Policing Attitudes in Popular Discourses on Food and Eating
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Digesting Femininities: An Examination of Body- Policing Attitudes in Popular Discourses on Food and Eating. Natalie Jovanovski B.Psych (Hons). Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2014 College of Arts Victoria University Abstract Feminist and psychological literature has long established a link between women’s often conflicted relationship with food and social discourses that reinforce harmful notions of the ideal female body and the need for bodily self-surveillance. However, new cultures around food and eating have emerged which purport to offer different ways to connect with food. One feature of these gendered discourses is their use of feminist terminology and ideas of empowerment and emancipation. This thesis sets out to explore popular cultural discourses on food and eating by examining recent, best-selling diet books and cookbooks written by women and the iconic feminist texts that have inadvertently helped shape them. The thesis will argue that together, these food and eating-related discourses reinforce and normalise body-policing gender norms and body-centric attitudes, despite their broader aims to challenge these ideas. By viewing these texts through a feminist post-structuralist lens, and employing methodological tools from critical discourse analysis, this thesis attempts to move beyond individualistic, body-centric approaches that dominate existing literature. It aims to fill a gap in this literature and in current debate by examining different cultural discourses for the ways body-surveillance messages are normalised and perpetuated. It advances the idea of ‘food femininities’ to describe the multiple means by which authors of diet books, cookbooks and iconic feminist texts instantiate and reproduce body-policing narratives. It concludes that these apparently new discourses on food and eating, like the discourses that preceded them, promote similarly harmful, self-objectifying attitudes in women. ii Declaration I, Natalie Jovanovski, declare that the PhD thesis entitled ‘Digesting Femininities: An Examination of Body-Policing Attitudes in Discourses on Food and Eating’ is no more than 100,000 words in length including quotes and exclusive of tables, figures, appendices, bibliography, references and footnotes. This thesis contains no material that has been submitted previously, in whole or in part, for the award of any other academic degree or diploma. Except where otherwise indicated, this thesis is my own work. Natalie Jovanovski 30th September 2014 iii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I thank my Principal Supervisor Associate Professor Julie Stephens and my Assistant Supervisor Dr Meagan Tyler for their incredible support. I won the supervisor lottery with you two! Julie - your kindness throughout this process has been amazing. Not only did you help me pick up the pieces after a series of thesis (and life-related!) issues, but you also made me feel confident to have a voice. I am lucky to have worked with somebody as lovely as you. Meagan - you were far more than just a “McDonalds parent”! You added a radical flavour to my work (and life) and broadened my political perspective. I look up to you so much and I find you just wonderful! To my dear friend Mel Thomas, thank you so much for offering me love, support and inspiration, even when I was at my most annoying. Also, to my friends Maria and Vicki – thank you for encouraging and supporting me - once again, when I was at my most annoying. To my mum, dad, grandmother and uncle who stood beside me the whole time – thank you for waiting patiently! And last but definitely not least, to my wonderful brother Miki – thank you so much for being such a wonderful friend. (Even if you refused to read my draft... you bastard). iv Dedication I would like to dedicate this thesis to my grandfather, Radivoj Todoreskov, who passed away before I got the chance to finish. There hasn’t been a single person in my life who believed in me more than you did. There have been so many moments during the writing of this thesis that I wanted to talk to you, and my heart would always sink when I’d remember that you’re gone. You are irreplaceable, unforgettable and forever in my heart. v Table of Contents Abstract ii Declaration iii Acknowledgements iv Dedication v Contents vi Introduction 1 Development of Project 9 Thesis Overview 14 Chapter 1: Beyond Body-Centrism: A Literature Review 18 Self-Objectification, Objectified Body-Consciousness and Body-Policing as Cultural Phenomena 19 Psychology and Individual Psychopathology 22 The Domination of Fashion and Beauty Discourses 25 The Importance of Gendered Discourses on Food and Eating 32 Dietetic Food Femininities: Cooking as a Gendered Phenomenon 