Abstract
During World War I, dieting instructions by popular health and beauty experts such as Lulu Hunt Peters, Susanna Cocroft, and Antoinette Donnelly were part of a food dispositif that produced gendered ideas of corporeal citizenship. Dieting was framed as an expression of patriotism and a civic duty. Instructing female readers in self-discipline and self-surveillance, diet discourses promised women initially political and economic equality if they subjected themselves to the new disciplinary regimen. After the war, dieting instructions reframed dieting as a liberating practice for women and associated weight loss with success, white superiority, glamor, and self-determination. Hollywood and fashion design helped dieting to become a wildly popular practice with which women asserted the control over their own bodies and lives. This produced a backlash staged by media and doctors, claimed female dieters to be irrational, in danger and in need of supervision. This article explores the role of advice literature in the subjection of female bodies.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
Not applicable as I don’t work with data sets.
Notes
Italics in original.
A few scholars have suggested the idea of a food-centered dispositif. Nina Mackert writes about a “dispositif of diet and nutrition” that she locates in the Progressive Era, using the calorie as a technique of governmentality (2019, 129). David Nally discusses global food provisioning as a biopolitical intervention (2011). And Christopher Mayes speaks of a current lifestyle dispositif in which he includes food and dieting (2016).
For an in-depth reading of Fisher’s report, see Nina Mackert, “Feeding Productive Bodies” (2016).
References
Atlanta Constitution. 1919a. New standard of health for women through U.S. Camps. Atlanta Constitution, June 15, p. 6.
Atlanta Constitution. 1919b. U. S. training corps for women. Atlanta Constitution, January 26, p. 2.
Axtell, L.E. 1930. Grow thin on good food. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company.
Banner, L. 1983. American beauty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Barry, R. 1917. Less sugar. Means good-bye to your surplus fat. New York Times, November 4, p. 2.
Beard, G. 1871. Eating and drinking. New York: Putnam’s Handy Book Series.
Brown, N. 2006. Private politics & public voices: Black women’s activism from World War I to the New Deal. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
Chicago Daily Tribune. 1920. New training corps camp for women at Asheville, N.C.. Chicago Daily Tribune, June 15, p. 19.
Clarke, I.C. 1918. American women and the World War. New York: D. Appleton and Company.
Cocks, D. 1927. The etiquette of beauty. New York: George H. Doran Company.
Cocroft, S. 1916. What to eat and when. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
Cocroft, S. 1918. How to be strong. Cosmopolitan, May, p. 100.
Countiss, E.R. 1919. Mobilizing for the national health. Harper’s Bazaar, July, pp. 27, 86.
Czerniawski, A.M. 2007. From average to ideal: The evolution of the height and weight table in the United States, 1836–1943. Social Science History 31 (2): 273–296.
Deleuze, G. 1986. What is a dispositif. In Michel Foucault, philosopher: Essays translated from the French and German, ed. T.J. Armstrong, 159–166. New York: Routledge.
Donnelly, A. 1916. How I reduced Mrs. Eva Lane 30 pounds in 6 weeks. Chicago Daily Tribune, April 30, p. 1.
Donnelly, A. 1917a. Diet, exercise, and keep at it, to reduce. Chicago Daily Tribune, July 7, p. 10.
Donnelly, A. 1917b. What exercise has done for Sammy ‘twill do for Sammy’s sister. Chicago Daily Tribune, September 2, p. 1.
Donnelly, A. 1920a. The war on weight. Chicago Daily Tribune, November 26, p. 17.
Donnelly, A. 1920b. How to reduce, new waistlines for old. New York: D. Appleton.
Donnelly, A. 1921. Fat New Yorkers in race to reduce. Chicago Daily Tribune, October 23, p. 1.
Donnelly, A. 1926. Fanny Hurst keeps the literary fires burning by dieting. Chicago Daily Tribune, June 14, p. 31.
Donnelly, A. 1928. The only way to reduce. Chicago Daily Tribune, September 23, p. 1.
Donnelly, A. 1929. Discipline is fundamental of self-improvement. Chicago Daily Tribune, February 2, p. 18.
Farrell, A.E. 2011. Fat shame: Stigma and the fat body in American Culture. New York: New York University Press.
Fass, P.S. 1977. The damned and the beautiful: American youth in the 1920s. New York: Oxford University Press.
