Jen Agg: Stop Calling Women 'Outspoken'

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Jen Agg: Stop Calling Women 'Outspoken'

"When you're a woman... having opinions always translates to 'outspoken.'"

There is an insane double standard applied to men and women in life and in work. It is the root cause of every business frustration, outside of pesky financial ones, I've ever had. It envelops relationships I've had with employees, contractors, and customers. At least once a day I'm given the opportunity to imagine how any one, in any of those groups and more, would be communicating differently with me if I were a man. And why should I ever have to think about that?

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Yes, in conversation, women who are perhaps more successful than their male peers are constantly trotted out as examples that sexism is over and we are living in a postgender world. In the realm of indie rock, someone might point out how obviously Liz Phair's record sales trump Ryan Adams'—maybe . . . someone fact-check that—and one could certainly find many examples of successful women in pop music, while of course ignoring the male executives that still run the music industry, and the fact that the cultural impact of PJ Harvey isn't at all proportionate to her monumental talent. In literature, Joan Didion may outsell many of her male peers (but we'll have to ignore how few Didions even get the chance to compete in the heavily male-dominated world of words on a page that aren't about female friendship, vampires, or witchcraft). In art, if you're the next Cindy Sherman you may outsell some dudes, but you'll never really be as critically acclaimed, and if you are it will be under the belittling banner of "female artist." And in food we still have the embarrassing title "Best Female Chef" announced each year by the even more embarrassing "World's 50 Best Restaurants," a list that HILARIOUSLY was meant to be an antithesis to the stuffy Michelin Guide. The only place there should be a gender separation is in sports, where the test is physical strength. In the modern-day world of food, it's often the same couple of chefs who are trotted out over and over to suggest that everything is totally okay and equal now. And if, against all odds, as a woman you somehow do become "legitimized," "critically acclaimed," the questions to ask are "Who's doing the legitimizing? Whose approval are we seeking?" It's mostly white men, sadly. They hold so much of the power in media. It's changing, but too slowly.

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Hate me for my politics, hate me for personal animus, but don't hate me for running my business the same way men have been running theirs forever.

The media have a responsibility to take the gendering out of their coverage, which they mostly fail at (*cue helpful people telling me about all the exposure I get, to totally negate my argument*). It is their responsibility to think about who they are most often choosing to support with lilting, prolific praise, and how objective their choices really are. But, of course, it's complicated by there being so few prominent women in food in the first place.

And obviously it's not just media, it's our entire culture, built to accommodate and prioritize the needs of men.

And obviously it's not just media, it's our entire culture, built to accommodate and prioritize the needs of men. But under the umbrella of the patriarchy and within its themes is day-to-day life. And that's where it becomes death by a thousand cuts. It's the little things, like how new contractors constantly defer to my husband, even when I've booked the appointment with them and detailed the work I want done, until Roland exasperatedly throws up his hands and says, "I don't know where the sink is going, talk to my wife, she's the boss." And then the contractor says something awesome and conspiratorial to Roland, like, "I hear ya, chief. Happy wife, happy life." Or when customers are talking to me and ask if they can "speak to your manager" (I MANAGE ME, ASSHOLE). These erasures of talent happen ALL THE TIME when you're a woman. And they happen even more in a job that requires the ability to make tough calls over and over again, at lightning speed. Men don't have to worry about being disliked for incisive business decisions; they are lauded for their hand-on-the-tiller leadership style. Women, on the other hand, are endlessly criticized for actions that are objectively the same. I've lost track of how many times I've heard through the grapevine that someone we tried out at one of the restaurants hates me for the egregious sin of not hiring him or her. That's not even a real beef—hate me for my politics, hate me for personal animus, but don't hate me for running my business the same way men have been running theirs forever. Friends in the industry have gone to bat for this idea. Peter Sanagan, of the popular local butcher shop Sanagan's, offered this quote to an Elle magazine profile: "I can name five Toronto chefs and restaurateurs who are a little difficult, and all people say is, 'He can be a bit of a dick, but we respect him.'" So plain and simple: men who are perceived as difficult still get "respect," women don't.

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The status quo is a worn old hammock, and even when its taut strings are uncomfortably restrictive, we lie there, comforted by its familiar shape, lulled by its familiar sway.

Look at the way I'm portrayed in the media. It's consistently "the outspoken restaurateur Jen Agg." Doesn't sound so bad, right? Until you've seen it over and over again, and it occurs to you it's not meant as a compliment, and it's never used to describe equally outspoken men who own restaurants. They, by contrast, get awesome adjectives like "rebel," "mastermind," and "the innovative———." What the writers actually mean when using "outspoken," even if they aren't always fully aware of it, is "rabble-rouser," "shit-disturber," "troublemaker."

It's like someone slapping you in the face and then saying, "At least I'm not hitting you with a hammer." Yes, great, that's true, but I'd REALLY like you to stop slapping me.

