'Cooking to Prep for Marriage': Woman Calls Out Misplaced Representation of Important 'Survival' Skill

Asking young girls to learn cooking and getting their hands on every household chore is a long-standing practice in brown households. This is because they wish to ‘prep her for marriage’ from an early age when she is continuously reminded of meeting the needs of her husband’s (or her ‘own’) family. Out of nowhere, cooking is regarded as being the foremost skill that girls should imbibe to become eligible for marriage. After all, a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach!

But, not anymore! While many have called out this gender-specific practice of asking women to learn cooking to feed their family, an internet user chose a unique way to highlight this wrong presentation of such an important ‘life’ skill and what must be done for its correction. A Twitter user, @smishdesigns, sparked the much-needed conversation with her post that read, “I rebelled so much against learning how to cook growing up because it would dictate my worth in the marriage market accordingly. Important life skill I missed because it was not presented to me for my own survival in the world but to feed the stomach of a man child.”

Netizens definitely gave a thumbs up to her interesting remark and even shared their instances of being asked to “surrender to gender roles". “One must learn regardless of age or gender. It’s a life saver and healthier option without a doubt,” wrote a user while another one remarked, “Conversely I was never let into the kitchen as a child because my mother would handle everything, and now I’m a grown-up who thinks cooking is a chore. It sucks how this basic life skill isn’t something that is taught seriously during childhood”.

Things are changing, slowly but eventually, and social media users also talked about cooking being now regarded as a ‘surviving’ basic skill. “It wasn’t presented to me as anything at all but was such a stark gender role that I didn’t bother. Not a hard life skill, actually. Lived abroad for a few years, recipe blogs helped,” commented a tweep. “On the other hand, my mom used to say “You would have to live alone in Hostels and Employee Quarters don’t die of hunger learn cooking and eat whatever you feel like because outside food far from our homeland is not fulfilling at all. I m happy and Cook every Friday cook,” told the fourth user.

Meanwhile, some male users brought up that women should stop blaming a gender for everything as one of them stated, “It was presented to you as a life skill, you saw it as an extension of patriarchy. Take ownership…that’s more than half the problem!.” So, where do you stand in this debate?

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