The-F-Word.org

Life is incredibly hectic right now, what with end of the quarter papers coming due and extra projects taken on for work. Then, Memorial Day weekend the boy and I head off for a whirlwind weekend in Philadelphia and NYC. But I have some great features in the works to whet your appetites, including feature interviews with authors Trisha Gura and Katherine Parkin.

As someone who developed an adult-onset eating disorder, Gura’s book intrigues me. Though behaviors associated with eating disorders are common amongst suffers, the experiences of adult women and why they develop eating disorders can differ drastically from that of a young girl.

When a professor friend who went to school with Katherine Parkin first told me of her latest book, my first thought was that Parkin has written the book I wanted to write. She and I share much of the same research interests, which include delving into the social history and psychology which conflates femininity with food and food preparation.

Posting might be sporadic the next week, but in the meantime, check out their newly released books:

Lying in Weight: The Hidden Epidemic of Eating Disorders in Adult Women
What happens when girls with eating disorders grow up? In her groundbreaking new book, science journalist Trisha Gura, Ph.D., explodes the myth that those who suffer from eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, are primarily teenage girls. In reality, these diseases linger from adolescence or emerge anew in the lives of adult women in ways that we are only starting to recognize.

Food Is Love: Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America
Modern advertising has changed dramatically since the early twentieth century, but when it comes to food, Katherine Parkin writes, the message has remained consistent. Advertisers have historically promoted food in distinctly gendered terms, returning repeatedly to themes that associated shopping and cooking with women. In identifying shopping and cooking as an expression of love, ads helped to both establish and reinforce the belief that kitchen work was women’s work, even as women’s participation in the labor force dramatically increased. Alternately flattering her skills as a homemaker and preying on her insecurities, advertisers suggested that using their products would give a woman irresistible sexual allure, a happy marriage, and healthy children. Ads also promised that by buying and making the right foods, a woman could help her family achieve social status, maintain its racial or ethnic identity, and assimilate into the American mainstream.