The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
4 — Wednesday, October 13, 2021

I’ll state my case plainly: Paul Hollywood is 

a sex symbol. The British celebrity baker and 
host of the “Great British Bake Off” may be a bit 
of an asshole, sure, but so were James Dean and 
President Kennedy.

A quick visit to Twitter reveals a clearly 

polarized public opinion. While one twitter 
user tweeted “If Paul Hollywood wants a thick 
bottom he knows where to find me,” another 
said: “Thinking about saying to paul Hollywood 
‘sorry daddy I’ve been a bad bad baker.’” However, 
the best comment was that “Paul Hollywood is 
known as a silver fox because he eats voles and 
urinates in bins.”

Hollywood’s sex appeal is a running joke on the 

show as well. In one episode, host Noel Fielding 
likened Paul’s rear end to “two beige moons, 
dancing in the sky,” which contestant Maggie 
remarked was a “rather nice” thought. Stickers 
of Hollywood with chiseled abs can be found on 
Etsy (and made a cameo in episode one of the 
latest season). 

Former stars have criticized Hollywood’s 

harshness, and fans love to hate him when he 
makes contestants cry, but deep down, I think 
many can agree that “Paul Hollywood is such a 
dilf bro, omg,” a statement which was (naturally) 
followed by two agonized emojis.

But what makes Hollywood so sexy? It 

certainly isn’t the way he berates old ladies. 
There’s nothing sexy about that. But it’s so easy 
to forget his brutishness when you see him 
extend his right hand for the elusive Hollywood 
Handshake. Reserved only for what he deems 
the most impressive bakes, the handshake is 
arguably more coveted than the weekly “Star 
Baker” crown. That meaty paw, connected to a 
forearm — thickened by years of kneading dough 
— that emerges from a sleazily cuffed and coolly 
untucked shirt, is enough to send shivers down 
spines.

The effect of the shake remains the same from 

season to season: A strong hand extended in silent 
praise from an otherwise frigid critic is hot, if 
you’re the kind of person who thrives on positive 
reinforcement. I’ll pass that off to the fact that I’m 
a Leo, but feel free to read into it further.

If there’s something else to the Hollywood 

Handshake, it’s the oceanic eyes. With a piercing 
blue stare, Hollywood must have X-ray vision 
and can probably read minds. Nestled beneath a 
furrowed brow, Hollywood’s “fuck me” eyes could 

melt butter, which he’d then work into the perfectly 
un-soggy bottom of a cheesecake or something.

The final piece to this puzzle, and the one 

that has nothing to do with Paul’s lumberjack 
limbs or Ice King eyes, is baking itself. In a very 
cottagecore (i.e., antithetical to the traditionally 
masculine Paul) way, there’s nothing sexier 
than a loaf of bread, baked just for you. The gift 
of comforting carbohydrates, the luscious and 
erotic aroma of yeasted dough, the time spent by 
a loved one so that you may slather a chunk of hot 
sourdough with butter — bread and baking are a 
love language.

Especially for the post-lockdown baking crowd, 

the comfort and love found at the bottom of a cake 
pan is certainly part of the hobby’s appeal. It isn’t a 
great leap to suggest that baking is intimate, sexual, 
erotic. There are 200k posts tagged #crumbshot 
on Instagram. Beyond the blooming aromas and 
communal joy of a batch of cookies, the art of 
baking is arousing even when no one is there to 
share. The way a roll gently rises and falls of its own 
accord in the distorted heat of an oven, the dregs 
of batter licked flagrantly from a spatula, the soft 
sizzle of a cooling loaf in a quiet room.

The eroticism of baking is a big part of 

Hollywood’s charm. As a prominent face of 
21st-century baking, he stands for it all. Anyone 
who can make such delightful things, and 
especially one who can show you how it’s done, is 
worthy of a desiring, perhaps lustful eye.

