On fame

Did you all see the Nigella Chefography last night? That was the first time I came close to tears watching a TV biography. Before the age of 30 Nigella lost her sister and mother and then lost her husband at 40. Pretty intense stuff. Things I love about the Nigella Chefography:

1. The revelation that home cooks shouldn't necessarily cook like restaurant chefs.

2. The eccentric goddess of spring outfit she wore (complete with a wreath of ivy) to her wedding party.

3. The heartbreaking 10th anniversary party she threw with her husband right before he died.

4. The even bigger heartbreak of hearing John Diamond (her husband) talk after they had to cut his tongue out because of cancer.

5. The scene with her and Nigel Slater tearing apart a chicken with their hands.

6. Her delight at being labeled a goddess of sensuality when it was really the food that was given the porn treatment. And her subsequent labeling of herself as the queen of the boobs and bottoms.

7. Her honeymoon in Venice with her first husband (she talks about Venice a lot in her shows).

8. The original cover of How To Eat. I wans to frame that.

9. The great relationship her daughter and step-daughter seem to have.

10. The fact that both her husbands are kind of geeky schlubs.

I was thinking about how Nigella handles her fame. Chefography constantly talks about how much of her cooking life Nigella opens up to her shows. I makes me think about anonymity, particularly ours. We've kind of set up this whole blogging thing to where people who know us know that we write the blog but you couldn't just do a DCFoodblog google search and it comes up with our names. There's been ongoing controversy of a law school bulletin board that has been harassing female law students to the point where messages are encouraging guys to take pictures of "hot women" in the gym. They post flicky and myspace pictures of the women on the 10 hottest list. It's times like these that I value the premium J has placed on our anonimity. Certainly we've made friends through this blog but noone could pull our pictures and put them on a 10 hottest or 10 uglinest list on the internet. This is a delicate balance because the folks we've met online and have become offline friends are awesome but the weirdos and the regular "guys" who don't have boundaries exist.