Women chefs are still struggling, no matter how ‘badass’ they are

Last October, food writer Charlotte Druckman published Women on Food, a book that highlights the normally marginalized voices of over a hundred female chefs and offers insight into the regressive gender dynamics and norms reinforced in their workplaces. Women on Food explores this in many ways, but one question the chefs weigh in on is particularly telling of their experiences: which words they wish people would quit using to characterize them. Among the flagrantly gendered phrases mentioned — including “ballbuster,” “nurturing,” and “bitchy” — one seemingly positive term stood out: “badass.” 

As Druckman points out in the book, the term “badass” has been culturally appropriated from black culture. The term is generally believed to have originated in the 1950s to describe a black man who resisted white supremacy; “bad,” in this case, means admirably tough or violent. It’s since been weaponized by the patriarchy to validate women that are considered up to par with toxic masculinity. 

Cooking is still a highly male-dominated industry: over 93 percent of U.S. restaurants are led by male chefs. Being a chef is the job with the second biggest wage gap, with women making 75.4 cents to men’s dollar. It’s difficult for women to receive bank loans to open their own restaurants, virtually impossible for mothers to take family leave in a men’s kitchens, and a strain to move up professionally. In 2017, a mere 17.6 percent of the head chefs and owners featured in Bon Apetit’s “Hot 10” restaurant list were women. This gender disparity doesn’t stay in the kitchen, either: Also in 2017, 75 percent of Harvard’s Science and Cooking lecturers were men. 

If you are a “badass” female chef, however, perhaps you can gain a bit more respect. Take Chef Tamar Adler, who discussed in the book how she got burns on her arms from lifting scathing and unwieldy items in the kitchen because she felt she needed to reject the stereotype of weak femininity and assert her “badassery.”

“Bad boy” — a phrase often used to describe male chefs and, in many ways, the corollary to the “badass” female chef — was also mentioned in the book. “Bad boy chefs” disturb the preexisting paradigms of food and are admirably unapologetic. They leave women — who, of course, have historically cultivated “traditional” food — in the dust, along with their boring stereotypes of feminized cooking. 

The “bad boy chef” has perhaps been best personified by the late Anthony Bourdain. Take, for instance, a 2014 profile of Bourdain by Smithsonian Magazine. Journalist Ron Rosenbaum wrote, “In this particular cultural revolution the original rock star, the Elvis of bad boy chefs, is Anthony Bourdain.” The glowing depiction of Bourdain stands in stark contrast to the way a woman chef is described in the same profile. Rosenbaum noted that Bourdain was paired with “domestic goddess” Nigella Lawson on the show “The Taste.” 

It is worth nothing how sexual politics dangerously factor into the “bad boy” chef reputation. In that same Smithsonian profile, Rosenbaum comments on Bourdain’s description of sleeping with the daughter of a notorious KGB defector as the kind of thing that helps give Bourdain his “bad boy reputation.” 

This glorification of chefs’ sexual conquests, however, coincides with the rampant sexualization and harassment of women in kitchens. Take Chef Dominique Crenn, who told The Washington Post in 2018 that she was harassed by a sous-chef in her workplace. Upon filing a complaint to the head chef, he told Crenn, “If you don’t like it, you can leave.” The head chef also told her if she ever exposed the sous-chef to anyone else, he would blackball her. More recently, in May 2018, 60 Minutes spoke with a group of women who had all worked with The Chew’s Mario Batali, and all claimed the chef harassed and assaulted them. Batali had been getting away this alleged behavior for 20 years. 

Women, therefore, are struggling to thrive in restaurants. Being called “badass” doesn’t help women transcend these struggles; it instead is an attempt to fool women into thinking they have the ability to do so while ultimately training them to accept their condition.