Hollywood is no “nice guy,” and he certainly 

doesn’t finish last (a real James Bond, he races 
Aston Martins in his free time). He has his issues 
too, cheating on his now ex-wife with a co-host 
on another baking competition in 2013. This he 
called “the biggest mistake of my life” in a BBC 
interview at the time, but what else do you say 
about this sort of thing? Another big mistake in 
his life was in 2003, when Hollywood dressed 
up as a Nazi for a New Years’ Eve, to which he 
responded, 14 years hence, “ 
I am absolutely 

devastated if this caused offence to anyone.” The 
classic non-apology, shifting blame to those who 
were offended and then proceeding to use his 

WWII-veteran grandfather as proof that he does 
not like Nazis. 

This is to say that Hollywood is not a perfect 

man. He makes old ladies cry and does his hair 
like a repressed Guy Fieri. These problematic 
aspects of Hollywood’s history might make him 
less attractive, but they don’t kill his “Bake Off” sex 
appeal. His flaws notwithstanding, he remains a 
sex symbol for lovers of baked goods everywhere. 

The celebrity chef community could do with 

a page from Hollywood’s book. The signature 
flames that Fieri wears on his clothing are frozen 
solid in Paul’s eyes. The suave dad style of Bobby 
Flay is given a burly, British twist. Even Giada De 
Laurentiis’s smile is mercifully softened into a sly, 
all-knowing grin. In fairness, I’ll concede that, 
style-wise, Hollywood is lacking. But his hands 
are his hands, no matter the sleeve from which 
they emerge.

Like art, food has the ability to bring us 

back to our fondest memories of people, 

places and moments. Food can comfort us 

and help us feel connected to others, but it 

can also force us to confront our deepest 

insecurities. We make countless movies, 

television shows, cookbooks, songs and 

TikToks honoring food. And I, for one, will 

never stop getting sucked into the trap of 

watching videos of a stranger cook and 

consume their own delicious creation in the 

wee hours of the nighttime.

In our second B-Side of the 2021-22 school 

year, Daily Arts investigates our deep-rooted 

relationship with food and how it influences 

our self-expression in all forms of art — 

literature, film, social media and much more. 

This is the Food B-Side.

— Sophia Yoon, Senior Arts Editor

I spent almost the entirety of my 

pandemic year in my apartment in 
Ann Arbor, which is to say that I spent 
it on my couch in front of my TV. The 
early days of quarantine have mostly 
turned to mush in my memory, but 
one thing I can remember distinctly 
is watching Claire Saffitz make 
gourmet Girl Scout Cookies.

From March 2020 through May 

2020, content from the Bon Appétit 
YouTube channel was more or less 
the only thing I cared to put on TV. 
I was a fan before the pandemic, but 
something in my anxiety-addled 
brain latched onto Bon Appetit in a 
new way during that time. Maybe 
it was that the Test Kitchen chefs 
were easy to develop parasocial 
relationships with (I still think that 
Gaby Melian and I would really get 
along in real life), or that the process 
of cooking, especially in the hands of 
these experts, was just soothing to 
watch. Maybe there was a little bit 
of schadenfreude (an uber-German 
concept describing the sort of 
perverse pleasure you can get from 
other people’s misfortune) involved 
as well. Part of the fun of watching 
“Gourmet Makes” was wondering 
if, after days of intense frustration, 
Saffitz would ever crack the recipe 
for gourmet Starburst.

I don’t tend to think of food as an 

escape, but Bon Appétit made it feel 
like one. There was something warm 
and welcoming about watching 
these smiling, personable chefs 

make beautiful dishes in a bright 
kitchen. They talked to the camera 
as if everyone on the other side was 
a friend. Especially when I was 
sad, ordering in on most nights and 
isolated from most of my real-life 
friends, each video was like a shot of 
serotonin to my brain.

However, 
everything 
came 

crashing down in early June. A 
picture of Bon Appétit’s then-
Editor-in-Chief 
Adam 
Rapoport 

in brownface surfaced on Twitter, 
which opened an enormous can of 
worms not only about his conduct 
at Bon Appétit but about the way 
people of color were being treated 
on the channel. Sohla El-Waylly was 
the first of the Test Kitchen chefs to 
reveal an incredible pay disparity 
between 
white 
employees 
and 

employees of color. Although she was 
quickly becoming one of the most 
popular chefs on the channel, she 
had not been compensated for any 
of her video appearances and was 
making significantly less than white 
contributors.

