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This volume addresses how the rhetoric of feminist empowerment has been combined with mainstream representations of food, thus creating a cultural consciousness around food and eating that is unmistakably pathological. Throughout, Natalie Jovanovski discusses key texts written by women, for women: best-selling diet books, popular cookbooks produced by female food celebrities, and iconic feminist self-help texts. This is the first book to engage in a feminist analysis of body-policing food trends that focus specifically on the use of feminist rhetoric as a harmful aspect of food culture. There is a smorgasbord of seemingly diverse gender roles for women to choose from, but many encourage breaking gender norms and embracing a love of food while perpetuating old narratives of guilt and restraint. Digesting Femininities problematizes the gendering of food and eating and challenges the reader to imagine what a genderless and emancipatory food culture would look like.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- 2. Beyond Body-Centrism: Contemporary Food Discourses and Feminist Research.- 3. A Smorgasbord of Food Femininities: Analysing Gender in Popular Food Discourses.- 4. Femininities-Lite: Feminist Empowerment and Diet Culture.- 5. Cooking Up Femininities: The Conflict Between Motherhood and Pleasure.- 6. Flavours of Feminism: The Personal is Personal.- 7. Unveiling a Pathogenic Food Consciousness: Gender, Feminism, and the 'Neoliberal Subject' Conclusion. Hold the Femininities: Ordering a Genderless Food Consciousness?.
About the author
Natalie Jovanovski is a postdoctoral research fellow at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. Her research interests include feminist politics, theory and activism, food culture, and the sexual objectification of women.
Summary
This volume addresses how the rhetoric of feminist empowerment has been combined with mainstream representations of food, thus creating a cultural consciousness around food and eating that is unmistakably pathological. Throughout, Natalie Jovanovski discusses key texts written by women, for women: best-selling diet books, popular cookbooks produced by female food celebrities, and iconic feminist self-help texts. This is the first book to engage in a feminist analysis of body-policing food trends that focus specifically on the use of feminist rhetoric as a harmful aspect of food culture. There is a smorgasbord of seemingly diverse gender roles for women to choose from, but many encourage breaking gender norms and embracing a love of food while perpetuating old narratives of guilt and restraint. Digesting Femininities problematizes the gendering of food and eating and challenges the reader to imagine what a genderless and emancipatory food culture would look like.
