Feminism to blame for “obesity epidemic”?

Just when you thought there wasn’t anything left to blame us for: “Today, cook books dominate the bestseller lists: most of them are destined to lie, unused, on kitchen shelves. Schools no longer teach cooking per se, just variants on subjects such as home technology, in which teachers explain to children how microwaves heat up food. Meanwhile, sales of ready meals continue to climb hand in hand with teenage obesity. It may be fanciful to lay the blame for this at the feet of the early feminists, but, without a doubt, our struggle to free women from the sheer drudgery of housework was a small link in the chain.” Or so Rosie Boycott argues here. The idea seems to be that early feminist mags should have put more emphasis on cooking quick, nutritious meals while holding down a job. Too bad men have that gene that makes their heads explode if they try to use a pan. Otherwise one might have thought cooking wasn’t just women’s work. Nice example of how strong our unconconscious assumptions about this sort of thing are: Boycott has done some important feminist work, but it still never seems to cross her mind that men could conceivably cook. (Thanks to Stoat for passing this one on to me.)