Food, Culture, and Gendered Identities Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by reptilia888

The kitchen is made into a gendered space where ideas about femininity and mascul­inity are produced, learned, and enforced (Weedon 139). Food television constructs cooking as gendered work done by men for leisure and profes­sional esteem, and by women as a domestic duty to the household and family.

Feeding work goes beyond cooking, cleaning, and shopping. It includes emotional labour, provis­ioning, and the constr­uction and management of gender. Elements of feeding work include planning meals, attending to nutrit­ional concerns, provis­ioning work (small trips, supplies), balancing finances and schedules, preparing meals, feeding, and cleaning.

Much existing research suggests a persistent gendered division of labour in feeding and provis­ioning work. Carrington finds that narratives about feeding work demons­trate concern with "­doing gender­" as well as equality. Feeding work makes families as well as cultures, and gender is a signif­icant part of this process.

Culture is gendered through the act of biological reprod­uction, symbolism of nation and culture as female, the reprod­uction of boundaries among groups, and the reprod­uction of cultural practice.

Benedict Anderson describes nations as "­ima­gined commun­iti­es". Even if these commun­ities are imagined, they are often the site of intense loyalty and attach­ment.

Cultural food coloni­alism is made up of several compon­ents: desire for the Other through cooking and eating, cultural capital, desire for novelty and exoticism, the Other as a resource, and recipes becoming commod­ities which are detached from culture and context.