With Julie and Julia coming out this weekend, there's a fresh surge of interest in Julia Child, the French Chef. Part of that interest includes a certain degree of shock and surprise over her apparent homophobia, and her expression of distaste for gay men, especially, and her regrettable use of terms like "de-fagification" or the French pejorative terms pedal or pedalo.

I'm a chick and I love to cook. So, perhaps unsurprisingly, I've always adored Julia Child; she was a chick, she loved food and cooking, and she was happily and enthusiastically outrageous and simultaneously unflappable. I'm also queer, but if you're expecting another blog post or article expressing surprise and outrage over her rather suddenly infamous homophobia, you're not going to get it from me. My reaction is actually more of a casual shrug, followed by, "Yeah? So what?"

When Julia Child passed away in 2004, at the age of 91, we lost an amazing, articulate, and powerful woman. Not "powerful" in that sense of Martha Stewart or Oprah Winfrey definition of power involving multi-million-dollar conglomerate corporations, but personal power in the sense of a woman unafraid to take control of her own life, direction, and image—both in the kitchen and out. She inspired other women to do the same. She also nearly single-handedly created a middle-class American appreciation for fine food and drink. And, not so incidentally, she helped pave the way for Martha, Oprah, and all the intriguing and charismatic women yet to follow.

Laura Shapiro notes in her book, Julia Child, excerpted for Boston Magazine, "Women were too easily intimidated in the kitchen, Julia believed; they panicked if the recipe called for three tablespoons of lemon juice and they had only two."

Did she harbor some rather strong and not-so-politically-correct beliefs about queers? Sure. I'd be surprised if she hadn't, honestly. We are all products of our time and culture. Julia Child was one of those rare women who very much like, admire, and appreciate men. She was also a larger-than-life woman who summarily rejected fear, indecisiveness, submissiveness, and hesitation. Since those were all qualities associated with traditional American '50s femininity, it's not surprising that she expressed a dislike of women and especially groups of women, which she'd dismiss, somewhat reflexively. “They’ll turn it into a clacking hen house sure enough, and then no one will want to go there" she reportedly said, regarding the decision to allow unaccompanied women into the Ritz Grill. Likewise, it's hardly surprising that she rejected those same perceived effeminate characteristics in men—and expressed that rejection rather strongly.

Her decades of friendship with James Beard gives lie to the idea that Julia Child was Fred Phelps in an apron, though. And later, in the 1980s, when HIV/AIDS was decimating the population of gay men, she spoke eloquently and emotionally at a Boston Garden AIDS benefit sponsored by the American Institute of Wine and Food. She most assuredly was not in the "God Hates Fags" camp. I'm glad of that, because perhaps one of Julia Child's most remarkable qualities was her warmth and likability.

Twenty-seven full-length PBS episodes of The French Chef are available streaming, online. They're still well-worth watching: for the cooking, for the enthusiasm, and for the inimitable Julia Child.