Expressing one's opinions ought to be an obvious freedom. But in our culture women learn early to shut up: on the playground, in classrooms, on dates, in boardrooms, and of course on the athletic field, where we are meant to be cheerleaders for the men. This holds true even when the men are doing egregious things like regurgitating our ideas/ jokes/plans of action back to us, presenting them as original and having the gall to explain what they mean. If you're a woman with a job, this has happened to you at some point over the course of your career. And to have women in leadership roles stand by and do nothing, benefitting from the privilege they've achieved, supporting a system they too had to fight against, but not wanting to disrupt their place in it by rocking the boat—that's an integral part of why nothing ever changes. Which, sadly, I can totally relate to. When I felt like I was "winning" at restaurants, even if it was alongside someone whose leadership style I didn't agree with, I had a hard time speaking out and putting my foot down. I felt like I had to adjust my demeanour to exist within the structures of an oppressive relationship, a relationship that conformed to the status quo. I'm also not surprised that women who've reached the pinnacles of their careers in restaurants claim to have had little to no trouble with sexism. Maybe that's willful blindness—they're fully aware of how shitty it is but unwilling to point it out for fear of being kicked off the mountain. Or maybe they've just been able to navigate through the system by playing the game, and eventually they come to believe that there is no "system" because the success they've achieved is obviously merited. I don't know, and I never will. But I do know that both those attitudes foster a perpetuation of the status quo, and that's no good.

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The most obvious example I can reinforce all this with is Hollywood, which is basically the restaurant business with less food, more makeup, and much bigger profit margins.

We are the pressers of our own brakes, the authors of our own fates, or any other metaphor that will help fully drive home the message that we could really do a number on the patriarchal structures that engulf our culture if we'd stop being the primary supporters of those walls. If women would stop scurrying up the ladder to dutifully patch the cracks in the glass ceiling we could smash that thing for good. But as long as women un-ironically state that they've "never really noticed a boys' club," or helpfully suggest that kitchens are worse for young men than for young women, or run magazines that continue to glorify men's accomplishments while diminishing women's, we just won't get anywhere. The status quo is a worn old hammock, and even when its taut strings are uncomfortably restrictive, we lie there, comforted by its familiar shape, lulled by its familiar sway. Even when it becomes obvious we must get up, we lie there, while our circulation gets cut off and we become motion sick from what once seemed like a pleasant way to take a nap.

It's a yarn I'm so tired of winding round and round, and my metaphorical swift is bulging with enough to make onesies for a thousand lumberjacks, but despite everyone inherently knowing the oft-repeated woes of the modern bourgeois feminist, it bears repeating. The most obvious example I can reinforce all this with is Hollywood, which is basically the restaurant business with less food, more makeup, and much bigger profit margins. There, men are allowed to fail over and over again with ill-performing, ham-fisted filmmaking, while women who are perhaps better directors (or could be, given the chance) must hit it out of the park on their very first try or they'll never get another shot. And when a famous actress complains about wage disparity, which she has only become aware of because of a hack, maybe the world isn't so sympathetic, because what could a woman making $20 million a film have to complain about? And that's really the crux of it, this "how dare you be ungrateful?" attitude.

Yes, it's slowly changing, but most women still find ways to couch their language when expressing themselves, or voicing their dissatisfaction with systemic problems; they caress their opinions with smooth add-ons like "I feel if we consider the options" and "What about looking at it this other way?" while men are given the freedom to just bluntly state their thoughts. The more I say, the more my image gets wrapped up in something that people see as politics—as if my wanting true equality for women is somehow political and divisive. Crazy. Simply by saying what I think, I open myself up to closer examinations of my decisions, to criticisms of my language choices, and to comments sections that would make your eyes bleed. This isn't because I'm actually the worst and am constantly screaming faux controversial things from the rooftop of city hall; it's because of the patriarchy. And when you're a woman, living in the stifling confines of a historic system in which you've only relatively recently been allowed to vote and own land (calm down, I said "relatively," as in relative to when time began for humans), having opinions always translates to "outspoken." But at least I can own my home. And that's kind of the problem: "at least." "At least" stops us in our tracks, throws a spoke in the wheel, and grinds us to a halt. And it's often women saying or thinking "at least": "At least I wasn't forced into marriage missing a clitoris." "At least I'm not someone's property." These comparisons don't do any good. I mean, it's obvious that feminism is a worldwide issue, and the degree to which women are emancipated depends greatly on where they were born and live and the colour of their skin. It's like someone slapping you in the face and then saying, "At least I'm not hitting you with a hammer." Yes, great, that's true, but I'd REALLY like you to stop slapping me.

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So what are my options? If hosting another conference proves to be too laden with metaphorical landmines, and a strong lack of desire to repeat it, how do I take steps in redefining what it is to be a woman in the world, and in the world of restaurants? I honestly don't know. I think putting words on a page helps tremendously, though. As much as I love the restaurant business, and as much as it's been good to me, if I end up with "restaurateur" on my tombstone, I will have woefully fucked up my forties.

Excerpted from I Hear She's a Real Bitch by Jen Agg. Copyright © 2017 The Black Hoof Inc. Published by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.