Women laughing together with salad?*

So, yeah, women eat lunch. Even powerful ones.  (*Sorry, The Hairpin.)

There is something powerfully dated about this piece. Throughout, the tone is "How about those dames? They start working outside of the house, and the next thing you know, they want to take a lunch break. What next - voting?"

More important, the entire article is animated bt a presumption that while professional women in New York want to take advantage of the networking opportunities afforded by a meal with business assocates in the midde of the day, first and foremost, their job is to be skinny, so the news in this piece is... fancy salads? I can understand that not everyone wants to have a crab cake eating contest with Henry Kissinger at Le Cirque, but it made me sad to see an article about meals focus so much on restraint, and so little on pleasure:

What they value perhaps more than anything else is what is embodied in that classic carrot-and-avocado salad: a sense of richness that never leaves the diner in a crippling food coma. “Very often you’ll go out and have a meal and you’ll feel heavy,” Ms. Bhojwani said. “You never feel heavy after a meal at ABC Kitchen.”

Again, no need for us all to go all Diamond Jim Brady, but it's hard to shake the sense that the food part of lunch is a regreettable necessity. 

And file under I wouldn't live in New York City if they gave me the whole dang town: 

“Where you go to have lunch has to be on brand with your brand,” said Carrie Rosten, a consultant for media companies and magazines — as much a signal of your sensibility as the shoes you wear. She added: “You’re not going to some Midtown spectacle of a place. Because that’s not cool. That’s a different thing.”

At the day job, the Cod is having lunch w/ a dean tomorrow, and is alarmed at the prospect of matching his brand with one of the local options. 

Also: "At ABC Kitchen, Satya Twena, center, a hat designer, with her employees at discoverpique.com, Valeria Segal, left, and Alex McLean." See right. I have a good friend who used to design tires, but it would look stupid if he wore one to lunch. Ms. Twena could maybe profit from this example. I understand that ladies are permitted to wear hats indoors, but I don't reckon that includes when you stole your hat from the Flamingo Kid.)

Play us off, Anna Kendrick: