Fast/Food. Notes on Television “Gastro-Motorcyclism”

Abstract

The article aims to explore a particular aspect of the relationship between food and gender – that is, the seemingly extravagant connection between celebrity (male) chefs, television cooking shows and motorcycles. This phenomenon, which Esperanza Miyake calls “gastro-motorcyclism”, is centered on the motorcycle as a “mobile technology of gender”, that means a disciplinary technique which regulates ideological and discursive systems about men and women and their conventional gender roles within society. The “culinary motorcycle” in television programs such as The Naked Chef, The Hairy Bikers, Feasting on Asphalt or in web series such as Food Biker both challenges and reinforces dominant gender and class ideologies surrounding cooking shows. Ultimately, “gastro-motorcyclism” enables the chef-rider to negotiate tensions surrounding culinary gender and class by providing what appears to be a counter-narrative against – but nonetheless supportive of – the more traditional and normative gendered television cooking shows.

Keywords: food, gender, cooking shows, motorcycle, gastro-motorcyclism.