I've name-changed for this. I'm sorry it's so long. I'm a member of a women's book group that has grown over the years to be more like a women's social group. We decided to celebrate the end of Covid regulations by renting a large self-catering house on the coast and having a long weekend of walking, talking, reading, yoga etc. There were 18 of us and the organiser asked various of us to each take responsibility for a meal. I was asked to provide scones for the afternoon we all arrived. No problem: I'm a decent home cook. Then about a week before we were due to go the organiser contacted me to say five of those attending were vegan, so could I provide something for them. I have a good vegan brownie recipe, so I added a batch of brownies to my to-do list.
Then at about three days notice the woman who was due to make Saturday night's supper went down with a cold that might have been Covid and I was asked to take over that, too, because apparently no one else was available (hmmm). She'd bought all the ingredients for veggie lasagne so I collected the ingredients from her and made and froze two big lasagnes. Then to cater for the vegans I made a separate vegan pasta dish.
I turned up early on the Friday afternoon and put out 18 scones and a dozen brownies for everyone. I knew I'd over-catered, but you never know
how much people will eat on these kind of occasions. They'd come out well and everyone enjoyed them.
That evening the woman tasked with cooking Friday night's meal got a bit overwhelmed and so I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen assisting and helped her serve up her Mexican feast (which was delicious). It became clear by Saturday that I'd been labelled the kitchen queen and also that about half the group weren't helping with the washing up or any aspect of the meals. They'd pick up a tea towel, dry a cup and then vanish, leaving what they called the 'kitchen crew' to pick up the slack.
On the Saturday, when we all came back from a long walk, I put the left-over scones and brownies out and several women ate them and then said things like 'You're going to make me fat!' I was the biggest person there: I'm a size 18-20. I began to feel really uncomfortable about the whole situation. That evening I served the lasagnes. They were particularly good (I don't always get things right) and everyone was very complimentary. One of them, who's extra-slim, came into the kitchen when others were around and thanked me for the food and said 'It's always great to have a feeder around at events like this because then the rest of us get to eat so well.' A couple of other people picked it up and wanted to pat me on the back for being a feeder. I said that I I thought the word 'feeder' was something thin people used to put down fat people and I'd prefer them not to use it. They insisted it was a compliment.
I came home feeling angry with myself for falling into the trap of taking so much of the food provision on to be helpful, and also with the women who'd enjoyed my food but then put me in my pace by calling me a feeder. To me the word carries a lot of condescension — as if they are above providing food and as if food isn't really important and it wouldn't have mattered if no one had bothered to organise meals.
I called the organisers yesterday and told them that I wouldn't be involved in the provision or preparation of food on any subsequent trips away. I said I felt that the division of labour had been unfair. They listened and agreed that too much of the responsibility for the food had fallen on just three of us, and they agreed that some women hadn't done their fair share of work and were as p*ed off as I was about it. But they said 'feeder' is a compliment, not an insult, and implied that it's my own weight issue that has made me unduly sensitive to the word.
It's doing my head in. Am I AIBU to be agree to feed people, then told I'm a feeder and feel insulted?