http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1042702/Time-Warp-Wives-Meet-women-really-live-past.html

My perspective as a professional cook/baker is that professional cooking is a man's world, and home cooking is starting to follow suit. Most of the men I know think they are better cooks than their spouses/girlfriends, and a couple of them hardly even let their women into the kitchen, because they don't want their knives and pans to get messed up. As cooking becomes a bigger and bigger trend and 'foodies' come out of the woodwork, more and more men are cool with cooking, actually kind of taking it over and making it a competetive thing: 'Last night I made some seared scallops over wilted arugula with a balsamic-wild mushroom reduction.' 'Oh yeah? Well, I made roasted lamb chops with a fig and rosemary conserve and herbed polenta.' Conversations such as this between men are not uncommon in my world. So the one lone woman from the article who thinks that women doing the cooking signifies a step backwards for feminists is obviously still stuck in the 60s and 70s and hasn't been paying attention to recent trends. I've had to fight to even be taken seriously in a kitchen, so I have no idea what she's talking about. Welcome to the 21st century, lady.

"For many feminists then, there is something almost perverse about actively choosing to do tasks that the women's libbers of the 1960s and 1970s fought so hard to reject."

To argue that this is what women's liberation was about, abandoning and prohibiting certain practices, is on par with saying that abolition was about rejecting cotton-picking. Women didn't have a choice when it came to these domestic practices and their companion aesthetic, but that same lack of choice would apply if the feminist ideal was a prohibition of everything that was formerly demanded. When I look to the advances of second-wave feminism, I see liberation from the compulsion to do this or that, but not necessarily this or that as such.

I make a mean meatloaf. My wife makes a great tuna casserole. We all like the cupcakes I taught our older daughter to make.

I'm confused. Where's Camille Paglia when you need her?

There should be little wonder why third wave feminists are calling out their elders, for just as these matrons insist that society and men held them in slavery, they are in turn attempting to exert the same exact kind of societal and cultural pressure that kept them and their mothers in the kitchen on their daughters to force them into the boardroom.

Just as 50 years ago a woman would be told to stay home, take care of the kids and bake cupcakes because it was "for her own good", today elder feminists are saying, "go out and get a high stress job, make a lot of money and carry a chip on your shoulder the size of Alaska. Because, you know, it's for your own good."

The problem with this is obviously that no one likes being told to do things because they "should" or because it's "for their own good". The only lamer argument for adjusting someones behavior might be along the lines of "because I said so" and we all know how persuasive that one is. Are they really surprised that very few women want to listen to them?

Frankly, I think they need to get off their high horses. Just like most "mothers" they seem to think that their children are either alternatively brilliant or complete morons depending on how well they mimic behavior and actions that they want them to. The truth of the matter is of course that todays women are not stupid and can make their own choices about what they want to do with their lives. Sure, they recognize that this was made in part possible due to the feminist movement, but deciding to live your life and make your choices out of respect for those that struggled on your behalf can be just another fucking form of slavery.

After all, what the hell would be the point of granting freedom, if you insist that the grantee behave by a set of rules? And what human being would willingly choose to live under the tyranny of expectations?

That is to say, do we repeat oppressive patterns because of a compulsion or a deep-seated fetish for them (re-enactment), or do we repeat them as a means of developing expertise -- as a way to prepare ourselves for future role conflicts, and perhaps to gain greater insight (rehearsal)?

To cast the issue as one of ironic detachment is a blunt shorthand, useful if glib, pop theorizing is your goal. But there are other less convenient ways to talk about this stuff, esoteric but well-established and, to my mind, worth the trouble.

What's at the root of "cupcake feminism"? Is it confrontation? Is it longing? Does our culture crave a return to pre-modernity or is this a way of measuring our progress?

It seems to me that the forms of mid-20th century life have taken on a mythic aspect in current American consciousness ("Mad Men," the current trend in retro fashion, etc). It's surely no great stretch to see insecurity and disenchantment in the face of the Global Century driving a nostalgia for the high point of the American one. Anything pre-Vietnam is "in."

The real test of a forward-looking people, including its feminists, is this: can we linger over the past and then close the album?

The culture and language of the women who raised me was parallel and complementary to the men's, but seperate in many ways. It included books, and languid conversations in summer kitchens watching water baths of canned field peas. I remember more formal events, when coffee was served on hand-painted lacquered trays and surrounded by slices of cake and pickled watermelon rind. Crochet work and knitting and embroidery mixed with sly remarks and deep empathy. Women had their own society and their own secrets that were not shared with men, just as men had their own rituals and codes.

I've never understood how the idea of a womanly subculture that involves skilled crafts and intelligent conversations is inherently counter to feminism. The idea that this subculture is somehow subordinate and inferior to the masculine subculture was and is one that some men harbor, but is also the view of some women who try to claim the banner of feminism for their narrow view of what equal rights are about.

I still see nothing wrong with book clubs and sipping iced tea on summer porches, scratching at mosquito bites while you gossip yourself through the long blue evenings of August. I collect and enjoy crochet work and the delicate beauty of some embroidery, created by women who often had very little. To say that these things, that a cupcake of all things, can't be enjoyed as a part of a larger women's culture because the larger climate in which that sub-culture evolved was often hostile to the ideas of equality for the members of that sub-culture is both profoundly chilling and profoundly irritating.