Thanksgiving Gender Roles

What's Cooking? Shows the realities of universal concepts and ideas related to family, community, gender, status and cultural identity of four different middle class families over a cultural American holiday called Thanksgiving. As we watch these four different families prepare for the same event, we come to realize that the enthusiastic ideas about the ritual begin to transform into a series of conflicts. An analysis of the explicit message that Thanksgiving is a series of rituals that we celebrate uncovers more than the obvious ideology.

As what’s cooking? Takes the viewer through four different families process of food investment, preparation, and consumption, we realize that Thanksgiving is a great American equalizer not only ideally,

The families shop for the turkey, the women prepare the meal, the men talk, enjoy sports, drink beer or wine, and the families set up and sit at the table to enjoy the meal. Early in the ritual one sees the gender role distinctions. Although some men are seen shopping, they are really accompanying the women. The male who is shown shopping, Mr. Aviles, is shopping because he is now alone and it is obvious that he is out of his forte. Men help carry, lift, bring, talk or watch television, drink beer or wine, and occasionally hold or watch the children for a short while. They are the eaters, the ones who will complement the women and validate their hard work with hearty consumption of the food. According to an article from a website called ‘womensissues.about.com’ states that “the gender divide that arises when having a "traditional Thanksgiving dinner" is the primary focus of the day. For women it's a day of work. For men it's a day of leisure.” This article was published in

Interestingly enough, in both the Aviles and Nguyen families, the more acculturated daughters are the least involved in food preparation. The struggle to stick to traditional roles of gender and appropriate behaviors is later highlighted when the Vietnamese daughter is accused of having “No sense of modesty and shaming the family.” They labeled her this way because of two different incidents. They found condoms in her pockets, and also they saw her at the movie place that they own with a white American male. Lastly they think that she is very disrespectful and disobedient. It seemed that they always put everything on Jimmy, Which is the older brother so that’s why it seemed like Jimmy didn’t want to come home, he would rather spend his holiday with his Mexican American girlfriend. And then there was the second youngest, he got mixed up into trouble. He was hanging out with the wrong crowd, which Jenny felt that she needed to get