Lunch lady is an American slang term for a woman who cooks and serves food in a school cafeteria; the equivalent British English term is "dinner lady". In Britain, a dinner lady also patrols the school playgrounds during the lunch breaks to maintain order amongst the children. Since the 1960s, lunch ladies have sometimes been caricatured as overweight, uncaring women with hairnets, rubber gloves, glasses and moles. Most lunch ladies are more highly paid than their counterparts in retail food service, because of the rigid federal requirements of food quality, sanitation, and record keeping to which school systems must adhere.[citation needed]
Lunch ladies in popular culture
- Although not a lunch lady, Chef from South Park is the head cafeteria cook at South Park Elementary.
- Dinnerladies is a British sitcom about dinner ladies, although set in an office complex rather than a school.
- Lunchlady Doris is a lunch lady from The Simpsons.
- Adam Sandler on Saturday Night Live did a song called "Lunchlady Land" and accompanying skit with Chris Farley dressed up as a stereotypical lunch lady. The song appeared on Sandler's album They're All Gonna Laugh at You!.
- The school lunch lady plays a key role in the plot of "Earshot", an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- Rosa Petitjean is a fictional lunch lady of Kadic Junior High School in the French animated television series Code Lyoko.
- Edna is the highly unhygienic lunch lady for Bullworth Academy in the video game Bully. She often coughs, sneezes, and blows cigarette smoke on any food she prepares, believing it "adds flavor." She also is unconcerned about the opinions of health inspectors.
- The band The Darkness has a song named "Dinner Lady Arms" on their album One Way Ticket to Hell... And Back.
- Ms. Sara Macgrady, the lunch lady for Lakewood Elementary School in the TV show Arthur.
- Denise Martin, a contestant on Survivor: China.
- In the Nickelodeon animated television series, Danny Phantom, the first villain that appears is the Lunch Lady Ghost. She does not like any changes the cafeteria's meat-based menu and can also control food (namely meat), to the point of forming it around herself as a giant meat monster.
References
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