Cooking and Meaning

Regarding the meanings or rather, the interpretations of some things are changing.  I like how it is now a lot more acceptable for people to want to cook and not be considered weak, wimpy, or submissive.  For far too long, that has especially been the case when women confess to enjoying the activity of cooking.

I am not understanding why a lot of females say that tasks of cooking and cleaning are demeaning to women.  Too many liberals seem to think the only reasons a woman would need to cook or clean -- is to service a man.  They state that if a woman is single, career-minded and modern and strong, then she does not have to know how to feed herself.  Oh but handing out sesual favors like candy is supposed to be empowering.  What the eff?  Can someone explain this to me?

Ah, excuse me?  Why are you only concerned with what men think?  Who cares how it benefits men?  How about the fact that I am cooking and cleaning for *myself*??  *I* think it is important to maintain.  So, what, you're saying that if a woman does not have a man to cook and clean for, that this somehow means she would not need to take care of *herself.*  So I suppose this means you are perfectly fine with living in filth and sh-t, and eating McDonalds’ every day.

And this somehow makes you empowered?  “I can’t cook or clean or otherwise take care of myself, therefore I’m a feminist!”  I see little write-in, blurbs about like, "woke up hung over and ate potato chips w ketchup for breakfast."  But hey at least she has a job!  That’s great right??  That’s way better than those weak, submissive women that know how to take care of themselves in living their day to day lives, RIGHT????

You are basically saying that until you met a man or started dating or got married, that a woman would be okay with living in filth and shtt, and eating McDonalds every day.

Ohhh boy.  There is just too much of... is this what people mean when they say "emotional baggage?"  There is just way too much slop like that which is fed to pigs in their trough, that people assume is slogged through and piled on top of and burdened with.  [[[lead into from the whole fallacy of females in wmns mags sayi how they are strong inds""" and not weak helpless submissive arm candy; And they are concentrating on their career right now and that is why they do not know how to cook food for themselves.

Hang on; you know how earlier I wrote that I understand not?  That is not quite true, unfortunately.  I do know of the background noise from whence this originates.  Whenever a woman states that she can't cook or she hates to cook.  I can tell you for a fact that they are secretly proud of this sorry fact.  They are secretly cackling in gleeful pride.  If you notice, they always declare this fact very smugly with a proud grin.

Here is the weird, nonsensical reasoning behind this.  Cooking and cleaning has traditionally, all throughout the course of human events, been designated as "women's work."  Their interpretation is that this must mean that cooking is automatically trivial; it must be less important to the survival of the human species.  After all, women have been treated as second-rate citizens all throughout human history.  Men must have taken residence of all the <important> jobs available in society.  Such as plumbing, automotive work, construction work.  Therefore whatever tasks were given to women, by default surely must have been the trivial crap left over.

So with all that ancient history in mind, these so-called strong modern women have decided that they must repel any cooking.  They must act like two like-charges in an atom.  Any time they encounter food that needs to be prepared before it can be consumed, they must repel it and run away, and they must proudly unabashedly declare their woeful lack of skills in feeding themselves.  They declare that this weird factoid automatically means they are magically a strong independent modern woman. 

I myself unfortunately temporarily fell prey to this skewed mentality -- until my Madre set me straight.  I then came to my senses.  I realized, wait a minute.  Why would anyone be proud of not being able to have a very useful vital skill?  If this is what "feminism" and "girl power" means, then maybe we as human beings need to enact a massive overhaul in what those terms mean. 

Look at it this way.  You have to learn a useful professional skill so that you can get a job and support yourself.  You have to learn to manage your finances so that you don’t go broke.  Pay attention to and monitor your medical health.  So too do you have to equivalently be able to take care of yourself.

Cooking and cleaning-- demeaning?  Ohhh so it’s empowering to be able to take care of oneself outside the home.  But it is not empowering to be able to take care of oneself inside the home.  Riiigghht, toohhhtally.

Fine, so she has a job, good.  But there is no discernible reason that she has to neglect everything else.

I have been thinking about this brain-dead, skewed, illogical, and frankly disrespectful approach, regarding towards women’s work.  I realize now that this is astonishingly degrading to women.  This is frankly as bad as demeaning women as sex objects.  I decided to re[[_vampp__]]] my worldview on many things.  The biggest thing I have decided to massively shift my viewpoint of is women's roles in the family and society.  I have decided that instead of continuing to degrade women's contributions, I should instead recognize them for the fact that they are woven into the fabric of society.

Yep, sure enough, men are the ones that decided that because cooking is women's work, this automatically means that it is cutesy superficial fluff.  They decided that simply because it is women’s work, by default this must mean it is unimportant to civilization.  And unfortunately too many women absorbed this narrow-minded, unenlightened way of thinking.  Oh, so cooking is trivial, you ungrateful, unappreciative aholes??  Then good luck eating your raw chicken and munching on your raw wheat and grains with the skins and hulls and corn silk still on.  Go get salmonella and massive amoebic dysentery.  Go have fun chewing and masticating raw tree foliage, and continue to be stuck in your little caveman hole in the rock and continue to think that women's work is unimportant to the good of the community.


