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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.

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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?

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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.

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