Do we like Julia Child?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record and a real stain: anti-gay slurs in her letters and a contested discrimination suit, set against years of AIDS fundraising and Planned Parenthood work.
Julia Child was born in Pasadena, studied history at Smith College and spent World War II in the Office of Strategic Services, where she met her husband Paul in Ceylon. She only got serious about cooking in Paris, at the Cordon Bleu. Her first big book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, came out in 1961 with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle.
The French Chef hit TV in 1963 and ran for 206 episodes, with a Peabody in 1965 and an Emmy in 1966. She also co-founded the American Institute of Wine and Food in 1981 and the James Beard Foundation in 1986. Nothing new on her lately: she died in 2004, and she's still the benchmark for friendly TV cooks.
Now the less lovely bit. SFist, summarising a 2007 Boston magazine piece, reports that her letters used anti-gay slurs about men in the food world. Mashed's write-up says the same, and it also says she was alleged to have pushed a gay chef out of the institute she helped found. That's a stain, and it's in her own correspondence.
The 1992 suit is the sharpest example. Daniel Coulter alleged she blocked him from the executive director job at the American Institute of Wine and Food, and he sued for $3 million. SFist doesn't report the outcome, but Mashed says she settled. Settling isn't an admission, so it's an allegation that was never tested in court.
Then the turn. Mashed reports that AIDS killed her friend and lawyer Bob Johnson, and that her views shifted. She used her fame to raise awareness and money for research, and to push for drugs and healthcare. She hosted benefits and spoke out when other celebrities stayed quiet, according to Mashed.
On women's rights she was ahead of the pack. In 1982 she wrote a pledge letter for Planned Parenthood and taught cooking classes in Memphis to raise money, despite daily anti-abortion protests. In 1989 she criticised the Bush administration for doing little about the environment. Writer Helen Rosner also says her views on race and reproduction sounded patronising by today's standards, so she isn't spotless.