A long time ago, I'm talking on the order of third grade.  Around that time the media was spewing its usual babble elegance that cleaning is demeaning to women.

And I realized that, waaait a minute, I *like* being clean.  I like living in cleanliness.  Even at that young age, I had the fortuitousness and strength of mind to dismiss these claims as being fictitious.
I did not know of these forthcoming particular turns of phrase, but I felt that it was cleansing.  Simply put.  Order is restored to the universe, chaos is reduced.

*like martha stewart back in the day, back in high school.

On The Subject Of Women's Work

I like how the meanings of certain things have changed a bit in recent general aura of collective perception.  Actually no, that’s not a good way of expressing it.  What I meant is that I like how interpretations of certain things are better now.  More mature, more comprehensive.

It is the woman, the wife and mother, who is the center and strength of the family.  It is she who holds the family together.  The home is the dominion of the woman.

Being a wife and mother is *not* demeaning, degrading, etc. to women.  It is not a simple, trivial biding-of-time task to be a homemaker, which can be flippantly dismissed with a wave of the hand as "unimportant."

If we are to be open-minded to a woman that gets pregnant and brings forth life into this world, then by necessity we must also be open-minded to a woman who chooses to raise that very child.  we need to be appreciative to a mother who chooses to devote her time, energy, faith, and dedication to this task that is the keystone around which civilization revolves.

This is an enormous undertaking that requires an insane amount of devotion towards this goal.  The woman being wife, mother, and homemaker.

___finally exalted wives and mothers to the respectable status in society that they have truly more than earned.  We have at long last elevated homemakers to the status of any professional out in the paid job force.  Finally society is honoring them with the respect and dignity they have more than earned.  It is infuriating that some people think a wife and mother’s work is somehow less important than a dizzy carnival rider in the corporate rat race.  Daily office meanderings.

Previously he ignorant types have denigrated the woman by calling her a "housewife."  They sniffed with haughty derision disapproval, as if what they were doing was automatically better than her, as if she was beneath them.  As if somehow the work she does is unimportant.  They claimed her contributions to society are trivial.  I am embarrassed to admit that I fell into this claptrap myself before I finally slapped some sense into my head.

Why are her skills that are vital inside the home considered any less important than skills outside the home?

Let us examine the kind of work a wife and mother does. 

It is the homemaker spouse who is the leader of the family, makes the survival day-to-day decisions, and has to keep track of what everyone is doing. Marriage and family is not a business relationship.  The leadership role is not determined by the spouse who makes more money.  It is not about a wife being weak & submissive and walking two steps behind her husband.

Taking care of the family, raising the kids, *bearing* the kids, keeping track of everyone's schedules.  She is the one that keeps the family and homestead intact, together.  She does the cooking and grocery shopping, making sure everyone is well-fed.

What about raising children?
Guiding a person into a good and intelligent human being.  So that they are thoughtful, kind, caring, considerate individuals.  So that they may become productive members of society.  Socializing a child during their formative years.

You know, all the stuff that the media keeps saying the grade schools should be doing?  Nope.  That is not the school's job.  That is the parents' job.

(On an unrelated note, why do a disturbingly high number of western women hate their mothers?  I have noticed this in a large number of editorials and I don't get it.  It does not seem very feminist to hate the woman who gave you life.  But that is a topic for a separate essay.)

Just like you have to learn to take care of your finances, learn how to balance your checkbook, learn a valuable professional skill so that you can get a job when you grow up.  So too do you need to learn to cook food.

-- might sound silly, but harry potter.

I really like the American Girl books series for little kids.  I happen to think they kick ass.  the American girls book series have cookbooks and all sorts of historical facts that offer amazing insight into the lives of pioneer women and girls.  They cookbooks contain a lot of very creative and interesting recipes that are culturally aware.

I recall seeing an issue of a parenting magazine recently that talked about having a cooking theme at a child's birthday party.  I think that's a pretty cool idea.  There were suggestions on what types of food to cook that were small enough so as not to overwhelming to the little kids, but at the same time elaborate enough that they would be engaged and interested.  And it finished off with the idea of including a wooden spoon in the kids' party favors bags.
-- macl in middle

The Femininity-Inferiority-Complex

It has come to my mildly perplexing realization that I do not really understand how a lot of females think.  That is why it has taken me this long to figure out why the hell so many females in the mass media keep wanting to disrobe at all times no matter what the occasion.  I was staring at the cover of a celebrity/Hollywood/etc. magazine featuring the hollywood's darling of a bucknaked kate hudson.  And then I blinked slowly.  And then I suddenly and finally understood why females do this crap.  First of all, they are not using the correct definition of the word "empowering," which I have covered extensively.

