mea culpas

Anthony Bourdain Is Realizing He Could Have Been Nicer to Women

Anthony Bourdain. Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for WASTED! Documentary

Anthony Bourdain, the culinary bad boy, is now pivoting to a culinary woke-boy persona. In an interview with Slate, he discussed how heโ€™s been reexamining his career. Bourdain is intimately connected to the case, as his girlfriend Asia Argento has accused Weinstein of raping her. (After speaking out, Argento left Italy following a media backlash.)

โ€œI guess Iโ€™m looking back on my own life,โ€ he said. โ€œIโ€™m looking back on my own career and before, and for all these years women did not speak to me.โ€ Here, he means women that he knows personally who did not talk to him about their experiences with harassment and assault. He called this lack of trust a โ€œpersonal failing.โ€ Per Slate:

But I had to ask myself, particularly given some things that Iโ€™m hearing, and the people Iโ€™m hearing them about: Why was I not the sort of person, or why was I not seen as the sort of person, that these women could feel comfortable confiding in? I see this as a personal failing.


Iโ€™ve been hearing a lot of really bad shit, frankly, and in many cases itโ€™s like, wow, Iโ€™ve known some of these women and Iโ€™ve known women whoโ€™ve had stories like this for years and theyโ€™ve said nothing to me. What is wrong with me? What have I, how have I presented myself in such a way as to not give confidence, or why was I not the sort of person people would see as a natural ally here? So I started looking at that.

He also acknowledged that many times he was an asshole (his word) but, like most men, he hopes he didnโ€™t make anyone uncomfortable.

Look, I like to think, I like to think that I never made โ€ฆ Look, there was a period in my life in the kitchen where I was an asshole. I was. I would do the classic, throw plates on the ground. If waiters or waitresses for that matter displeased me I would rail at the heavens, curse, scream. But I like to think I never made anyone feel uncomfortable, creeped out, or coerced, or sexualized in the workplace.

But he began to self-examine anyway. And what did he find? The bad-boy persona, coupled with the particular moment he arrived on the restaurant scene and his way of sexualizing food may have fed into โ€œbro culture.โ€ He also says he never was comfortable with catcalling (or people being rude to waiters). His journey takes him through his days at Vassar (where the women โ€œspoke like sailorsโ€ and โ€œI was like the only guy at the table and these women were like predatorsโ€) to working his way up through the restaurant industry, including its hazing rituals during the English guild system.

But, look, I accepted when the book came out, that I was the bad boy. There I was in the leather jacket and the cigarette and I also happily played that role or went along with it. Shit was good. People said a lot of silly things about me. People actually used the word macho around me. And this was such a mortifying accusation that I didnโ€™t even understand it.


You know, to the extent that I was that guy, however fast and however hard I tried to get away [from] it, the fact is thatโ€™s what my persona was. I am a guy on TV who sexualizes food. Who uses bad language. Who thinks our discomfort, our squeamishness, fear and discomfort around matters sexual is funny. I have done stupid offensive shit. And because I was a guy in a guyโ€™s world who had celebrated a systemโ€”I was very proud of the fact that I had endured that, that I found myself in this very old, very, frankly, phallocentric, very oppressive system and I was proud of myself for surviving it. And I celebrated that rather enthusiastically.


I mean, I became a leading figure in a very old, very oppressive system so I could hardly blame anyone for looking at me as somebody whoโ€™s not going to be particularly sympathetic. They say something to me about someone I know, and maybe I would tell them.

Maybe Bourdain will now venture into leading reformed-machismo seminars.

Anthony Bourdain Realizes He Could Have Been Nicer to Women