Consider the Soft Boy

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The Bad Boy Chef. The Chef Daddy. The Pasta Boyfriend. The Vittles Boyfriend. The Soft Boy Cook. Enough!

I read the much-shared piece last week on the Gentle, Seasonal Soft Boy cooks. It mirrors something I wrote several years ago, long-deleted, about the potential for then-new platforms like Tik Tok to disrupt the status quo toxic masculinity of kitchens and food media. I’ve since soured on the idea.

This “Soft Boy” cook piece is a glowing profile of a few well-known Tik Tok chefs (I like Chuck Cruz, limited to no thoughts on the others). Eric Kim writes, “That the soft boy cook can find fame and financial success by cooking in ways women have for generations is a glaring tension. But because they appear demure in a landscape dominated by supercharged machismo, they can afford to be precious with their food, even rewarded for it, while filling a widening gap for sensitive men.”

Ah, yes. The of course, women are never recognized for the same thing, a shame line buried in every piece like this. Write about that then!

There’s the understandable view that celebrating softer, gentler men is a tool against the hegemonic forces of slapping meat on cutting boards, but where does celebration veer into sycophancy?

Perhaps I’ve been burned by enough Soft Boys in my own life, but I’m not sure that picking a few of them and loudly proclaiming “these are the good ones” does much to upset the status quo.

Glowing Male Media feels beleaguered by horniness and critical Male Media feels beleaguered by heteropessimism. Is there any space left to be normal? Does the ghost of Bourdain loom too tall?

Look, I’m not immune to the powers of a tall man, or perhaps a man with thick curly hair, or perhaps even a set of muscled forearms. In fact, there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that I am practically unvaccinated in this regard. But as I often say, it’s important to recognize which anecdotes are better left in the group chat.

The conventional wisdom is that chefs are hot because it’s nice to be cooked for, and that’s true. But cheffing is also perhaps the most physically laborious job a man can have while still feeling like, vibes wise, your class peer if you have some sort of email job, despite the fact that chefs are categorically broker than tradesmen. And physical labor is hot!

It’s 100% legal and OK to be into chefs, but sometimes you have to surrender yourself to horny jail for a bit and re-enter society with your thinking cap on.

And that’s my thing with the Soft Boy of it all, is that I keep hearing about disrupting toxic masculinity or whatever and okay, it’s not working? People I went to high school with are still flying to London specifically to eat at Straker’s, Keith McNally’s book tour continues without anyone asking him hey man, why do you talk to and about women like that? One cursory glance at the “rising” feature on Substack will tell you that it’s still a great time to be one of those guys who slaps meat on a cutting board. A new DJ-led venture opens down the road with a racist caricature as the logo!

The solution to the cult of personality around bad boys and bombasts (read: pricks and abusers) isn’t to create a different cult of personality around good boys and sweetie pies (hint: good boys are not always good). Perhaps the issue isn’t finding the right people to put on the pedestal, but rather the pedestal itself? Just a thought. 🫒