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A slave to the stove? The TV celebrity chef abandons the kitchen: lifestyle TV, domesticity and gender
Author(s) -
Scholes Lucy
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
critical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.111
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1467-8705
pISSN - 0011-1562
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8705.2011.02004.x
Subject(s) - popularity , stove , advertising , sociology , rebranding , reality tv , media studies , celebrity culture , popular culture , art , aesthetics , gender studies , political science , history , law , archaeology , business , finance , economics
This essay uses the modern phenomenon of the TV celebrity chef to discuss contemporary debates about food culture. It links the rise of TV celebrity chefs to the popularity of lifestyle TV that has come to dominate our schedules. Taking Delia Smith, Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver as the central case studies, this essay explores the way popular programmes present the role of cookery both in the home and in the public sphere. Embedded in this are issues pertaining to the gendered boundaries of the domestic environment – most significantly perhaps in the relationship between the idea of the ‘domestic goddess’ and twenty‐first‐century feminism. This essay argues that female TV chefs such as Smith and Lawson are still shown for the most part in their kitchens and their horizons rarely seem to stretch beyond the domestic sphere. Oliver, on the other hand, represents a new brand of chef who has taken off his apron and taken to the streets, rebranding himself as a social activist or even – in his own terms – a revolutionary.