Women & People of Color First to Go on Top Chef

If you've been watching Top Chef Las Vegas, you can't help but notice the obvious. As women and people of color are voted off the show week after week, the contestant pool is increasingly becoming a "good old boy network" much like the top-tier of chefs that serve as guest judges on the show.

But is this intentional or accidental? It all depends on your perspective. A couple of things are clear. A member of the Hindu faith who does not eat or cook beef for religious reasons will never win Top Chef. A member of the Muslim faith who does not eat pork for religious reasons will never win Top Chef. And of course, Vegetarians are completely screwed in this competition.

Women are more likely to be vegetarian. Some people of color don't cook or eat meat for religious reasons. Meat-centric challenges, like this most recent episode focusing on 'classic french proteins', are inherently biased against women and people of color, and one of the reasons Top Chef Las Vegas is rapidly becoming a club for (mostly closeted) white-men only.

These challenges favor contestants who work with meat and are knowledgeable about european cooking techniques and are biased against contestants who may specialize in other ethnic cuisine. When have we seen a Thai Cooking Challenge on Top Chef? An Ethiopian Cooking Challenge?

And selecting a guest-panel of white male judges only makes matters worse.

It seems a particularly cruel joke to recruit a crew of 'Cheftestants' who are diverse in gender, race, and ethnicity, and then set up a series of challenges and select a series of guest judges that stack the odds in favor of the white men.

Top Chef, you can do better!

Top Chef Forces Contestants into Binary Gender System

Just when you start to think the folks at Bravo really get the gays, they do something to mess it up, like Top Chef Season Six Episode 2.

This episode, where contestants are "forced to compete in teams of men vs. women" was a failure to grasp gender and sexuality studies 101. In a time where everyone from Elizabeth Birch to Caster Semenya are broadening our understanding of gender, Top Chef does the opposite.

Does the top chef contestant pictured on the left identify as male or female? I sure don't know. I've never met Preeti and frankly, it's none of my business.

What I do know, however, is that when you separate the "boys" and the "girls", there are almost always some folks who don't fit neatly into either category, and there are almost always some folks who are hurt in the process. And Preeti sure seemed pretty pissed about the decision for the men to compete against the women.

Top Chef really should have been able to figure this one out on their own.