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The big little lie of the TV kitchen island
- anm89 7y ago"Over the decades, as versions of this housewife’s setup have eliminated dining rooms, pass-throughs, and farmhouse tables, the open-concept kitchen, centered around an island visible from all sides, has become not a labor-saving device but a stage on which (mostly) women are forced to perform." I gave up here. This is so stupid that I'm not sure what is the premise that I should critique. Also Im a guy who cooks in a kitchen with an island and I love it.
- mraudiobook_com 7y agoYou must just hate women and like "putting them on display".
- JasonFruit 7y agoThis was exactly my reaction: I love my island, and I think the kids would eat there every meal if I didn't like to make a sit-down meal now and then. I've never found that the island acted as a stage, or that it interfered with my convenient triangle of sink-counter-stove. I don't know what kind of poppycock this is trying to be, but there is no excuse for it.
- wingerlang 7y agoI don't own a house, but I keep notes for what I will eventually (hopefully) look for and this kind of island is quite high on my wants-list.
- the_seraphim 7y agoI don't have an island, but man would I enjoy performing the dance of the steak...
- goto11 7y agoTV shows and movies love kitchen islands because because you can have people moving around while interacting and the camera moving around them. The article is not about interior design per se though, it is about characters in the HBO TV series "Big Little Lies", characterized through their homes. If you haven't seen the show the article probably makes little sense.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoThere's an excellent book about the history of domestic technology called "More work for mother." It details how the more domestic tech we created, the more work shifted from the man of the house to the lady of the house and standards were raised Three hundred years ago, full-time wives did about 60 hours/week of housework. Today, with all our modern appliances, they still do about 60 hours/week of housework. In most families, as women begin working outside the home, they still do 40 hours/week of housework. The men mostly have not picked up the difference. I'm a former homemaker. I got divorced and got a corporate job. My adult special needs sons continued to live with me. Co-workers would express pity anout how I worked full-time and also had to go home and cook dinner. They were flabbergasted to learn my oldest son did the cooking. Given that I was working at a Fortune 200 company, these were presumably some of the most privileged "ordinary" women on the planet. Even the highest ranking woman in my department whose husband moved to let her accept the promotion was not comfortable learning about my arrangement at home because she apparently still did most of the women's work at home while having a VIP job.
- IshKebab 7y ago60 hours a week? You think housewives are doing 8½ hours of solid house work every single day? Yeah, no.
- Chris_Chambers 7y agoIt seems like she's shifted to spending 60 hours a week posting comments on HN non-stop. There should really be some kind of broader rate limiting to prevent people like DoreenMichelle and tptacek from polluting so many comment sections on HN. We check comment sections hoping to see a wide variety of opinions, not two people's blogs.
- jraines 7y agoAre programmers doing 60 hrs of work a week? Yes, if you count planning, talking about work to be done, thinking about work to be done, commuting (s/buying groceries, shuttling kids), mentoring, dealing with other people’s complaints & personal issues, dealing with red tape (forms to be signed, reports to review & give feedback on), etc, etc, etc You can say those analogues fall outside of “housework” ... sure, but then it’s like “hey programmer, you’ve got 60 hours in the week, why isn’t that feature done yet?”
- tjr225 7y agoI had the same reaction at the exact same point in the article. Are couples out there really not sharing chore responsibilities? Maybe my wife just got lucky. Whatever. In any case I don't see what the kitchen island could possibly have to do with it. I initially clicked on the article because I, a male, am excited about getting an island so that I can use it to cook for my family!
- happytoexplain 7y agoI agree with you and the parent post. I'm a husband who does most of the cooking and cleaning, and I couldn't live without a kitchen island. Also, I love having a big, open, combined cooking/dining/socializing space. My wife, and my mother (who does 100% of the cooking and cleaning in her family) both agree on all counts. I do, however, think the author is making a reasonable point in general - but the specific example and the tone misfired.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoI think you're focusing too much on the women part? I see it as criticising the stage aspect: instead of being able to be secluded and focus on the task at hand in a practically small space, you are instead performing in a space visible to everyone which is much too big to be good for the actual task.
- pixl97 7y agoMuch too big? Have you ever cooked for more than 5 people? Ya, maybe a gigantic layout isnt great for family dinners in the evening, but the moment you have a party it provides a great space to prep and layout finished foods.
- scarejunba 7y agoPractically everyone I know would rather have a larger kitchen and have conversation going on around the cooking. Who wants to be out there alone cooking? It's a nice activity together.
