ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 4, 1996 TAG: 9604040033
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Beth Macy
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Betty Crocker doesn't have time to make cakes from scratch.
She gets nervous when she has more than two stove-top burners going at once.
And she doesn't make reservations for dinner - unlike the country-club wife in the old joke.
But she can recite, verbatim, which restaurants in town offer kids-eat-free deals on which nights of the week.
She thinks Martha Stewart has way too much time on her hands - though she admires her self-made wealth.
Betty can't debone a chicken the way her mama used to, but she doesn't need to: She buys her poultry precut, boneless and skinless.
She also pays through the nose for it, but that's OK: She has the extra money. She works.
A few weeks ago, General Mills unveiled its new version of the consummate homemaker, Betty Crocker, giving her a multicultural facelift. The recipe called for a cup of Caucasian, a pinch of African-American, a touch of Latina and a sprinkling of Asian.
The new, improved Betty is now a brunette with almond-shaped eyes, a broad nose and a slight tan. She looks like she could be Cher's more sensible younger sister, a bank-loan officer perhaps.
In her silk blouse and power suit, she's a woman who has it all - a lot of responsibility at work, a great-looking husband at home and three kids involved in three different after-school sports.
As for the melting-pot spin, I say ... baloney. On white bread. With iceberg lettuce and a slathering of Miracle Whip.
The real story on Betty isn't that she's General Mills' watered-down version of ``multi-ethnic.'' It's that she's trying to do it all - both at home and at work.
And if she's anything like the rest of us, she is worn-out. (How about inserting some luggage under those eyes, General Mills, along with some salt-and-pepper in her hair?)
A 1991 Harvard University studied reported that, among people who work full time outside the home, women spend 61/2 hours more per week supervising children and doing household chores than men. Over the course of a year, that amounts to 338 hours - and a whole lot of casseroles.
To see how far Betty's come since women joined the work force, I borrowed an older copy of ``Betty Crocker's Cookbook.'' An early-'70s edition, the landmark cookbook sports Betty as a blue-eyed blonde with a high ruffly collar on her shirt and a Dippity-Do'd-looking hairdo.
``More than ever you're preparing meals from scratch with fresh, natural foods - perhaps even in a microwave,'' the Betty on the back cover says. ``You're preserving and freezing. You're baking bread. You're entertaining at home. You're eager to try new and adventuresome recipes.''
There are lessons in carving beef and decorating gingerbread. There are diagrams for making fresh egg noodles and preparing a broccoli-stuffed meat loaf roll.
Thumbing through the book, my mouth waters - but I'm not just craving Betty's shrimp souffle. I'm craving the time to make it.
For Christmas last year, my sister-in-law gave me a copy of ``Fannie Farmer: The Original 1896 Boston Cooking School Cookbook.'' Though I love to cook on weekends and own more than 50 cookbooks, I was puzzled at first by the gift, which contained recipes for such mysterious dishes as fried smelts and potato croquettes.
But I soon came to admire it as a social history on the art of homemaking - a subject not widely tracked, let alone mourned. From her section on ``Helpful Hints to the Young Housekeeper'' to her descriptions of 12-course meals, Fannie Farmer reminds us that there was a time when women not only knew how to extract juice from an onion; they knew why they were doing it.
I think about Betty Crocker and Fannie Farmer now when I stroll through Harris Teeter and see all the ready-made offerings: prewashed lettuce, torn and ready to toss; two entire aisles devoted to microwave meals; and a deli that sells both sliced turkey breast and whole turkeys cooked, along with all the trimmings.
The grocery stores may have finally caught up with the revolution of women going to work. But it's time now for the next uprising - the one where double-income families become double-homemaker families; the one where glass ceilings shatter both at work and home (pass your man the dust pan, please).
If General Mills wants to really get with the times, the next reincarnation of its popular icon won't feature Betty Crocker at all. Its next makeover will be more androgynous, with a name reflecting product use by both sexes.
How about Bailey Crocker?
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Betty: 1936. 2. Betty: 1972. 3. Betty: 1996by CNB