and I saw hospitality as a much faster path than any university degree could offer,” he explains to elDiario.es. “Over time, I ended up dedicating myself to both at different times in my life and, when I was working as a journalist, I returned to university, this time remotely and to study humanities,” he says.
Like everyone in her generation and before, she had seen mothers and grandmothers collapse between the stoves while the rest of the family waited to be called to the table, and had heard sexist jokes about it. How could I want to work in a place I should avoid like the devil?
How could I want to work in a place I should run away from like the devil? If she asked herself this question but not the men who studied with her, she was saying something.
If she asked herself this question but not the men who studied with her, it meant something. Becoming a feminist helps to understand many things that were not even considered a conflict before, which is why Arranz decided to investigate how different thinkers and creators with a gender perspective had dealt with the issue.
In The apron and the mass names of feminists appear like Betty Friedan, Angela Davis, Silvia Federici or Shulamith Firestone, among others. All with very diverse, even contradictory ideas. “I enjoyed reading and rereading historical feminists like Simone de Beauvoir, Angela Davis or Bell Hooks, focusing only on what they had said about cooking,” says the author of the essay. “In the whole of her discourse, this may only represent a small part, but it helped me a lot to understand the scope and nuances of this subject, which are many,” he explains.
Not only are there theories in the pages of her essay, but it is filled with art, literature and cinema. The list of references gathered in the bibliography and webgraphy is a treasure trove of feminist culture. “I discovered artists like Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who advocated the “art of maintenance” and asked who would be in charge of picking up the trash on Monday mornings after the revolution. Or like the Feminist Art Workers, who have a body of work, Heaven or Hellwhich defends reciprocity as a key element in the functioning of a community and with which they wanted to replace the image of women as perpetually generous beings with another that showed them not only giving, but also receiving care,” she says.
Additionally, during her research, she came across works she didn’t know, made by creators she already knew. For example, Chantal Akerman’s first work, a short film about a woman who blows up her kitchen called Skip my city. Similarly, he refers to the writer Marge Piercy, author of the novel Woman at the edge of time. “She has a poem where she talks about how women all over the country are rebelling against their role as housewives and setting fire to their family dinners,” Arranz says. “I was also surprised by the reach that works as Kitchen table series by Carrie Mae Weems, which I already found to be a fascinating series and which, by delving into it, allowed me to see the impact it had on the representation of black women or the use it made of the kitchen table as a symbol through which to explore female identity,” she emphasizes.
Food Studies, which later gave birth to Feminist Food Studies, did not take root in our country as they did in other countries.
Maria Arranz
— Journalist and editor specializing in culture, feminism and gastronomy issues
At the beginning of his essay, Arranz specifies that his study is set in a period that goes from the 1950s to the beginning of the current century in the United States and some European countries. The selection of authors and works is personal and most of the material he found comes from the Anglo-Saxon academy. What is happening in Spain? “I feel, without being an academic or being able to delve into the reasons why this line of research has not been as fruitful in Spain, that it has to do with the fact that Food studieswho are those who then give birth to the Feminist Food Studies“They did not settle in our country as they did in others,” the writer comments.
THE Food studies that she mentions belong to a branch of feminism that, since the 1990s, has been critically analyzing “how food relates to other academic disciplines and attempts to shed light and a gender perspective on many issues related to food, including these, cooking,” he says in The apron and the mass.
It’s often said that open-plan kitchens are perfect for those dining at home, but you have to wonder who gets up to go to the kitchen during those dinner parties.
Maria Arranz
— Journalist and editor specializing in culture, feminism and gastronomy issues
In the future, she may publish references to Spanish creators and thinkers, but not exactly in a book, since Arranz’s intention is to continue his research. To do this, he opened a profile on Instagram in which he shares content that was not included in the book (due to the format or because he discovered it later) such as images from series, films or other works of art. At the moment, it does not have thousands of followers but it is growing little by little. In addition, she would like it to be a collaborative space, “where people would be encouraged to share images and stories that touch them in relation to the theme of cooking and feminism,” she says.
Cooking outside the house
In the traditional architecture of Spanish houses, the kitchen was a room with a door, but for some time now it has become common to find open kitchens with a breakfast bar that opens onto the living room or with an island in the middle. How (if at all) does this affect women’s roles in the domestic sphere? Arranz mentions in her book the architect Anna Puigjaner, who proposes houses without kitchens replaced by communal kitchens. In the same vein, the feminist architectural studio Cierto, located in Barcelona. These are proposals that tend towards the collectivization of care, which implies a change that goes beyond architecture, although this factor is also essential.
“It’s often said that open-plan kitchens are perfect for those who dine at home, because when you get up to get something from the kitchen, you don’t miss what’s going on in the living room, or for those who have kids and want to keep an eye on what they’re doing while they’re making dinner,” says Arranz. “But the question is, who gets up to go to the stove during these dinner parties or who cooks while watching the creatures out of the corner of their eye? The most likely answer is that it’s always women.”
When cooking is associated with leisure or some form of public recognition, we then detect an overwhelming masculine presence.
Maria Arranz
— Journalist and editor specializing in culture, feminism and gastronomy issues
Curiously, there are examples of kitchens where women are not allowed to enter, as if in a world upside down. These are the Basque gastronomic societies or txocos, cooking clubs reserved for men. Over the years, some have opened up to the presence of women but it is still current when it happens, so extraordinary. In many you can already participate, but to be a member you have to change the statutes and it is no longer so easy, because the weight of tradition is great and there are opinions on everything.
“I think this is another example of how, when cooking is associated with leisure or some kind of public recognition, we detect an overwhelming male presence,” Arranz reflects. In the book, he mentions an excerpt from a video by the collective Les Insoumuses, in which the members comment on a show broadcast on French television in the mid-1970s: “In this show, a chef stated without cutting his hair that cooking is done by women. In homes, it is a minor cuisine, which is not interesting to talk about, and those who do “La Cuisine” with capital letters, the important cuisine, are them, the men. With great irony, Les Insoumuses summed it up like this: “Men do the profitable cooking, women do the free cooking,” Arranz describes. “To his sentence, we could add another: ‘men cook to have fun, women cook to feed themselves every day,’” he concludes.
