Turkey Brain

It seems none of us are immune to bias. While I have been more accustomed to religious observance as a means of discrimination, I have heard quite a bit about cookbooks versus textbooks. 

"You know, those girls," she sneers, "the only thing they know how to do is make challah." 

Via chabadofbelair.org

I have not yet heard the scorn from the other side (like "Those girls who read for fun!") so it seems to be a currently one-sided prejudice. 

Such an accuser conjures an image of a frumpy bluestocking, but she was actually quite stylish, sporting a designer bag. I was then even more confused. I would have thought such disgust over such gross physicality as a delectable dinner would spill over into other aesthetics, such as label-worship. 

I have, in recent years, become interested in cooking. If I am to truly do battle with the horrific diet of the typical American, I certainly have to be in a position to offer palatable alternatives. The process of extracting edibles from raw ingredients can be a complicated project, so to have it so derided as a pastime for the feeble-minded was certainly a puzzlement to me. 

I was fond of academia (until the professors' egos got in the way of the education); college, I found, was not strictly about learning—it was about thinking, to ponder the cultures and ways of many societies outside of our daily comprehension, and attempting to do so without judgement. 

We are all not meant to be the same; the world would be quite boring if we were. Marriages would be arranged by lotto; food would taste the same; fashion would require but one runway. 

If "that" girl knows how to make good challah but is not interested in the history of the Renaissance, God bless. But there are plenty of females who enjoy, say, both. I refuse to permit but two categories, "ignorant chef" or "hungry intellectual."

There is also a third alternative, of one who can't cook to save her life and flunked out of high school. She is also allowed to have her own strengths, her own accomplishments, outside of such a simple worldview. 

The truly well-read will acknowledge that an anthropological outlook is in order, and it behooves a graduate of higher education to step outside of her own standards and grant some goodwill to skills she does not possess. 

Can't we all just get along?