Things 
spiraled 
from 
there. 

Rapoport resigned, most white 
Test Kitchen chefs publicly vowed 
not to appear in Bon Appétit videos 
until chefs of color were fairly 
compensated and some, including 
El-Waylly, left the company outright. 
Others still were called out for their 
own problematic behavior, and 
previous 
contributors 
disclosed 

their own experiences with racial 
discrimination at Bon Appétit.

I love to read about food, especially 

when I’m down. Apart from being 
necessary for survival, great food 
is a compositional masterpiece, a 
labor of love and a sensory puzzle. 
Reading about food satisfies an 
elementary sense of curiosity while 
offering delectable imagery and a 
healthy dose of escapism. More than 
anything, it is comfort. Here are the 
books I turn to:

Food for thought: “Sourdough” 

by Robin Sloan

“Sourdough” 
is 
warm 
and 

fluffy, with the funkiness of a good 
starter. The story follows Lois, a 
software engineer who moves to 
San Francisco, where she starts 
to bake sourdough bread with a 
mysteriously animate starter culture. 
One would expect a book about 
bread to be apolitical; however, as 
you keep flipping through the pages, 
it’s easier to see undercurrents of 
Sloan’s commentary on technology 
and how it changes culture (as in a 
“fungal party hellscape,” but also the 
characteristic features of everyday 
life). Sloan asserts that “food is history 
of the deepest kind,” and follows Lois 
as she overworks herself at her day 
job while uncovering the source of 
her fungal party hellscape. 

Lois continually questions her 

work. Her programming job needs 
her to solve an endless scope of new 
problems: “Baking, by contrast, was 
solving the same problem over and 
over again, because every time, the 
solution was consumed. I mean, 
really: chewed and digested. Thus, 
the problem was ongoing. Thus, the 
problem was perhaps the point.” 
“Sourdough” wraps you in a soft, 
disarming hug — its taste is strongly 

thought-provoking yet wholesome. 
When reading it for the first time, I 
remember finishing a chapter, sighing 
contentedly and falling asleep. It’s not 
a book you want to down; instead, 
you want to savor it. Solving the 
same problem over and over again 
isn’t such a bad thing; Lois loves the 
meditative process of baking bread, 
and I love the equally generative 
process of reading “Sourdough.”

Bread 
and 
circuses: 
“The 

Hunger 
Games” 
by 
Suzanne 

Collins

This one isn’t technically comfort 

food, but it’s a comfort read, and 
ultimately, a story about food. Set 
in a world of food insecurity where 
foraging is necessary, “The Hunger 
Games” is a dystopia where children 

are forced to fight to the death in 
order to feed their communities. 
There are too many examples to 
name: Characters are named after 
edible plants, like Katniss and Prim. 
There are symbols of hope, like 
dandelions, which characters forage 
after starving for weeks. And who 
could forget the boy with the bread? 
As Katniss moves through different 
worlds, she makes a point to notice 

the food around her. The game she 
hunts in District 12 is sparse but fresh; 
berries are plucked directly from 
bushes. As Katniss is first introduced 
to the rich, overly luxurious foods 
of the Capitol, she fights “to keep it 
down,” overwhelmed: “What must 
it be like, I wonder, to live in a world 
where food appears at the press of a 
button?” 

The more I think about it, it’s 

messed up to say that “The Hunger 
Games” is a comfort read — after 
re-reading the young adult series so 
many times in middle school with 
friends, I’ve fallen into the same 
trap as the Capitol’s audience. The 
world is ridiculously captivating: 
the political intrigue, the delectable 
luxuries of the Capitol and of course, 

the star-crossed lovers from District 
12. Suzanne Collins used the trilogy 
to comment on how, as long as we 
receive our panem et circenses, we 
can neglect humanity. To love “The 
Hunger Games” is, quite literally, 
to enjoy our bread and circuses. But 
damn, if it isn’t a juicy read.

