Julia Child_ A Life - Laura Shapiro [55]
For this reason, she found homosexuality outlandish—not immoral, and certainly not to be criminalized, but a rude disruption in the natural order of things. Homophobia was a socially acceptable form of bigotry in mid-century America, and Julia and Paul participated without shame for many years. She often used the term pedal or pedalo—French slang for homosexual—draping it with condescension, pity, and disapproval. “I had my hair permanented at E. Arden’s, using the same pedalo I had before (I wish all the men in OUR profession in the USA were not pedals!),” she wrote to Simca. Fashion designers were “that little bunch of Pansies,” a cooking school was “a nest of homo-vipers,” a Boston dinner party was “peopled by 3 fags in an expensive house…. We felt hopelessly square and left when decently possible,” and San Francisco was beautiful but full of pedals—“It appears that SF is their favorite city! I’m tired of them, talented though they are.” The opposite of homosexual, in her terminology, was “normal” or “well muscled” or “very masculine!” Or, as she often put it, “real male men.” Lesbianism was less of an affront to her, though she felt sorry for women so sexually benumbed that they were not attracted to men. (“Can’t be much fun.”)
It appears never to have struck Julia that she was talking about homosexuals the way her father talked about Jews, blacks, foreigners, intellectuals, and artists. All her adult life, his prejudices had sickened her, especially because he was so contemptuous of Paul, who represented several categories of humanity that John McWilliams despised. Her father’s ugly convictions threw Paul into such a rage that he finally stopped visiting Pasadena with her. Yet she was able to detest her father’s bigotry while her own remained a blind spot. During the McCarthy era—the period when her liberalism was forged, mostly out of sheer outrage—Paul himself was summoned to Washington from Germany, on suspicion of being a Communist and a homosexual. He was interrogated for a day, then cleared. (The only evidence for the first charge was his acquaintance with a couple of other people whose politics were under investigation. As for his supposed homosexuality, the most damaging evidence seemed to be the fact that he was married. As his interrogators pointed out, many homosexuals were married and had children.) Paul laughed outright at the accusation, and Julia did the same when she reported the incident to Avis. “Homosexuality. Haw Haw. Why don’t they ask the wife about that one?” Even the knowledge that McCarthy, whom Julia regarded as evil personified, was using the specter of homosexuality as a deadly weapon, didn’t raise any alarms in her own conscience.
For all her prejudice, however, when she met homosexuals whose appearance and body language were what she called “normal,” or straight, much of her disapproval evaporated. What she really disliked was effeminacy in men—a caricature that made it clear how they spurned the male-female differences and rituals she so relished. “My, I hate being a widow!” she exclaimed to Avis when Paul was summoned away from Germany for the investigation. “And I have finally had to admit to myself that if I were a real widow, I’d probably have to take to the streets. It’s just no fun; it is not only the physical male, but the mental male. Thank god there are two sexes, is all I can say.” Julia’s whole being was ignited by proximity to men: they were at the center of her world view, and their presence lent energy, authority, and dignity to all undertakings. The very idea of a social or professional event designed around women was offensive to her. “I hate groups of women,” she said many times, flatly and without apology. No matter the occasion, if it was only for women, she was convinced it would resemble a Helen Hokinson cartoon in The New Yorker: silly clubwomen dithering over