Feminine Women Can Cook/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Being able to cook is a sign of femininity.

  • Straight: Team Mom Melody can cook, whereas Action Girl Marcy is a Lethal Chef.
  • Exaggerated: Melody is a Supreme Chef, and Marcy wrecks the kitchen when she so much as tries to boil an egg.
  • Justified: Melody was raised to be traditionally feminine and know how to cook. Marcy wasn't.
  • Inverted:
  • Subverted:
    • Melody's cooking looks good, but as soon as the rest of the team tastes it, they nearly puke.
    • Marcy is offended when Jim asks if she can cook... And takes to the kitchen in a whirlwind of steel and flame, leaving the place looking like a battlefield in her wake... And emerging with a mind-blowing array of appetizers. They smell delicious, and Marcy seems very pleased with herself.
    • Colonel Badass is a skilled cook, and everyone suspects it's his special military training - turns out it's actually part of his girl fun.
  • Double Subverted:
    • That's because Marcy helped out.
    • Marcy's cooking looks and smells good, but tastes horrible.
  • Parodied:
    • One of the greatest chefs in the world, J.F. Kindling, is described by the press as feminine, polite, and sweeter than any food. When the main characters meet him, they learn that J.F. Kindling is male.
    • Marcy discovers that she can cook just fine if she wears a housedress and frilly apron, while Melody loses her cooking skills if she wears trousers or uses masculine language.
  • Deconstructed: A Billy Elliot Plot ensues between Melody and her mother Josephine, a woman with staunch 50's ideals of femininity, and forces her to cook and keep house. Melody either does these but with an enormous hatred boiling inside her that borders on Yandere, or deliberately chooses to fail at cooking to tick her mom off. This causes a terribly huge gap to come between them, leading to domestic violence and Melody running away and pretending to be a boy.
  • Reconstructed: A Billy Elliot Plot ensues between Melody and her mother Josephine, a woman with staunch 50's ideals of femininity, and forces her to cook and keep house. Melody does not go against these and goes on to become not only a good chef, but also very tidy and artistic, making a healthy income through the various arts she has dabbled in, including cake decorating.
  • Zig Zagged: Melody is the best cook they know of. One day it turns out she is at heart an Action Girl, but keeps up feminine stereotypes so that other people would trust her to make their food. Her friends thell her to be herself, and she abandons her girly mask only to notice that she now feels like a stranger in her own kitchen. Her therapist suggests she has unconsciously conditioned herself to relate cooking with her femininity role. In the end she solves the problem by wearing a frilly apron to the kitchen, while not hiding her true character anymore.
  • Averted: Ability to cook has nothing to do with femininity.
  • Enforced:
    • "We've got to show Melody's the motherly type. Let's make her the Team Chef. And while we're at it, we should have Marcy burn water for contrast."
    • All food production and cooking is controlled by an huge monopoly organisation employing only women and enforcing a strict femininity agenda for the sake of the brand.
  • Lampshaded: "I just know this'll be delicious! Femininity in a chef enhances the taste of food more than any spice!"
  • Invoked: Marcy borrows Melody's clothing, in the hopes it will make her a better chef.
  • Defied:
    • Melody rarely cooks, because she doesn't feel she needs to be a good cook to be feminine.
    • Marcy learns to cook, not to be more feminine, but simply because she doesn't want to live on microwave meals.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???
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