Equality Killed the Kitchen, Now It’s Killing Us

Ask any feminist and they’ll tell you: the point of feminism is to declare independence. Independence from the dictates of men. Independence from the dictates of government. Independence from the dictates of biology. But can we be honest for a second? When feminism destroyed the kitchen, it sabotaged its own quest for independence.

Now before a stampede of Karens comes after me, let me make my case. Does it sound counterintuitive? Absolutely, especially if you’re a militant activist who imagines herself having her own epic Rosa Parks moment every weekend, but open your mind for just a little while and come along for the ride.

The basic fact is, if you can’t take care of yourself, you can never be truly independent, and feeding yourself is a pretty essential step in that process. The feminists rejected the kitchen entirely and set up a dependency spiral to ruin generations.

I’m not here to dismantle first-wave feminism and the desire for civic equality – let’s save that for a rainy Tuesday – but rather to talk about how far we’ve come from the disdained “50’s housewife” imagery. The derogatory phrase “make me a sandwich” fueled enough XX-chromosomal rage that we decided to take the whole country down in a fit of self-destructive equality.

What started as a reasonable desire to be able to work independently, open a bank account, hold our own credit cards, and vote became a direct war against the sandwich itself. 

The more women aspired to leave the household behind, the more their lives needed to be subsidized outside the home. Late nights at work required picking up a prepared meal and bringing it home. Early mornings brought the quick-fix breakfasts of frozen waffles and dry cereals. The less mom had to do in the kitchen the better, so she could get back out to her “real work” – increasing the GDP by 75 cents on the dollar.

Now I’m sure most of the original feminists fueled their work with homemade sandwiches that they prepared before rallies and town halls, but if you open the fridge of the most stalwart young activists today, you’d be lucky to find a bottle of mustard and some stale bread. When the young activists return home, they use DoorDash or another such service, because they certainly don’t belong in the kitchen.

As they demand new rights following imagined public wrongs, they rely increasingly on others to take care of their basic needs. Their mothers didn’t pass down any homemakers’ knowledge, schools don’t offer home economics courses out of respect for women’s rights, and the sheer convenience of meal subscriptions and takeout ensures that the credit card becomes the new kitchen implement of choice.

Did you know that  64% of Gen Z can’t cook at all?

And with that dependency comes a very real economic cost. The cost of delivering food can inflate the real value by up to 80%. 

Consumer debt is hitting all-new highs. The younger generations have no sense of forming their own budgets, saving for long term goals, and preparing for retirement. The growing popularity of financial podcasts such as Dave Ramsey, The Money Guys, and Financial Audit across generations shows the growing need for financial literacy among a constituency that has become starved for direction while facing record inflation.

What we need is a bridge back to the old knowledge of self-sufficiency. For all intents and purposes, the internet joke of “OnlyGrans” isn’t far off the mark.

The ideal would be to have kids learning organically through their parents’ example, but to bridge the current gap, we need to set a standardized knowledge base. Let’s get a basic home-ec class back into high schools. Let’s get a non-credit “home cooking basics” course into community colleges that qualifies under educational assistance programs. While regular intro credit courses focus on knife techniques, safety, and sanitation, this course wouldn’t be restaurant-oriented. It would focus on creating a few basic budget-friendly meals, the art of batch cooking and meal prep to make your life easier, and the art of finding low-budget substitutions so your whole plan never unravels because you ran out of a single ingredient.

These programs would add necessary information into the mandatory education of the next generation, and provide economically viable backfills of knowledge to the generations currently struggling.

Look, we got carried away and girl-bossed a little too close to the sun, but it’s not too late. The problem was never really the sandwich, so why are we letting that become our poisoned apple? We can go back to our roots and truly set ourselves up for independence if we just have the humility to admit that something important was lost along the way. There’s no reason to starve ourselves or our bank accounts on the road to success.

In short – let’s get that bread!

(WARNING: extra time in the kitchen can often have unintended side effects, including: healthier diet, happier home life, loss of shoes, and also marriage and pregnancy.)