How come Colette was the only..
female cook in the kitchen?
shareBecause she is the toughest cook in the kitchen.
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MovieChat Forums > Ratatouille (2007) Discussion > How come Colette was the only..
Well, in Colette's words, "Haute cuisine is an antiquated hierarchy built upon rules written by stupid, old men." Apparently she was tough and ambitious enough to work her way into a job at Gusteau's.
"Courage is found in unlikely places." ~ The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
Why do I have the feeling that line was Jeneane improvising?
shareBecause the only things feminism stands for now is tearing down men, and too many screenwriters think the only way to write a "strong" female character is to make her a misandrist bitch.
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Boopee doopee doop boop SEX
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LMAO so being upset at having to work twice as hard as everyone else due to something as incidental as her gender makes her a "bitch". Why don't you say something like this about any of the male characters who act in similar ways?
She's not wrong.
How is any of that the fault of her coworkers? I didn't see any of her coworkers assaulting her. I only saw her assaulting her male coworker.
\o/ STEVE HOLT!
First-off, she isn't a "bitch" just because she is a female, it revolves around the attitude. Now, I do not agree, that men or women are below the other, but, if you really think about it, who are the females, who got others to notice them!? It was their "bitchy" attitude, which makes them seem like they are a man trapped in a woman's body, instead of having their genteel way of showing others, that we do not have to have a "badass" attitude, to get what we feel is right, we can play by the rules, as well.
shareBecause the only things feminism stands for now is tearing down men, and too many screenwriters think the only way to write a "strong" female character is to make her a misandrist bitch.
Nope. It's well known and talked about, even by men, that a lot professional kitchens are ran by misogynist *beep* who believe that women can only be home cooks.
And if you ask all these morons who taught them how to cook, 10 to 1 they are going to answer their mommy or their grandma. And that's why they think having a penis makes you a special kind of cook.
For every lie I unlearn I learn something new - Ani Difranco share
Why do I have the feeling that line was Jeneane improvising?
Yeah? Well just ask any woman in a professional kichen.
For every lie I unlearn I learn something new - Ani Difranco share
I don't get why some people think that what Colette said about the haute cuisine being male-dominated was false or only used to add to comedy. She's not being a "misandrist bitch"; haute cuisine IS male-dominated. The feel-good, at-home style of cooking is more frequently run by women, but high-end public cuisine is much more difficult for a woman to inhabit with a high title. And I'm not being a "misandrist bitch"; I'm just stating the truth. Women are often limited to the private, comfort style of cooking, while men control the artistic, haute cuisine. If you look at restaurants, you can even see it in how they hire their servers--the cheaper, family-style restaurants often employ mostly women as servers, while the classy, expensive restaurants hire men to be servers. Colette was the only female chef in the kitchen because that's realistic to haute cuisine!
shareSo very, very true. I went to pastry school years ago, and was flat out told by one of my (male) instructors that, despite being talented and ambitious, as a woman I was unlikely to be at the top of any kitchen unless I opened my own bakery. When I asked him why, he said it was because I was a married woman-most chefs looking to hire kitchen staff steer clear of married women of childbearing age. Although I am now a stay at home mom, as a twenty-something it rankled me to hear it put so bluntly, even if now I see that it's true-the culinary field is not a great one if you want a family (never mind a family, if you want a life).
Because cooking like pretty much any profession is still male oriented, obviously.
Ya Kirk-loving Spocksucker!
a majority of professional,chefs are men. It is a very high pressure job with unsociable hours, and that type of job tends to attract more men than women.
share(And women are unfairly discriminated against because it's assumed that they will have children and get married which will take away from the job)
sharei think it's more that women who have children tend to prefer jobs that allow them to spend more time with them. being a chef is not very good for that.
shareThere's very little to look forward to when a woman goes to work in a kitchen where all the other employees are men, and it happens just as often at lower end restaurants, corporate chains, or indeed bakeries. There's very little policing when it comes to sexist behavior, and you better believe it is rampant.
As for the children thing, the issue is not time spent with your children that you don't have yet, it's the very real threat of maternity leave. It takes a long time to train new kitchen staff, not to mention whatever your particular tasks might be. A kitchen has to run like a well-oiled machine, so asking an employer to suffer even a temporary loss in productivity as they bring new people on board is a very tall order. They may not even have the resources to put up with it. Even with a new person able to take over, chances are your duties will be divided up among the rest of the kitchen staff and so everybody will need to work harder or put in more time, and that's just if transition is successful. Not to mention that you'll want your job back in 6 months, and it may not be there. If they do promise you some hours when you're again able, that means they have to communicate to your replacement that the job is probably temporary, which means they will start looking elsewhere, and if they leave say 3 months in, then they have to scramble to find someone in the interim and it becomes a viscious cycle of heart attack-inducing frustration. When you do return, they won't know whether to be thankful or not, because you may well find out the long hours and zero pay change means you can't work as much as you did before. No one will know that before you do, and so there is no way to prepare for it.
A relative of mine is a woman who owns her own bakery, and even with a small (13 or so) staff like that and with the understanding of what it means to be a woman in this business, all the frustration and logistics of losing two employees to maternity leave at the same time was barely worth it. All head chefs, everywhere, live in fear someone will come up to them on their lunch hour and say that they're pregnant.
So on top of the generic sexist remarks and lower pay and chauvinism about stressful jobs (that's even come up in a comment above), there's also this discrimination about female hires as a risk assessment for avoiding the maternity leave situation down the line - and while it definitely would be discriminatory, it is certainly related to justifiable fears. Especially so when you are dealing with the nature of the kitchen dynamic and small enterprises and just-ok insurance policies without much in the way of an "oh shlt" fund.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-06/women-everywhere-in-chang-colicchio-empires-but-no-head-chefs
The reality is this: Men overwhelmingly hold the highest paying and most prominent kitchen jobs at ambitious, independent restaurants across America. Women occupy just 6.3 percent, or 10 out of 160 head chef positions at 15 prominent U.S. restaurant groups analyzed by Bloomberg.
Women occupy just 6.3 percent, or 10 out of 160 head chef positions at 15 prominent U.S. restaurant groups analyzed by Bloomberg.
And the worst part is that there are more and more female chefs opening their own restaurants but even the ones getting buzz are only rarely covered by the press.
For every lie I unlearn I learn something new - Ani Difranco share