Is it ok to hate cooking? (rare uncensored crashout!)

Disclaimer: I’m actually much less mean than this post makes me sound, I promise. I don’t actually hate anyone! Sometimes we all crash out a bit, don’t we, and this was cathartic (and imo funny) to write, so I’m putting it on my blog, because it’s my silly little personal blog, and what’s a personal blog for if not a bit of silliness and catharsis, amiright. TW for bad language and strong opinions.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Tangential Ragey Preface (TW: Vaccines)

Shit be pissing me off these past few days, y’all! Not sure what it is, probably some weird postpartum hormonal nonsense, but I have exactly ZERO patience, especially for things that strike me as stupid, lately.

Just this morning I finally officially uninstalled Instagram (if you know me, you know I have an on-and-off toxic relationship with Instagram). The algo was already annoying me, but the final straw was this one stupid doughy-faced dipshit all up on my Suggested Reels talking about how Catholics shouldn’t vaccinate — and I don’t typically make fun of people’s appearances, because that’s just against my personal code of ethics, but damn!, today, that just crossed a line for me. Like don’t be coming up onto my internet with your misinformation and your doughy-ass face talking about “vACciNes aRe deMoNic” when there’s literally an active outbreak of a previously-eradicated virus raging through my neck of the woods right now precisely because of y’all’s self-centered antivax BS. With your bitch ass. Bye bye, Instagram. (And if you’re thinking of leaving me an antivax “dO yOuR rEseaRch” comment, don’t bother, I’ll delete it without reading. With your bitchass.)

ahem! Anyway, that’s not even the reel I came here to complain about! All of that was just a preface to demonstrate that stupid things, things that wouldn’t normally get under my skin, are getting under my skin lately. The thing I actually came here to talk about is: cooking.

Getting to the Point: The Reel in Question, and the Real Question

Again, it starts with a reel. And this one was randomly recommended to me on YouTube, God knows why. Here it is, if you’re curious, but be warned, it’s stupid as shit. The gist of it is: it’s a series of clips of street interviews, contrasting contemporary Russian women with contemporary American women. When asked whether they cook at home, the Russian women (who btw all happen to be very stylishly-dressed and made-up, also very fit and sexy) all responded, with their delicious accents: “yes, of course, I always cook for my man,” “lots of meat for my man,” “yes, obviously, I love to cook,” “yes, I cook breakfast lunch & dinner daily.” The American women, on the other hand (who btw were varying degrees of basic, out of shape, and casually dressed) all said: “ehh, a couple times a week,” “maybe once a week.” Moral of the story: Russian women are better than American women, because they cook. And women who cook are better.

Stupid! — but, you know what… is it true, I wonder? Am I mad because it’s true?

You might not be concerned about whether this claim is true; you probably have your existing opinion reconfirmed, and move on, thinking it’s obvious and “why would anyone wonder, let alone worry, about something so obvious?” Most people don’t worry about such things. But hey, this is my job, this is what I do, I worry about such things, so if you don’t give a shit and are just rolling your eyes thinking I’m being ridiculous, why are you even on my blog? Get up outta here. (With your bitch ass.)

I won’t bother discussing the issues of femininity, style, and beauty, as those are things I’ve discussed already (here, here, and here, if you’re curious); but today, will focus specifically on this question of cooking. Must a “good woman” necessarily be a good cook? Is it ok for a woman to not cook?

Backstory: Mith’s Personal Relationship with Cooking

Fuck cooking. I hate it. It’s taken me thirty-six years to realize and accept that I hate cooking. For much of my life, I really believed that cooking was one of my hobbies, that I genuinely liked it. But no. What I liked was “edging” eating. I liked being close to food, messing with food, touching and smelling it, as a substitute for actually eating it. A sick avoidant fascination with food. I developed an ED in adolescence, so my relationship with food is just permanently fucked up. Also booze. One of the funnest things ever in my life was drunk cooking. One of my absolute favorite things in the world: chopping vegetables and listening to music while drinking on an empty stomach — peak human experience. 🤌I used to slice all my fingers up so bad.

But then I got sober and got the eating shit under control, and surprise! IRL food is so uninteresting now. (I specify “IRL food” because I still love watching Food Network, writing about food, looking at paintings of food, reading cookbooks…not to be annoyingly self-referential today, but I discuss all of that here.) It’s no longer some exotic treasure to lust after. It’s just food. Ugh. No offense, but why does anyone love cooking? Don’t they have anything more interesting to spend their mental energy on?

