Salon Food examines the claims of a Burger King spokesman who told Advertising Age “Our research showed that breakfast is a male-centric audience for Burger King; it doesn’t resonate as well with women — we are targeting the people who are buying breakfast.” Given the King’s recent advertising, it would seem that none of its research indicates that the chain has any female customers. One possible solution, of course, is to avoid the early morning polemics and pole dancers entirely and stick to the breakfast manifesto.
But forget breakfast — are women are being nudged out of kitchens altogether? That’s the assertion made by Double X’s Hanna Rosin, who chronicles the assorted conflicts that come with being married to a wannabe-chef husband. Julia Child and Alice Waters have been rendered “cuddly” by overwhelming machismo in this latest incarnation of the culinary home front, Rosin writes, while it has become “hard to keep up with the itinerant rage-aholics cycling through the Food Network — Gordon Ramsey, Marco Pierre White, David Chang, [and] the Voltaggio brothers.” Never mind that none of the above chefs are actually on the Food Network: The message is that too many cooks these days arm themselves with curse words and one-upmanship, as well as spatulas. “Women, meanwhile,” writes Rosin, “are left holding the cupcakes.”
Breakfast: The manliest meal? [Salon Food]
The Rise of the Kitchen Bitch [Double X]
