Abstract
In this chapter, I examine the rising popularity of cookbooks written by female food celebrities and the conflicting messages they promote. These conflicting food femininities, which are informed by feminist principles of self-pleasure and choice, provide fertile ground for body-policing narratives to emerge. Two British (Nigella Lawson and Tana Ramsay) and two Australian (Julie Goodwin and Poh Ling Yeow) celebrity cooks are examined for the way they talk about food, cooking and eating. Through an examination of their relationships with food, conflicts between their maternal and hedonistic selves emerge, uncovering implicit narratives of body surveillance and anxiety. Specifically, I argue that the use of feminist terminology to inform both motherhood and hedonism produces complicated discussions about women’s entitlement to enjoy food without worrying about the appearance of their bodies.
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Jovanovski, N. (2017). Cooking Up Femininities: Motherhood, Hedonism and Body Policing in Popular Cookbooks. In: Digesting Femininities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58925-1_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58925-1_5
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