You have heard of the stereotypical hyper-masculine exaggerated male that actually secretly has an inferiority complex?

He is secretly ashamed because he thinks he is not masculine enough?  Therefore he overcompensates and tries too hard to focus on outward appearances.  He is insecure in his masculinity, so the only way he knows to remedy this is to prove furiously to everyone *else* that he is unquestionably macho.

He is frantic and worried that someone might stumble upon the truth.  So in an effort to squelch the hesitancy that might crop up in anyone’s mind that he might be less than super-dooper tough,
After all, as long as he can convince everyone else that he is masculine, at least his public image is intact.

All this vehement nakedness in pop culture is basically the female equivalent.

Females are constantly assailed with accusations from the media that they do not have “body confidence.”  They are relentlessly beaten in the head with the idea that they have eating disorders.  ...That they are “ashamed of their bodies” if they are not exhibitionists with all their private parts on full unabashed display at all times.  So in a desperate ploy to prove the media and “society” wrong, they resort to this.

The females are too paranoid that someone might uncover their inner turmoil.  So they overcompensate with this exaggerated display.  This is an effort to quell, nay, crush the uncertainty possibility that they are not fully body-confidenced.  After all, as long as they can convince everyone else they are sexy and comfortable with their sexiness, their outward public impression is intact.

Do not interpret my comprehension of that self-trivializing behavior as if I am okay with it.  Here is an odd analogy, but you know that Sneaker Pimps song, "six underground."  There is a line that is as follows, "Don't think that 'cause I understand I care."

However, this is still quite a pathetic excuse, and I'm not buying it.  I’ve been bombarded by the exact same media messages every day, and I managed not to crumble like a stale cookie.  I stated the fact that it was not true, and I told them to bugger off.  I made my case and stood my ground.

Weird Inconsistency In "Art"

Here is another weird inconsistency regarding art as compared to other categories of entertainment, music, literature, poetry, prose, etc.

There is a weird consensus amongst pop culture that noone is allowed to question what they are told is pimped out at the public as "art."  Ever everever.

We are not allowed to discuss content.  We are not allowed to discuss the obvious, or lack thereof, evidence of genuine discernible *talent.*  "Oh you're so closed-minded, you just don't understand it."

We are not allowed to discuss the personal preferences -- and very legitimate topic -- of taste.  Mention the words ""tasteful" or "palatable," and they scream that you are being judgmental and closed-minded, that taste has absolutely nothing to do with art; who are you to decide what is and isn't appropriate; how dare you try to tell the artist what they can and can't charge the public audience ten bucks on Tuesdays to see, ad nauseum.

Like Thomas Kinkade just a few short years ago.  He has gorgeous paintings of cottages and cabins in the countryside.  They are cute and cozy and comfy and fill you with feelings of warm fuzzballs all inside.  I see one and I crave a cup of hot cocoa.

Then, all these self-proclaimed temperamental artiste types were saying, "he is a sellout, ohhhhh,” caterwauling, “he is so popular with the mainstream so he could not POSSIBLY have any genuine talent.  Plus look how happy peppy perky his art is, hah!  That is not possibly reeaaal art, reaaaall art must portray despair and suffering, it simply mussst portray struggle, it must reach deep into the caverns of the soul and disembowel the viewer!!  No ifs, ands, or buts!!"

I wonder if they were just jealous that Thomas Kinkade did genuinely become successful as an artist.  He managed to appeal to people who like happy, cozy, comfy things, which is obviously a lot of people.

And the guy has actual talent.  That's the part these sniffing haughty "disapproval" types always gloss over.  Have you seen one of his paintings?  They are gorgeous.  Exquisite detailing, it is obvious he labored over it painstakingly.  He managed to make a decent living off this art.  He probably is able to support this family with food and not food stamps; he was probably able to put his kids through college, etc.

I wonder if the rest of the self-proclaimed “realll” artists were just bitter, jealous, and resentful.  A lot of them are like this.  They rail against mainstream movies, they sniff haughty derision at happy hollywood endings.  They think they are automatically "better," i.e. more intellectual, more profound, more informed, if they only like entertainment that is miserable.

They also rail against kindness and sincerity.  They screech and scream, "oh that’s just so fake, oh the mainstream cheerleader and football types are just putting on a facade, oh their public image is so contrived and shallow, whereas I am so very honest and genuine and deep, I don't hide who I am, I don't carefully cultivate a public image at all.""

And then you have the notorious exhibit in NYC to which Rudy Giuliani cut off taxpayer funding.  (Agguhh, gag, I've seen pictures of it, and I flatly refuse to acknowledge it as art.  That's because it isn't.)  I am ever grateful to Mayor Giuliani for doing that, even thoo I don't live in NYC.  These people think that because they slapped the label "art" on whatever they vomited out, they can get away with anything?  Frankly, they seem rather mentally ill.