I remember when Nigella Lawson first hit it big years ago. Nigella was like Britain's sexier answer to the Martha Stewart phenomenon in the US.
Mostly what I remember about the Nigella breakout was hearing how sexy she was at the time. All the guys I knew were into her. And most of them did not cook nor had any interest in cooking but were all docile followers of her show on PBS.
After Martha, Nigella marked the change from cooking shows being about food made by staid and conservative people into more about pretty faces who threw pasta into boiling water. This is not to say that Nigella can't cook, I own a book or two by her, her recipes are always rather good.
But my buying her books is only a recent event. When she first became a sensation, the sight of her face caused me burning, gnawing jealousy. Even when I was interested in the recipes my interest was always accompanied by the desire to hiss and smack her. As I say again, I was rather young so it was all due to my being a hormonal, territorial female. This is the main reason young women have such prickly friendships with one another.
Now that I'm older, the hormones evening out, I can look back on Nigella with a more rational eye. And I can see why she was so alluring to guys. She is pretty. She is a tall, dark haired and attractive. Her manner is both studied and rather impromptu. She really likes food. Her body is rather curvaceous and was definitely against the resurgent Twiggy look that was popular at the time. She is definitely not girly as she plunges her hands into raw egg, meat, fish etc. When she gets cake icing or syrup on her hands, she has no compunction against shoving that part of her hand into her mouth and licking off the sweets. So she comes across as rather wild and untamable. Basically she does all the things guys would call piggish if their wives or girlfriends displayed the same behavior. But since Nigella was pinup fantasy and would never ruin fantasies with real life, it was all so sexy.
Anyway, the link below is a clip from her eponymous show, "Nigella Bites". Haw haw, get the Freudian joke? What a glimpse into the future of the cooking show biz. At least Nigella could cook.
Happy New Year!
Labels: cooking, culture, videos, youtube