35 Culinary Food Femininities: Dieting as a Gendered Phenomenon 41 Feminist Food Femininities: Feminist Consciousness as a Gendered Phenomenon 46 Chapter Summary 49 Chapter 2: Analysing Texts and Gendered Subject Positions 52 vi ‘Gender Talk’ in Language and Discourse 53 Patriarchal Discourses and Gendered Subject Positions 55 The Complicated Marriage Between Feminism and Post-Structuralism 58 Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis as Method 62 Chapter 3: Femininities-Lite: Body-Policing Attitudes in Best-Selling Diet Books 69 Background 70 Chosen Texts 72 “Don’t Be a Pussy”: Freedman and Barnouin’s Post-Feminist Subject Position 74 Skinny 76 Bitch 81 Post-Feminist Veganism 84 Animalising Women’s Eating Behaviour 89 Anthropomorphising Food 94 “Just F---ing Do it”: Bridges’ Liberal-Individualist Subject Position 98 Just Do It: Deconstructing the Mantra 99 Just Do It Like a Woman 99 Just Fucking Do What? 101 Confession 103 Panopticism (or Self-Surveillance) 104 Confessional Panopticism 106 Self-Surveillance, Confession and the Female Body 108 Self-Surveillance, Confession and Women’s Eating Behaviour 114 vii Chapter Summary 122 Chapter 4: Cooking Up Femininities: Body-Policing Attitudes in Popular Cookbooks 123 Background 124 Fantasy Food Femininities 125 Chosen Texts 127 “Cracking the Combination Lock”: Tana’s Maternal and Hedonistic Subject Positions 128 The Responsible Mother 129 The Professional Male Gaze 131 Consuming the ‘Yummy Mummy’: Nigella’s Maternal and Hedonistic Subject Positions 135 Resisting the Traditional Maternal Subject Position 136 Nigella’s Hedonistic Subversion of Traditional Motherhood 140 The Yummy Mummy and her Objectified Pleasure 144 “It Must Be In My Blood”: Julie’s Maternal and Hedonistic Subject Positions 150 Becoming a “Certified Feeder”: Poh’s Maternal and Hedonistic Subject Positions 158 Chapter Summary 166 Chapter 5: Flavours of Feminism: Body-Policing Attitudes in Iconic Feminist Texts 167 Defining ‘Feminist Icon’ 169 Chosen Texts 171 Orbach’s Feminist Self-Help Subject Position in Fat is a Feminist Issue 173 ‘Fat’ as a Resistance to Ideal Femininity 174 viii Pathologising the ‘Fat’ Female Body 178 Body-Consciousness and the Asexual ‘Fat’ Woman 180 Fat is a Feminist Issue as a Consciousness-Raising Tool 183 The Unhappy Marriage of Feminism and Self-Help 186 Wolf’s Liberal-Feminist Subject Position in The Beauty Myth 191 Wolf’s Second-Wave Feminist Influences 191 A Liberal-Feminist Subject Position 197 The Feminist Third-Wave: A New Way to See 203 Chapter Summary 208 Chapter 6: A Smorgasbord of Food Femininities: A Discussion 210 Identifying a Bulimic Culture of Food Femininities 212 The Role of Patriarchy in the Bulimic Gaze 219 Aesthetic Palatability 222 A Smorgasbord of Food Femininities 228 Resistant Food Femininities? 230 Chapter Summary 237 Conclusion 239 Hold The Femininities: Ordering a Feminist Food Consciousness? 245 References 251 ix Introduction This thesis seeks to examine the reinforcement of body-policing attitudes in gendered discourses on food and eating. Specifically, it focuses on how the advice given to women about food and eating in diet books, cookbooks and iconic feminist texts, is founded upon gender stereotypes that instantiate and normalise women’s attitudes towards body- surveillance. Feminist writers and scholars have problematised the practice of self- objectification and acknowledged the importance of locating and theorising the cultural origins of women’s obsession with body-policing practices (Bartky, 1990; Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997; McKinley & Hyde, 1996). These studies have implicated the harmful role that fashion and beauty discourses play in the practice of self-objectification, and have linked these practices to the development of ‘disordered’ eating (Ahern, Bennett & Hetherington, 2008; Grogan, 2008). Yet these approaches, while generating a significant and influential body of literature explaining, at least partially, where women’s conflicted relationships with their bodies originate, have been largely body-centric, focusing on how the size and shape of the female body is depicted in the media and overlooking the power of other significant discourses in perpetuating harmful self-objectifying messages (Malson, 2009, p. 135; Probyn, 2008). Despite the strong association between body-policing attitudes and ‘disordered’ eating behaviour in women (Tiggemann, 2013), very few studies have addressed the role that gendered discourses on food and eating and previous feminist analyses of women’s relationships to food, play in the reinforcement of women’s body- policing practices. In this thesis, I take up the task of examining new gendered discourses on food and eating, for the myriad of ways harmful body-conscious narratives are constructed 1 and reproduced. In this