Nigella does bite.
Despite the New York Times‘s breathy adoration, I still do not like Nigella Lawson. First of all, she’s a female Jamie Oliver. Men just find her less annoying because she’s good-looking and she’s posh. The fact remains that she’s famous more for her personality than for her recipes. She also obviously has an oral fixation, which drives me up the wall. In every picture she’s got a carrot stick or something between her lips. (Snookums and I feel this is a big key to her appeal with male audiences.) Lastly, I found her book “How to be a Domestic Goddess” sexist and annoying. I like to bake, but I don’t consider myself more feminine or goddess-like because of it. I don’t think wafting around my house in a cloud of vanilla and ginger is the apex of womanhood. And I don’t think flicking your hair that much in a kitchen can be very sanitary, do you?
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4 responses
NO NO NO! Oh, Kris–our first fight! 🙂 I love love love the Nigella Lawson. I haven’t read her book, but I just adore her and her show (I have a TiVo season pass for it). I admit the recipes aren’t haute cuisine or anything, but they’re fun and simple and I just find her personality really winning. Have I been fooled? Now I’m worrying…
Max, you love all things English. Your Anglophilia is one of your charms. So I won’t hold it against you or anything. I just find her annoying, especially how every news story about her just has to mention how TRAGIC it is that her husband died and she’s raising the kids herself, and oh, did we mention she’s amazingly beautiful and talented and her dad’s famous? And everybody must love her because to not love her is to be a callous monster? Just pisses me off.
I think her books are pretentious. And besides, a lot of her recipes are actually rip-offs, very few are original.
Again, a complaint most people have about Jamie Oliver as well. Celebrity chefs are just such an odd breed. I’m a big fan of the old guard, like the Frugal Gourmet and the Fat Ladies. They did stuff that no one else did; not pseudo-Italian crap that everyone does.