Throw him in the pot
Re: "A woman of the world", (Life, Nov 1, 2025).
Stop asking women if they can cook after marriage. Stop asking it casually. Stop asking it politely. Stop asking it like it is a customary, status quo, friendly question. Because it is none of those things. This question is loaded, controlling, and deeply insulting, and women are tired of pretending otherwise.
It is not about food, it is not about skills, and it is not about concern for family life; it is a quiet but aggressive test to see whether we will submit to expectations we never agreed to and smile while doing unpaid labour for the rest of our lives.
How does cooking decide if we will be good emotional wives? How does counting rice tell you whether we will be loyal, supportive, patient, or emotionally present? How does knowing recipes prove we will stand beside our partners when life becomes burdensome, grievous, or turbulent?
Marriage is not a cooking exam or kitchen assignment, and a wife is not hired staff with a wedding ring as payment. Marriage is not a downgrade where a woman's intelligence, ambition, and identity are replaced with domestic duty. If cooking defines a wife, then what exactly defines a husband…eating?
No one asks men this question. No one leans across a table and asks a man, "So… will you cook every day once you're married?" No one checks his value by his ability to fry an egg or time a curry. But women?
We are asked this like it's a pre-employment screening. As if marriage is a lifelong, unpaid contract for domestic labour. As if love is proven by how well we feed others. As if our worth dissolves the moment a ring appears.
We can cook. We may not cook. We might cook sometimes. We might order food. We might undercook the potatoes and giggle helplessly. None of that defines our value as wives.
Yet somehow, the first thing people want to know is whether we can make a decent meal. Why? Because society is still deeply uncomfortable with women who do not automatically centre men's comfort. A woman who cooks is "good." A woman who questions why she must is "difficult." A woman who refuses the assumption is "modern," "arrogant," or "too much."
No. She is aware. And let's say this very clearly, with no softness left: if you ask me one more time whether I can cook after marriage, I swear I'll cook you first -- just kidding. But also, stop testing the limits of tolerance and then calling it culture.