Finck, H.T. 1923. Girth control, for womanly beauty, manly strength, health and a long life for everybody. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Fisher, I. 1910. National vitality: Its wastes and conservation. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Fisher, I., and E.L. Fisk. 1915. How to live: Rules for healthful living based on modern science. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company.
Fisher, I. and E.L. Fisk (1917). How to live: Rules for healthful living based on modern science. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company.
Foucault, M. 1980a. The confession of the flesh. Interview (1977). In Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, ed. C. Gordon, 194–228. New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. 1980b. The politics of health in the eighteenth century (1976). In Power//knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, ed. C. Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. 1990. The history of sexuality. Volume 1: An introduction. New York: Vintage Books.
Gordon, M. 1999. Onward kitchen soldiers: Mobilizing the domestic during World War I. Canadian Review of American Studies 29 (2): 61–87.
Herrick, C.T. 1917. Lose weight and be well. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Hirshbein, L.D. 1999. Masculinity, work, and the fountain of youth: Irving Fisher and the Life Extension Institute, 1914–1931. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 16 (1): 89–124.
Horwitz, T. 1923. The Mammy Washington almost had. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/the-mammy-washington-almost-had/276431/. Accessed 12 Nov 2021.
Hurst, F. 1935. No food with my meals. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Kennedy, D. 1980. Over here: The First World War and American society. New York: Oxford Press.
Lusk, G. 1917. Economy of diet. In Proceedings of the national conference of social Work. Chicago: National Conference of Social Work.
Mackert, N. 2016. Feeding productive bodies: Calories, nutritional values and ability in Progressive Era US. In Histories of productivity: Genealogical perspectives on the body and modern economy, ed. P.-P. Bänziger and M. Suter, 117–135. London: Routledge.
Mackert, N. 2019. Work, burn, eat: Abilities of calometric bodies in the USA, 1890–1930. Rethinking History 23 (2): 189–209.
Mayes, C. 2016. The biopolitics of lifestyle: Foucault, ethics and healthy choices. London: Routledge.
Nally, D. 2011. The biopolitics of food provisioning. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36 (1): 37–53.
New York Times. 1923. Flapper lines oust Venus de Milo plan. New York Times, April 16, p.12.
New York Times. 1929. Dieting kills actress. New York Times, June, p. 4.
New York Times. 1930. Ill from dieting, singer tries to die. New York Times, March 30, p. 22.
Peters, L.H. 1918. Diet and health with key to calories. Chicago: The Reilly and Lee Co.
Purkiss, A. 2017. “Beauty secrets: Fight fat”: Black women’s aesthetics, exercise, and fat stigma, 1900–1930s. Journal of Women’s History 29 (2): 14–37.
Schwartz, H. 1986. Never satisfied: A cultural history of diets, fantasies & fat. New York: Doubleday.
Stearns, P.N. 2002. Fat history: Bodies and beauty in the modern west. New York: New York University Press.
Thornhill, R. 1930. How to reduce and keep slim. New York: Methuen.
Tunc, T.E. 2012. Less sugar, more warships: Food as American propaganda in the First World War. War in History 19 (2): 193–216.
Ullback, S. 1931. Hollywood undressed: Observations of Sylvia as noted by her secretary. New York: Brentano’s.
Veit, H.Z. 2013. Modern food, moral food: Self-control, science, and the rise of modern American eating in the early twentieth century. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Vester, K. 2010. Regime change: Gender, class, and the invention of dieting in post-bellum America. Journal of Social History 44 (1): 39–70.
Wallach, J.J. 2019. Every nation has its dish: Black bodies and black food in twentieth-century America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Washington Post. 1915. Number of fat women is appalling. Washington Post, April 25, p. 14.
Washington Post. 1926a. Dieting woman leaves feast; Falls 11 floors. Washington Post, December 26, p. 3.
Washington Post. 1926b. Peril to women seen in fad for slimness. Washington Post, February 22, p. 8.
Webb-Johnson, C. 1922. Diet for women. London: Mills & Boon Limited.
Whitaker, A. 1927. The last word: We are all dieting now. Los Angeles Times, September 6, p. A6.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Vester, K. “How dare you hoard fat when our nation needs it?”: Weight loss advice and female citizenship during World War I and the 1920s. Subjectivity 30, 297–316 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41286-023-00163-w
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41286-023-00163-w