Esquire's 'Eat Like A Man' ADHD Edition
The September issue of Esquire magazine hit the shelves recently, and while normally this would go unnoticed here, this particular issue has a large food-related feature, subtlety titled, "How To Eat Like A Man Now." We don't know much about Esquire readers in 2009, and had been under the impression that they were a discerning lot. You know, brand name jeans, a touch of cologne, friends of bartenders, lovers of ladies.
We were wrong, and apparently the Esquire readership now skews to the club-totin', "bash your wimmin over the head and drag them to the cave" set. Here we have the ADHD edition of "How To Eat Like A Man Now", in which otherwise sane cooks (Paula Deen notwithstanding) share their beliefs about what it takes to Feed A Man.
"How To Forage Like A Man": Wylie Dufresne of New York's wd-50 is given a selection of ingredients and told to come up with a meal suitable for a man. The ingredients are ones that, allegedly, every man has in his fridge: Eggs! Ketchup! Pickles! Boxed mac and cheese! Get past the fact that these are ingredients that most families, single ladies, and old folks have in their fridges, too, and Dufresne comes up with an intriguing take on breakfast for dinner. I mean, I wouldn't want to eat couscous cooked in instant coffee mixed with powdered cheese, but maybe Men do.
"The Only Candy A Man Should Eat": Writer Chris Jones seems to understand the humor inherent in Esquire's premise, and fires off a remarkable ode to jujubes. You see, rumor has it that they are made from dead horses, and "by consuming dead horses we're taking their power and virility and making it our own." It's smart, knowing, irreverent: it's what all of this feature should have been had the editor lived in 2009 and not 1975.
"How Men Eat": In this (mercifully uncredited) section, we learn truisms like "Hunger spurs creativity in a man", "A beer with lunch can be transformative", and "There is no joy in a wrap." People pay money to subscribe to this? Now excuse me as I read my Cosmo about "How Women Eat." I'm really looking forward to "Hunger spurs thinness in a woman", "Gazpacho is the new Vichyssoise", and "Caution: tonic water has calories."
"Why I Like To Cook For Men": In perhaps the most egregious bit of stunt-writing in this piece, Paula Deen is brought in to wax poetic on her love of cooking for the menfolk. Our Lady of Butterfat speaks about how she loved to cook for her teenage sons, and now her husband, because "men make noises." Not like ladies who just sit there and take it, obviously. When Deen claims she "would rather cook for a man than a woman any day," her mid-century Southern mindset shows itself to be just as outmoded and old-fashioned as the tea sandwich. Julia Child didn't make noises over food? You don't think Alice Waters or M.F.K Fisher swooned over a good bouillabaisse? If your lady friends aren't making noises, Paula, maybe it's not them. It's you.
—Stephanie Butler
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