Post #6: Women Cooking in the 50s and Today

December 10, 2007 eunkyungan

The way that women are characterized and represented has come a long way over the times from the post World War II to today.  In the short video clip “Cooking Terms!” on YouTube, women back in the 50s are depicted as unintelligent and stupid whereas in the short clip from the “Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee: Sunset Clambake” show women are depicted today as intelligent and confident who knows what they are talking about.           

In the “Cooking Terms!” video clip, the woman in the film is shown as a stay home wife cooking for her husband.  In this film she is depicted as unintelligent and stupid because she misunderstands a cooking term and messes up.  Also, they use a man’s voice to narrate this film instead of having the woman talk.  The man who is talking talks as if he knows everything whereas the woman in the film does not know what she is doing.  This depicts men as being more intelligent and knows what they are talking about while the women are not and does not even know what they are doing.  Another part in the film that depicts women being unintelligent and stupid is towards the end when she discovers the glossary after she messes up. 

          

On the other hand in the short clip of the “Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee: Sunset Clambake” show, women are portrayed as opposite.  Women are intelligent and confident who knows what they are talking about.  In this video there is not a man’s voice describing what she is doing, rather the women in the video talks to the viewers describing how to make a meal throughout the video.  Unlike the 50s video clip of the women in the kitchen, in here she is not in a house kitchen cooking for her husband, instead she is out on the beach doing a cooking show.  In addition, she does not have a cook book in front of her to help her cook; she just cooks from memory and talks like she knows what she is doing.           

Although in both the video clips we see women cooking, they are represented very differently.  In the 50s video clip “Cooking Terms!” women are depicted as unintelligent and stupid who misinterprets a cooking term in a cook book and messes up and has a man’s voice pointing out her mistakes and how to cook right.  However, in the “Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee: Sunset Clambake” video clip, women today are depicted as intelligent and confident who knows what they are talking about without the help from a cookbook and a man to narrate.  Rather women today have their own cooking shows to teach the viewers how to cook.

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