New Dating Column For The Food-Obsessed
About a month ago, a post appeared on a ladyblog called xojane.com. The post was entitled "Men I'm Over: Foodies" and explained (at length) why the author has no interest in spending time with dudes who make food a focus of their lives. She talked about one guy who babbled on for close to an hour about pickles and others who obsess over ramps (not the skateboard kind) and soil composition. Women across the blogosphere stood up and cheered that someone had finally given voice to their agony. But here's the thing: it's a completely flawed argument.
First and foremost, I've always hated the term "foodie." It rhymes with cootie and we all learned early on about the dangers of that disease. More importantly, though, it diminishes the fact that I'm someone that loves food in addition to being a real person with other real interests. Nobody likes being lumped into a group, unless that group is "the richest men in the world." The guys that Jessica Olien describes in her post are caricatures of real people and, like most caricatures, they have oversized heads and were drawn at a carnival. The men the post talks about aren't even foodies — they're hipster douchebags. Nobody likes hipster douchebags, especially the ones who chose food over indie rock.
In reality, we (i.e. guys who love food) are the perfect guys to date. We always know the best restaurants in any given neighborhood and we're happy to spend half our paycheck taking our ladies out to dinner. We don't mind doing the grocery shopping — in fact, we love it. Plus, when we get home from said shopping, we're happy to spend hours in the kitchen preparing a multi-course feast for the women in our lives to enjoy. If I talk about the virtues of dino kale versus curly kale for a few minutes, so be it. There's a lot to talk about and it's not like you can make kale chips out of curly kale.
In a world where women are still subjugated and treated like second-class citizens, food-centric dudes should be seen as organic knights in biodynamic armor. I'm sorry if some guys are elitist dicks, but that happens with men of all types, not just those interested in the culinary arts. By and large, we're nice guys that just so happen to care about the way our steaks were raised and we have an opinion about the best beer to go with our nachos. Being knowledgeable is a good thing in my book and if you don't like it, go talk to the investment banker who'd love to tell you all about his massive IPO. You're over foodies? We're over you, too. Lay off, hater ladies, and let us XY foodlovers do our thing.