by Sorcha
(Note: Part of this post is gleaned from comments I made in August on Michael Ruhlman's blog. I'm into recycling, okay?)
A while back, I wrote up a rant about snobbery in the food enthusiast community. A few months down the road, I now find myself being annoyed by the exact opposite - people who screech "elitist" at anyone who thinks there's more to eating than just shutting your stomach up.
Don't get me wrong. I'm still just as anti-snob as the next n00b. But reverse snobbery isn't any better. It's just as smug and condescending, with an added tinge of self-righteousness implying that you, sir, are putting on airs and graces, and just who the fuck do you think you are, anyway?
It's really kind of a common theme in our culture, and not just in food. We just can't wait to take the piss out of the well-educated, the knowledgable, the good-looking, the well-dressed. Sometimes people deserve it, sure. You come swanning around me, thinking you're a better person than the rest of us for any reason that doesn't involve something like donating a kidney to a dying orphan? I'm probably going to smack you upside the head, at least in a verbal sense.
But sometimes, it's our own insecurities coming into play. Just because someone has five PhDs doesn't mean they're better than you, but it also doesn't automatically mean they're a stuck-up asshole who's secretly pondering the merits of sterilizing all people with an IQ of less than 180 so only the smart can breed. Yet all too often that's the kind of assumption we make, maybe without even realizing it. When we let those kinds of insecurities control us, I think, is when we get into that "who do you think you are?" mindset. We strike back at those we perceive as belittling our lives and our choices, whether they've actually done so or not. We become the very snob we're so angry about, or at least the equally-annoying opposite thereof.
In the time I've been hanging around over on Ruhlman's blog, being the jerkoff in the back of the room with nothing valuable to contribute but plenty to say anyway, I've become a lot more aware of this phenomenon. I think maybe that has to do with food itself. How we cook and eat is a huge part of who we are, and if people feel like that's being attacked, they get their backs up pretty fast.
Still, I don't understand how some people can think that if you like good food and you care about where it comes from and how it's made, it makes you some kind of ivory-tower prick. I mean, fuck, I'm a middle-class mom of hillbilly descent, sans college degree and currently unemployed. The paint on my teeny old house is peeling (Mr. Sorcha is painting it one wall at a time, but he's got, you know, a full-time job as well, so it's slow going.) My car is almost twenty years old, I like Family Guy and crappy action movies and yeah, my family eats at fast food joints and chain restaurants sometimes. But here's the thing. You don't have to be rich or even identify as a foodie to recognize poorly-created food - the best restaurant in my neighborhood, at least in my opinion, is a soul food joint up the street in a building that used to be a titty bar, and I'm pretty sure it'll never turn up in Gourmet magazine.
I still don't think it's elitist to look for quality in what you eat. Food isn't just fuel - it's family, it's laughter, it's nostalgia and comfort and love. It's important, dammit. It's the mac and cheese in the blue box that makes you happy when you've had a shitty day because it reminds you of childhood, and it's the moulard duck breast that makes you want to cry the first time you taste it because it's just that fucking good. Food nourishes not just your body, but your mind and your soul. It should matter. It does matter.