- viburnum 7y agoGood lord man, you are so defensive about this, you might benefit from working out your issues with a good therapist.
- WillyF 7y agoI stopped at the same exact point.
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- vectorEQ 7y agoi'm with you, despite that fact i've never in my life seen a kitchen island. i was opening the article to find an actual island :< got greeted to this dribble. :'D
- whatshisface 7y agoSitcom actors are always more attractive than normal people, and the sets they act in are usually way up there in terms of what it would cost to actually buy a house like that. It's because TV is aspiration with a little (a lot) of consumerist guilt mixed in.
- yardie 7y agoI think it has less to do with anting to be aspirational and a lot more to do with how sets are decorated. Take an interior designer and give them an unlimited budget with the only requirement being it has to look good on camera and you’ll get amazing results every time. My house has bare walls because we don’t have a professional decorator. And everything else is slapdashed together because that is how real homes work. Now logistics: you need space for cameras lighting and crew to move in. No way in hell is a multi camera show going to be shot in a real New York apartment kitchen. Walking through a real living room would have the camera operator bumping into all sorts of things. So homes and sets are huge. They aren’t filming bathroom confessionals.
- goto11 7y agoIn this case it is probably both. The show is about people with seemingly perfect lives which (spoiler!) has dark secrets which threaten to disrupt their lives. That kind of story just works better with beautiful perfect homes etc. since that makes the contrast and threat stronger.
- gist 7y ago> Sitcom actors are always more attractive than normal people You mean 'actors are more' (no need for 'sitcom'). Most people in entertainment (maybe with the exception of musicians and radio personalities) are more attractive than normal people. What I always find interesting though is when a prisoner is played by an actor. That is a big paradox.
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- kop316 7y agoI read through this a couple of times, and I still can't figure out its point beyond the idea that the author doesn't like kitchen islands/open floor plans, and even that I'm not sure of? I've found to really like open floor plans and an open kitchen. When I visit my family, we tend to congregate in the kitchen as someone is cooking (or several of us are cooking) and we don't want them to feel left out. An open floor plan allows this. When we go to someone's house that doesn't allow it, it tends to either a) divide people who are cooking and people in the living room, or b) have everyone in a small kitchen for socializing.
- anm89 7y agoThis article is a preference about interior design masquerading as a social critique.
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- goto11 7y agoIt is a reviews of a popular TV show called "Big Little Lies". The writer is using the interior design of their houses to characterize the main characters. Is is not really a critique of open kitchens, it is a critique of a character in the fictional show.
- kop316 7y agoThank you! As you can guess, I never have seen the show.
- analog31 7y agoI'd love to have a kitchen island. Our house has a tiny kitchen, and everybody congregates there, so it's impossible to do anything without people constantly bumping into one another. I could say, "get out of the kitchen," but then I'm separated from the conversation. Then, somebody wants a drink, or a snack, or whatever, and they're all back in the kitchen again. The island lets people socialize in the kitchen, which is where they want to be, without getting in the way of the cook. I don't care about being able to hide the mess. The rest of the house is a mess.
- brandonmenc 7y ago> As a portrait of modern family life, it is more than a little bleak—just like the show. The kitchen island is the new hearth, as the kitchen long ago replaced the living room as the center of the home. Modern? Many families have elevated the kitchen to main room status for generations.
- techslave 7y agohow could this possibly be on the front page? or any page. this is pure drivel.
- stonogo 7y agoThis article is about a TV soap opera, and it might have been more obvious (and saved me a click) had the submitter not pointlessly altered the capitalization of the headline.
- stuntkite 7y agoI read through the first quarter of it three times before I figured out that it's a confusing advertisement for a TV show rather than a discussion on the history of kitchen islands. I honestly couldn't find any useful information. It reads like it was written by a plausibly seeded neural net.
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- chiph 7y agoKitchen islands can reach epic proportions. I had to drop off a check to my realtor at another home where she was doing a open-house. The island in it had to have been 200 square feet of dark granite. You would need a rail network to pass the salt. Even if it housed every labor saving device known to modern kitchen science, there still would have been room left over inside.
- onion2k 7y agoYou would need a rail network to pass the salt. So... I'd need a train set in the kitchen? This is not a downside.
- logfromblammo 7y agoAll you need now is to get a lazy choochoo to replace the lazy susan in a show on HBO, and all the homemaker spouses will want one!
