Another reason to feel Sassy about that apron!

Aprons: Go ahead and tie one on

The garment no longer symbolizes women's relegation to the kitchen but their delight in being there.

May 06, 2010|By Rene Lynch, Los Angeles Times

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  Kirk McKoy, Los Angeles Times

Is there another kitchen object that carries as much baggage as the apron?

A whisk and a wooden spoon are, after all, tools to get the job done. But an apron?

For years, aprons were commonplace and worn with pride. But somewhere along the line the apron became shorthand imagery for all that was holding women back, an emblem of humble domesticity and repression. When an apron was required for practical reasons, it certainly wasn't flaunted. (If your mom was like mine, she'd yank that apron off before answering the front door.) And still today, when a man is too close to his mother, we say he's tied to her apron strings.

But a growing community of self-proclaimed apronistasis seizing the apron back from such dusty, anachronistic thinking. No longer a symbol of kitchen drudgery, the apron has returned with a vengeance, ushered by a renewed appreciation of all things domestic.

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