The Body, Power and Dieting: Beyond the Binary

Abstract

This chapter concludes Watching our Weight, drawing together the overall themes for the book and putting forward potentialities for further research. The book contributes to feminist understandings of the body, building upon the intersections between Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1977) and post-structuralist feminist scholarship (Bordo 1993; Bartky in Writing on the body: Female embodiment and feminist theory. Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 129-154, 1997). Through the lens of dieting, this book extends understandings of the ever-changing nature of power. Equally, using empirical interviews, the book extends some of Deveaux’s (1994) criticism of some post-structuralist feminist work. Secondly, the book addresses a gap on race within Discipline and Punish (1977) through the lens of dieting. Foucault is often accused of presenting the body as having only “one” experience of discipline (Bartky in Writing on the body: Female embodiment and feminist theory. Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 129-154, 1997; Sawicki in Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, power, and the body. Psychology Press. New York, 1991). This book draws on black feminist scholarship to speak directly to these gaps through the lens of dieting. Utilizing narratives surrounding Oprah Winfrey’s body, I combine the aforementioned study to discuss the dieting body and how it speaks to socio-historical narratives of black femininity (Hine et al. in We specialize in the wholly impossible: A reader in black women’s history (Vol. 17). New York University Press, New York, 1995; Thompson in Feminist Media Studies 15:794–812, 2015; Wallace-Sanders in Skin deep, spirit strong: The black female body in American culture. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2002). Finally, the relationship between the book’s theoretical approach and empirical sources makes an original contribution to feminist work on the body. Drawing on both interviews with dieters and fat activists, the project demonstrates how the dichotomy of power is active in areas of “submission” and “resistance”. Although Cooper’s Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement documents the history of the fat movement at great length, there is seemingly little to no research that brings together interviews from dieters and fat activists, as well as an in-depth case study of Oprah Winfrey’s dieting journey. Thus, the original contribution of this book comes from the relationship between the theoretical approach and empirical analysis, creating an original voice that extends post-structuralist feminist scholarship.