Television as a trattoria: Constructing the woman in the kitchen on Italian food shows

Abstract

This article analyses the gender issues raised by the representation of the woman in the kitchen on Italian food TV. In Italy, food and women have always been constructed as a whole, but today this model seems to be redundant. Controversial postfeminist readings of Nigella’s cooking shows and Williams’ categories of dominant, emergent and residual help investigate, in a constructivist sense, how Italian TV deals with this social change. Through qualitative, semiotic and gender analyses, the article focuses on three Italian food shows broadcast at noon. Results show that the three programmes mediate the role of the woman, drawing on the model of trattorie, traditional Italian restaurants in which the women cook and the men serve the tables. This negotiation helps balance gender relations without revolutionary outcomes. In fact, at the same time, it modernises the old model of the housewife and does not move the woman out of the kitchen.

Humor and Performing Gender on TV Cooking Shows

“…This paper explores the use of humor as a performance of gender in the media, specifically cooking shows. In spite of a recent body of literature on tv cooking shows and gender (Buscemi 2014;Hollows 2003;Swenson 2009), and on the concept of gendered performance (Chiaro and Baccolini 2014), how humor relates to female performance and female identity on cooking shows is an area to be explored. The media is influential in regulating norms and practices of discourse in society.…”

Share What and How You Cook at Home! : Uncovering Social Identity

“…This was discussed at the conference [1]. Other researches found domestic cooking has been the subject of foundational feminist work on gender inequality, as mentioned by Szabo [2], Buscemi [3] and Meah [4]; the risk associated with unsafe food safety practices and control domestic food hazards [5]; food not only as an important part of a balanced diet but also one of our main routes to pleasure [6]; and genetically modified food, culture, politics, and policy developments [7].…”

Islamic lifestyle and Emine Beder’s TV cookery showKitchen Love

“…This is also the case with Turkish television which has welcomed food programming with thematic channels and different formats. Cookery programmes have been evaluated in terms of promoting particular ‘biopedagogies’ (Wright, 2009 in Philipov, 2013), lifestyles (Lewis et al, 2012; Stringfellow et al, 2013), consumption habits (Caraher et al, 2000; De Solier, 2005; Ketchum, 2005), gender roles and fantasies (Buscemi, 2014; Cruz, 2013; Hollows, 2003; Nathanson, 2009; Oren, 2013; Parry, 2010; Scholes, 2011), but they are rarely thought to serve the making of religious identities. In this article, I demonstrate the extent to which Muslim identity is represented, and a particular Islamic lifestyle is constructed, in Emine Beder’s cookery show.…”