Blog Post #3

 In the article "How steak became manly and salads became feminine" there are a few things I took away. The question is why are women supposed to gravitate to things like salads and sweets and men are supposed to gravitate to things such as red meat and bacon. Food geared towards men or women came about in the era where there were certain gender specific dinning areas. Light dishes and elaborate deserts were considered female foods in many magazine and newspaper articles. This is because women's food was seen as "dainty" and not intended to be very filling. The 20th century rolls around and all the talk in cookbooks was about women giving up their favorite foods to focus on pleasing their boyfriends or husbands. On the other hand men spoke up about having a fun, attractive wife, not just one that slaved away in the kitchen all day. This created pressure for women to fit into a perfect mold. An article in 2007 said that "meat is strategy." Basically saying women started a trend of ordering steak on a first date. This would reassure that if a relationship did develop, the women would not be on the man about his diet. It looks like there is a long road ahead to changing stereotypes about gender and food. In the second article "I Smelled Like a Man for a Day" there are also some new things I learned. First, the writer explains how there are those "manly" scents that everyone knows of. There are many variations but if you think of Axe or Old Spice, you just know. Obviously these scents are very different than those of women's products. The question that was asked is why are men minty and women fruity?  These scents are the way they are because over time, this is what society thinks each gender should smell like. Tendencies of scent being part of personal identity discourages a man to use "feminine" scents and vice versa for women. Progress is being made with more gender neutral scents on the market.