I am hungry, how are you?

I have a male cousin who just graduated college.  Bryce is a kind, smart, and overall decent person, and I couldn't be happier that he lives closer by now.  He's looking to move into his own place now, and I decided that I'd look for some things he can take with him to the new place.  First up was a decent cookbook.  As a firm believer in gender equality, I believe that men and women have the equal right to be at home on the range (that is, the oven range).  And why not get my cuz on board too?  He likes equality just like me!

Going to look for that cookbook, though, was something of a nightmare, especially for a women's studies graduate!  Who knew that food was gendered?!  All along, I'd thought that eating was something we all did every day, no matter what our gender is.  But no, you would have NO IDEA how hard it was to find a gender-neutral cookbook!!  All the cookbooks geared at women had some pink and ultra-feminine detail, and they mostly dealt with making family sized meals and accommodating specific diets.  Which is helpful, but since I was buying for a single guy, it probably wasn't the target demographic.  Then, the cookbooks geared at men were as stereotypical as it gets!  All meat and grilling and bacon and, oh right, more meat.  And in enormous quantities.  So well, sure, I thought, my cousin likes meat, but I do know that's not the only thing he eats.  Besides, to put it lightly, let's just say Michael ("The Guys' Guide to Feminism") Kimmel would probably have a field day with how hypermasculinized the content of the books were and I figured that Bryce would find it more silly than useful. 

Don't believe me?  Well, take some of the titles:

 Taste-tosterone
Cook Like a Man: The Only Cookbook a Man Will Ever Need
Eat Like a Man
The MAN's Cookbook
Mad Hungry
Feeding Men and Boys

So this begged the question...how exactly is it different for a guy to eat than a woman?  If you look at the titles, it's all about eating and cooking and food prep in an ultra-masculine way (and in way bigger quantities), as opposed to saying anything about what they're going to eat when it's all done.  I mean, can you imagine flipping the genders?  I highly doubt you'd see the following:

Taste-trogen
Cook Like a Woman
Eat Like a Lady
The WOMAN'S Cookbook
Mad Hungry (when did you last see women encouraged to be mad hungry?)
Feeding Women and Girls   

Look, I like to cook, and I like to eat.  I think I'm pretty good at both.  I work out a lot, and I try to be healthy.  When I hiked the Grand Canyon in the fall, they advised us to eat twice the amount we normally do because it's so strenuous (they weren't joking).  As a single woman living on her own, I do all of my own cooking, and I eat what I cook.  Otherwise, I would starve.  There's really nothing masculine or feminine about my cooking or food prep, as it's just that, food prep.  My guy friends and my girl friends eat what I make.

And I don't see much that's typically male or female about it.  Yesterday, one of my girl friends and I made dinner together.  Both of us will eat pretty much anything, and we didn't have any leftovers.  So what was that?  We're both women.  Who live alone.  Did that mean that some men and boys were sneaking into her condo and swiping the dinner right from under our noses?  Or that we're not really women?  Or....does that mean that eating is just something everybody does, no matter what their gender or living situation is?  I'm inclined to think the latter.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm mad hungry and have some dinner to eat like a lady....Maybe I'll invite my cousin too!