‘Ex’domestic Foodways: A Study of the Food Vlogs

Abstract

The easy access to the digital space and the spatial limitations imposed by Covid 19 had made vlogging a source of income and leisure and a way to access the physical space beyond confinement. There has been significant increase in the number of food vloggers as well, even post-pandemic, irrespective of their gender and gender roles, who included both cooking and reviewing the dishes and diners. Many of the food vloggers engaged in the act of cooking have taken beyond the kitchen and sometimes include their friends or conclude the video by “eating together” with their friends. In this context, what does it mean to cook in an “open space”? How does that focus on the labour involved in the entire act? Does the physicality of the space in this process of aestheticization redefines the labour involved in domestic chores? The paper tries to argue that the act of cooking into the non-kitchen shifts the focus from drudgery of domestic chores simultaneously making it an act to showcase the “culinary skill and knowledge” and thereby obliterates the labour associated with it in the domestic space.