Food is a powerful thing. It has 

brought people together for centuries, 
between 
families, 
communities 

and cultures. From birthdays to 
neighborhood potlucks to holiday 
feasts, the nature of sharing food 
with others is a tradition carved into 
our very existence. We’ve found 
bread with score marks in the ashes 
of Vesuvius, indicating its intention to 
be divided and shared, and a OnePoll 
study found that 84% of Americans 
say food has the power to connect 
people of different cultures and 
backgrounds. Indeed, the sharing 
of food and recipes is nothing new, 
but recently there’s been a shift in 
how we share recipes, as well as who 
shares them. 

The digital age has brought on the 

popularity of cooking videos. TikTok 
in particular, with its unparalleled 
ability to create widespread virality, is 
a giant in the age of the viral food trend. 
You might remember Gigi Hadid’s 
famous pasta alla vodka recipe, 
simply consisting of fried onions and 
garlic, heavy whipping cream, tomato 
sauce, vodka and the pasta of your 
choice, or the feta pasta trend that 
was so popular it caused feta cheese 
shortages. Hadid was obviously not 
the originator of pasta alla vodka and 
feta cheese is no new ingredient, but 
with this new era, watching cooking 
videos is far from an isolated moment 
an individual experiences before 
dinnertime. Rather, it is a concept 
commonly shared and discussed 
throughout popular culture. 

This isn’t to say food trends are 

a new concept — I mean who could 
forget the Jello trends of the 1950s, 
which 
included 
adding 
gelatin 

to practically everything, from a 

vegetable and sugar mix called 
“Perfection Salad,” to submerging 
lamb chops in the mix. Even in more 
recent times, there has been the 
avocado trend of the 2010s, which 
caused the relentless slander of 
millennials and their spending habits. 
Yet the recent rise of food trends 
originating from TikTok is different 
from the trends of the past: The 
food is usually cooked rather than 
bought and can be made by anyone, 
often including younger generations. 
The most viral food trends usually 
use simple, accessible ingredients 
and don’t require much skill to 
master. Part of the allure is that even 
someone with very limited cooking 
experience can watch a minute-long 
video and think, “I can do that!” (And 

of course, the foods must also look 
enticing enough to warrant the desire 
to make them.) 

Why is this change so significant? 

We have lived in a popular culture 
that has frowned upon eating or has 
provided narrow definitions for what 
we’re allowed to talk about. We can 
be quirky with phrases like “I love 
pizza!” and “Don’t talk to me before 
I’ve had my coffee!” but there are 

unspoken limits. Dialogue usually 
doesn’t center around nourishing, 
balanced meals, and rarely centers 
around the process of cooking. Yet 
the emergence of viral cooking 
videos on TikTok, a platform where 
62% of users are between the ages of 
10 and 29, has changed this, and more 
people who have never cooked before 
are now encountering fun cooking 
content that they can replicate 
themselves. 

There are benefits to conversations 

about food that aren’t centered 
around caloric intake or body image. 
Normalizing society’s relationship 
with food, particularly within the 
digital world that so often fills our 
feeds with unattainable ideals, is a 
healthy thing. While 69% of girls 

ages 10 to 18 state that photographs 
of models and celebrities in the media 
motivated their “ideal” body shape, 
it can be helpful to build a neutral 
relationship with food — one that isn’t 
motivated by any endgame outside of 
creating something tasty for the fun 
of it. 

The inherent eroticism of the Paul Hollywood 

The Food 
B-Side

The downfall of ‘Bon 
Appetit,’ one year later

Comfort food you can read
How TikTok has transformed our love affair with food

Design by 

Kristina Miesel

Design by Lindsay Farb

Design by Madison Grosvenor

Design by Megan Young

Design by Jessica Chiu

ROSS LONDON
Daily Arts Writer

KATRINA STEBBINS

Daily Arts Writer

MEERA KUMAR

Daily Arts Writer

SARAH RAHMAN

Daily Arts Writer

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