Anytime you think you haven’t seen it all, wander into the comments on reels and shorts on social media.
The other day, I saw a reel on Facebook where the comment section was playing into the victimhood many people create for themselves to avoid hard work. A woman had created it, talking about how she had just passed three years of cooking from scratch, at home, for all their meals. She was fully an ingredient household and rightfully proud that her family had gotten off of processed foods, eating out, and so much more.
And the bitter comments were shameful.
Don’t deny people their self-righteous anger, for sure.
Look at all that anti-government behavior! How dare she be in the kitchen, cooking fresh meat, veggies, and more!
For now, there is a group of people who seem to truly believe that being self-sufficient is an arm of White Nationalist behavior, where the kitchens of America are full of evil White racists bent on destroying democracy. I wish I were joking, but I am not. Why do I go into the comment section? I should know better.
But yes, should you carve the time out to cook for yourself (and your family/friends), you might as well be a Nazi—no matter your race, economic status, political stance, or gender. You are, at minimum, supporting it by simply cooking.
I find that many Americans (and also Europeans) are happy to sit on their couch or in bed, ready to complain about everything since they have an audience.
How AI imagines two bitter people sitting on their couch, surrounded by bags of delivered DoorDash…
They complain that cooking food is a sexist thing to enslave women. That freedom is buying food from multi-national corporations (which pay low and use the lowest quality ingredients) and using people to deliver it to their work and home, creating a further poverty hole for gig workers to slide into (though they don’t talk about the gig work usually).
That is progress, it seems to them.
They scream about how the reel personality has to be a “Trad Wife” and how she is holding everyone down—and she must be a breeder of children and a Christian, and she must be “x” or “x” (whatever fills their need at the moment).
The saddest part is this is right out of the communist playbooks (See “The Kitchen, The Dining Table, And Why It Matters” for my thoughts on that). Have people reliant on the system. In the 1920s-40s, there were government-sponsored cafeterias and no kitchens in apartment buildings.
Now, it relies on others to cook for you; somehow, you are freed by it. They never pause to consider how much they spend daily and how much isn’t nourishing food (Starbucks? Yesterday, I treated myself to a frozen lemonade. I was hot, and I thought…it’ll cool me down. A 20-ounce Venti cost me $6.68! I rarely go out for drinks, so I am somewhat out of the loop now, but wow, I’m glad I had gift money on my Starbucks app. Now imagine if I bought a $4 pastry with it. Nearly $11 a day. For $11, I could have gotten a lot more groceries, even with the current inflation.
If that argument fails, they switch to Ol’ Reliable: “You are privileged! It must be nice to have time and a kitchen to cook in, with all the ingredients.” It usually devolves into where the person must be rich to afford “food.” So, of course, they must be holding down everyone to live this life.
The irony is that it IS cheaper to cook from scratch. Even if building a pantry is expensive initially, you will eat it all. Is it better to spend $25 for one meal for one person? Or, instead, spend that $25 to buy food you can cook multiple meals with? (For example, 1 pound of pasta will serve 4-6 people and costs $1 to 2 depending on the brand and sales. A 5-pound bag of rice is $5 and will feed one many times. Go to an Asian restaurant and want rice? You will spend $1-5 for a tiny amount.
But it takes being willing to think beyond today. To be willing to do the hard work.
The Takeaway (for me):
Their arguments are based on their unhappiness. They don’t want to take care of themselves, and they want the government to do everything for them. They want free housing and food. They should only have to work a few hours a week and have the latest mobile phone. They want the lives they see on reality shows and “influencer” pages on social media, which are nearly all fake. They refuse to accept that most people don’t live in luxury but are just average.
When they see people who are actually happy and living a good (and honest) life, they react with anger. It’s everything they have been trained to want to hate. The people they hate have things they want but don’t want to put the time/effort into getting them.
And that is it:
We all get 24 hours a day. Many women work full-time yet come home and cook a meal. It’s part of life. Every human has to eat to survive. Some choose to invest time into their lives. And so what if it is women who do it? It may bring them happiness to nurture their family. Maybe there is no big picture, no hidden agenda. They want to save money and eat real food. Gasp.
Or you can sit at home and be a bitter prune seed. And wait for the government to feed them for free. They might not like what they get fed, though. A steady diet of bug protein, corn, and whatever else it finds to feed the masses cheaply.
I’ll take getting in the kitchen and doing the hard work. No matter how tired I am.
~Sarah