A friend once asked if, hypothetically, a pill existed that one could take to meet all their nutritional needs so they wouldn’t need to eat, would I take that pill? And hell yeah I would. Food, digestion. Ugh. Do you remember that scene near the end of Infinite Jest where Hal is imagining, with a dread that borders on horror, all the food that he will have to eat to sustain himself during his career as a student at ETA? All the space that all that food would take up? All that eating you’ll have to do. Ugh. Why all this fuss over filling your stomach. Cooking. And the more elaborate the cooking, the bigger the mess you have to clean up, the more dishes to wash — yet another waste of my fucking life when I could be doing something mentally stimulating.

Sometimes I feel like: why, in 2026, are we still cooking.

No offense but sometimes, I feel like people who really love cooking and cleaning must not have much going on upstairs. Don’t come for me in the comments, I don’t actually endorse that thought. It just crosses my mind, fairly often, without my consent. I’m fully aware that cooking is an art and plenty of people way smarter than I are deeply passionate about it, and that’s cool. (Like I said, I’m obsessed with baking shows!) I don’t get it but whatever.

I hate cooking. I hate the stress and the mess of it. I don’t like to eat, so I don’t taste the shit as I’m making it, so I never even know if it tastes good or not. Left to my own devices, I’d probably never cook at all. I could happily live on coffee and smoothies. Fuck cooking.

Admittedly, this feeling may just be the result of my current situation in life. Cooking used to be “fun”… but now, it’s dull and practical. Now I have four young kids and a husband, all of whom have very different taste preferences, and we have a tight grocery budget and a kitchen that desperately needs renovation. And my kids pretty much won’t eat home-cooked food as a rule — anything I make, automatically disgusting. Strictly ready-made snacks from a package, for them. It all makes meal planning and cooking a real drag. — But, if the kids actually ate my cooking, and if I had money to blow on all my dream ingredients for all kinds of fun recipes, and a beautiful, efficient, well-outfitted workspace — then would I enjoy cooking again? You know what, maybe! But tbh, I feel like people will do the things they like to do regardless of their circumstances (case in point: me, here, writing this even though I have a zillion other things I should be doing). So if I really liked cooking, I’d probably like it even here and now.

I don’t like cooking, and am not very good at it. I do it, still — I make sure my husband always has a home-cooked dinner of some kind, even if it’s yesterday’s leftovers. But I don’t really fuck with breakfast (unless it’s pancakes/waffles, which I am actually decent at and make quite often, from scratch) or lunch, and my dinners are, at best, adequate. Nor do I care about aesthetics of plating or setting the table or whatever. Meal prep is not a joy, for me. Does this make me less of a woman?

I mean I think it’s obvious that I’m not a “good woman,” by the textbook definition. I’m a homely, frumpily-clad, small-breasted tomboy with cankles, a potty mouth, a bad attitude, and zero social or domestic skills. I’ve never felt girly or womanly. Honestly, I’m super grateful that I didn’t grow up in today’s age of transtrenderism, because if that shit had been popular back when I was a soft-brained kid, I have no doubt I’d have glommed onto the trend and started calling myself a “he/him,” and my liberal atheist parents would have encouraged it, and it would have long-term fucked me up even worse than I already am (lol). (Just pissing everyone off here, today, aren’t I?) Thank God I missed that boat. But anyway: all this to say: I hate cooking; does that make me less of a woman?

Finally getting to the meat of the matter: what is a “good woman,” anyway?

But what do we mean by a “good woman”? What is the textbook definition, and more importantly, who wrote that definition?

I’ll tell you who: men did! Men decided what a “good woman” is — and what they mean when they say “good woman” is: “good wife.”

Which is fine. I’m not complaining about that. That’s natural. And obviously women have a definition of a “good man” that’s gonna be different from a man’s definition. (However, I also think it’s true that women are better at recognizing that a man can be a “good man 🤝👍” without being a “good man 😍🥵” and vice versa — the two are not the same, in fact often quite different; whereas it seems like a lot of men can’t get it through their heads that a woman can be a person of value without being sexually desirable.)