- Chris_Chambers 7y agoWhy would you post this to HN?
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoWhen the author mentioned the “messy kitchen” I thought it was a joke. Now I realise, as a European, that American house design is just absurd form over function. If you need a second, practical kitchen to deal with your main kitchen not being usable for its ostensible purpose then something is horribly wrong.
- anm89 7y agoThis is a straw man and a half. She literally gives a single example of this and implies it's normative Do you really think this is normal?
- goto11 7y agoThe idea of a "messy kitchen" certainly exist in Europe, see Scullery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scullery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scullery It is not a new invention.
- mcv 7y agoIn NL we've got the "bijkeuken". Modern homes rarely have them, but old farm houses almost always do. Our new house incidentally does have one, which is indeed messy, and mostly used to store kitchen equipment we rarely use, as well as all the kitchen machinery, including the water kettle and coffee maker, that we don't want in plain sight. Apart from making tea and coffee, we don't do any actual work there, though. The real kitchen is still messy, because that's where the real cooking happens.
- goto11 7y agoHey everyone, before you comment: This article is a reviews of the HBO TV-show Big Little Lies. If you don't know or care about the show, the article will probably be of little interest to you. HN seems to be interpreting the article as a general critique of open-plan kitchens. Apparently HN cares a lot more about kitchen islands than about mainstream TV-shows!
- msla 7y ago> Hey everyone, before you comment: This article is a reviews of the HBO TV-show Big Little Lies. Thank you. This was rather odd without context. > Apparently HN cares a lot more about kitchen islands than about mainstream TV-shows! HBO is mainstream, now? I thought it was premium. Super-duper-premium, maybe. Ah well. I suppose in a land where Netflix can make its own movies, HBO is positively dowdy.
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- ghobs91 7y ago"Over the decades, as versions of this housewife’s setup have eliminated dining rooms, pass-throughs, and farmhouse tables, the open-concept kitchen, centered around an island visible from all sides, has become not a labor-saving device but a stage on which (mostly) women are forced to perform." Or...it's a convenient place to assemble ingredients away from the stove/oven area. This is such an incredibly absurd reach I don't know where to begin. Yet another example of trying to garner clicks and views with provocative journalism.
- ablation 7y agoThat's a lot of words written about not a lot.
- Merrill 7y agoA century ago most housewives were farm housewives. The housewife on a pre-electric, pre-running water farm could not have spent 60 hours/week on what is now "housework", since considerable time had to be devoted to caring for the chickens; collecting and packing eggs; planting, weeding, harvesting the garden; canning vegetables and fruits; helping with the milking; helping with butchering chickens, pigs, and steers; etc. On the other hand, multi-generational households were common, maiden-aunts came to stay and help, and neighborhood girls could be hired when needed. Neighboring housewives helped out when the threshing crew arrived and a dozen hungry men had to be fed a good meal. Baths were Saturday night and clothes were washed Mondays for the simple reason that greater frequency was impractical, since water had to be carried from the well and heated on the wood stove.
- onion2k 7y agoA century ago most housewives were farm housewives. You believe that in 1919, at the end of the first world war, and just 10 years before the Wall Street crash, most housewives lived on farms that didn't have electricity or running water? The population of New York city in 1919 was a little over 5.5 million people.
- wcunning 7y agoMore importantly, farming started out as the occupation of 90% of the population in the US and has been continuously falling ever since. The total number of farms grew up until about 1950, but as a share of the population it was only in the low 30% range at that time. Source: https://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm https://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm
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- Merrill 7y agoI stand corrected. The percentage in 1920 was about 30%. However, another large slice, probably over 20%, lived in rural small towns and villages where life wasn't much different. The Rural Electrification Act was signed in 1936. Before then, in 1930, only 3% of farms had electricity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act Electric motors are needed for inexpensive running water systems in order to drive pumps able to pressurize the system. There were gas engines used to drive pump jacks a couple decades before. There were also "Delco Plants" and batteries for local generation and DC electricity distribution on farms, but I don't think they were widespread. Mom's Maytag washing machine originally had a Briggs & Stratton gas engine that was replaced by an electric motor after REA was implemented. https://www.farmcollector.com/farm-shows/delco-light-plant-zmlz13janzbea https://www.farmcollector.com/farm-shows/delco-light-plant-z...
- rhino369 7y agoI hate open kitches and I really hate large islands that are sort of intended to be used for eating at. They are not nearly as comfortable to eat at as a table.