getting Dick

Inspired by Mimi Sheraton’s satirical cookbook/dating guide The Seducer’s Cookbook published in 1963, I wanted to update the concepts of femininity and sex for today’s time. The book takes form as a tongue-in-cheek guide for a woman to seduce a man with food. Dick, the only capitalized word throughout the book, is a generic conceptualization of the “everyman,” and as such the advice should conceivably apply to any and every man. The text references pieces of advice or ideas presented by Sheraton in a concise, direct format reminiscent of both classic Dick and Jane books and sexual commands. The collages throughout the book repurpose Playboy magazine covers from the 1960s and early 1970s into a visual-temporal narrative translation of a night with Dick framed by seductive meals. The resulting compilation bridges over 50 years of food, sex and irony, subverting the male gaze and tropes of domesticity with the agency of the modern domestic goddess–taking control in the kitchen and in the bedroom.