I’m just saying: when I read the sentence “he’s a good man,” I assume anyone of either gender could be speaking, and what comes to mind is: “this man is virtuous, he did a good deed, he did something brave or maybe even heroic, he’s trustworthy and reliable” — but when I read the sentence “she’s a good woman,” first of all I assume a man is speaking, and what comes to mind is: “she’s traditional and feminine, maternal, she cooks and cleans and takes care of her man, and takes care of her house and her physical appearance.” If you want to describe a virtuous, brave, or heroic woman, you say “she’s a good person.” If you saw a woman do something selfless, you would go on to describe her as a “good person,” not a “good woman,” because the latter sounds kind of sexual or even objectifying, like you’re describing a good cow at auction — it doesn’t mean the same thing as “she’s a good person.” Whereas, about a man, the two terms (“a good man” and “a good person”) can be used interchangeably. Is it just me? Am I wrong about this? Do you see what I’m saying?

What I’m trying to get at is: men, and some of us Trad-inclined women, tend to conflate the one definition of “good woman” (“good human being”) with the other (“good wifey”). We tend to think that a woman’s value as a person = her value as a wife. And that is not true. I’m not less of a woman because I suck at cooking. Less of a wife, sure! But that’s no secret, is it?

Brief Tangent About Housewifery and the Purpose of Life

I ain’t much of a housewife. I do my best, and don’t get me wrong, I do love this job! Since becoming a SAHM, I wake up every day with a sense of purpose, because I have the privilege of serving the people I love most in the world, instead of a bunch of often-shitty randos who don’t know me from Adam. It’s honestly so weird when I remember how depressed and suicidal and full of existential despair I used to be, working a job outside the home to support no one but myself. So much what is the fucking point. Might be a life for some, but it was none for me. I love being a housewife! I respect the job, and am always trying to get better at it, trying to improve my cooking, cleaning, and parenting skills — but, for the time being, I also happen to be pretty bad at it, skill-wise. Luckily, we don’t have to be super great at a thing in order to love it and flourish while doing it (exhibit A: me + writing, lol).

Back to the point & Another Question

Being bad at cooking, and/or hating cooking, does not make a woman less of a woman. (To use the real, non-sexual definition of “good woman.”) It makes her less of an ideal wife, sure. Fair enough.

But wait, is marriageability a moral matter? Is it a moral failing to not be good wifey material?

I bumped up against this question in my post about femininity, too. This is one that I can’t seem to decide on an answer to.

If two hypothetical women, Alice and Bertha, are both alike in virtue and holiness and moral qualities and all — love God and their neighbor, selfless, humble, charitable, et cetera — but Alice is a tomboy with short buzzed hair, who wears jeans and t-shirts and has more traditionally masculine hobbies, while Bertha is a super-feminine girl who wears dresses and long hair and loves cooking and taking care of children… is Bertha a “better” person for better exemplifying the qualities natural to womankind? Does she get like bonus points in God’s scorebook for being feminine?

I like to think no. I guess some folks out there would probably argue that Alice doesn’t truly “love God and her neighbor” if she dresses and acts like a dude, because if she really loved God she would honor His design for her as a woman, by being womanly; and if she really loved her neighbor, she would dress more humbly, more appropriately, so as to not call undue attention to herself or present a distraction. This is what my inner critic, Catherine (whom you may remember from this post) is saying in my head right now. But, I somehow don’t believe that Catherine is right.

However, I’m still on the fence with this one, and don’t think I’m going to solve it tonight.

In Conclusion

The dude who made that reel about Russian vs. American women is probably just some gross thirsty incel who’s been rejected by so many American women that he now fetishizes Slavic women and fantasizes about bagging himself a “Snow Latina” who, he imagines, will be just sooo happy to cater to all his needs. 🤮

And anyway, there were plenty of women in the comments going “uhhh, I’m Russian and I never cook” or “I’m American and I cook three times a day” — and someone even pointed out that his sample was rigged because he exclusively interviewed wealthy residents of Moscow. Biased.

And besides, Russia’s national policies really lend themselves to a traditional family structure. Not so in America. Oh no, not so — don’t even get me started. That’s a large part of why our culture looks the way it does. As American women, it’s not our fault. Russian women are not inherently superior — they’re not stronger or made of some better substance, or something. Their culture is just different. If they’d been born and raised in America, they’d be like us, and vice versa. People tend to forget the extent to which they are products of their time and place. People tend to think they’re original and in charge of themselves.

As someone who’s never traveled farther east than Prague, I think it is generally true that Russian/Slavic women are fitter and more feminine than American ones — so what. I do not believe that this reflects negatively on American women. And if you think it does, if you think that a woman’s value as a human being is actually determined by her ability/willingness to feed and take care of a man… then, with all due respect, i.e. zero respect, you can GTFO of here with your bitch ass.

And on second thought, I’m not even going to allow comments on this one, because I just know you’re all going to be mad at me, lol.