Nigella's helpless carrot act

[BaylisAndHardon]

Don't get me wrong, I do like Nigella Lawson and her cookery programs, however:

Has anybody else noticed that she pretends not to have proper knife skills and flails around in a sexy, helpless, becarrotted damsel in distress any time she has to chop something?

It reminds me of secondary school when some of the girls would pretend to be ditzy and thick so boys would like them.

It's 2020 fgs.

AIBU?

I actually don't mind the absurd sexuality. It's just the faux incompetence that gets me. I'd love to install a secret carrot cam to see how she REALLY chops them.

Be a sexy creamy dribble-licker all you like Nigella, but stop pretending you can't hold a knife.

Mary Berry is crippled with arthritis. That's why she uses knives the way she does.

Mary had polio that is why her hands are like that she was talking about it on one of her programmes she said a lot of people think it is arthritis.

@BaylisAndHardon

If I were a man commenting about a male presenter, I doubt I would be called bitchy or against men. I'd just get people either agreeing or disagreeing.

It's another expectation of women. You can't have an opinion without someone criticising you for not being maternal and fluffy enough. It's reminiscent of Trump's comments about Nasty Women. As if men ever have to put up with that fucknuggetry.

They can just say it, adjust their testicles, chop the carrot, and get on with their life.

Yeah, I hate this idea that if a woman is in any way critical of another woman, then they are 'bitchy' or 'jealous'. As you say, that's not required of men. They can be as critical of other men - and indeed of women - as they like.

If a man said they hated Jamie Oliver's chirpy Essex boy routine, would he be told he wasn't being sufficiently supportive of other men?

Secret carrot cam

I hate watching people with no knife skills chop things up, you see it on Youtube videos all the time. I'm always afraid they will hack off a finger. I do like to watch the skillful home cooks often from Mediterranean countries who cut veg perfectly just in the hand without a chopping board. A Thai lady I know could cut a cucumber in into beautiful julienne strips, just holding it in her hand and using a massive cleaver. Wait that sounds like a euphemism Nigella would love it.

I can't stand her, it's all low lighting and flirting. I find it quite painful to watch.

I've never noticed her chopping skills, apart from the nice knife thing she has for chopping herbs. The sexy schtick is well over the top now, it just comes across as parody. I preferred her when she behaved more naturally but sadly people on TV never seem to remain natural and unaffected for long.

It's an act isn't it?? Lots of TV personalities are very different on screen to off screen. Just part of their character. If people criticise your on screen character then it doesn't really matter because it isn't the real you. Perhaps its a self preservation thing?
Me and DP always have a giggle watching her and do impressions of her shoving food in/licking her fingers. My son can't stand to watch her because of the way that she eats.
I love it when they put her show on Gogglebox, the comments are brilliant and I think that's one of the reasons people tune in to watch her. She cook and its fairly entertaining at the same time. I have a few of her books and have some firm favourite recipes from her :)

It’s so easy to pick people apart......quite mean spirited really.
I love her. She has had a difficult life at times and now seems to be really enjoying her single life and her success. I like that she hasn’t obviously jumped into another relationship. It’s refreshing to see ( despite a pp on the previous thread referring to her eating on her own as sad and lonely!)
I find her recipes always work well for me which I can’t say of some professional chefs.

My friend interviewed her as a a starting out, freelance food writer. She was just as lovely in person.

Personally I think Nigella is glorious. And it's perfectly fine to be intelligent, capable, skilled and seductive at the same time
Bit of a case of sour grapes if you ask me...

OP I love your use of language. Makes a refreshing change to read such a finely honed description

@DuesToTheDirt

I can't stand her, it's all low lighting and flirting. I find it quite painful to watch.

Then why watch it ?

If people like her and her cooking they enjoy the programme, if they don't they should keep away from it.

Then why watch it ?

I don't.

I rarely watch the shows but what gets me even more than the sexualisation of cooking (and that does mightily piss me off) is the rainbow nations guest list she has anytime it shows a party with people eating her food. She acts like it's her own friends and family that she's having round for a little get together, and yet unlike most people, who usually have a lot of friends who look like them (race, class, age) and a a minority of others, she always seems to have the most staged 'one of everything' balanced guest list ever. Like not just a load of middle-aged white people and a few middle-aged BAME people, but as though she's gone through a list of having one person from any given background. It looks like the producers of the show deliberately hire extras on a checklist: one Chinese, one flamboyant gay, one with a guide dog ...

Calming down a little though, I did make a filo and feta pie she showed a few weeks ago and it was delicious, we all loved it.

I have never once looked at Nigella and thought she appears helpless in the kitchen.

She doesn’t dice carrots like a chef because she isn’t one! Nothing helpless about it. I’m an excellent cook and still chop carrots haphazardly because idgaf and other things are more important.

I love it when they put her show on Gogglebox, the comments are brilliant and I think that's one of the reasons people tune in to watch her

Mary’s impression of her was a sight to behold

Too many threads on here where women are bringing other women down...

I loved Nigella Kitchen and some of her earlier stuff. It made me go out and get fairy lights for my kitchen! But I have 2 pet peeves: because she wants you to go out and buy her latest book, she rarely gives any measurements when she is cooking, so it just looks like she is bunging everything in - surely not?

Secondly, there used to be lovely incidental music between scenes, which me and my daughter used to enjoy. In her recent shows, the "background" Stevie Wonder music is overpowering and irritating. I hope she reads mumsnet: TURN OFF THE MUSIC!!!!

@Wearywithteens

No - I think as somebody who isn’t trained as a chef she uses a knife like ordinary people. Mary Berry does the same. Surely of all the things she could potentially fake this wouldn’t be it?

This ^^

She is a cookery writer and hasn't had any knife skill training. Neither have I.

What is it with all the bitchiness about her on mumsnet? I know she talks like she has swallowed a thesaurus while she is cooking, but some of the comments are downright nasty.

I don't mind her TBH. I just love watching cookery shows, although I wasn't inspired by anything she made this week.

Nigella is a food writer and good cook, not a chef, and I think that may well be genuinely how she chops carrots. She seems really in control to me and the opposite of a helpless damsel. I think what she is trying to do is not be prescriptive with ingredients or make other amateur cooks feel inadequate.

I remember reading Delia's cake recipes as a less confident cook and not knowing what half the things she said meant. Whereas Nigella's cake recipes were very understandable, forgiving and helped me produce amazing cakes I never thought I could.

@DynamoKev

I do like Nigella Lawson and her cookery programs

I don't.

I wasn’t taught chopping skills at school either. Scone-base pizza and apple crumble never was going to prepare anyone to get home at 6pm and knock a healthy meal out or inspire a love of cooking.

My dn likes cooking but he did a stint at catering college, I did once tell him to give it 20 years then come back to me on the love of cooking🤨.

@joystir59

She lost me with fish finger borta. It looked disgusting.

It did look rather horrible, didn't it?

What on Earth would possess someone making an exotic dish to think 'I know what this needs...'

@Peachy1381

Too many threads on here where women are bringing other women down...

The fact that she's a woman is irrelevant. Anyway, some of the posters on this thread might be male.

But the curried banana skins - Sounds like something the Ministry of Food would have concocted during the war. Mock duck, mock cream and now for COVID-19 we have mock aubergines.