In The One with All the Thanksgivings, an episode of the US sitcom Friends (1998), two characters, Ross Gellar and Chandler Bing, talk at the kitchen sink about how Ross can successfully win the heart of Rachel Green. As they discuss their plans, Chandler pleads with Ross not to be left on his own with Ross’ fat sister. The “fat sister” to whom the men are referring is a character called Monica Geller, a beautiful perfectionist with “OCD” traits. However, throughout flashback scenes, the audience is repeatedly informed that “svelte and athletic” Monica was once fat (Richardson 2016, p. 83). Played by Courteney Cox in a fat suit, the purpose of “Fat Monica” (as she became known) was twofold. Firstly, she was there to be the punchline of a running joke, with quips about her weight being a constant across all ten series of the show (Harris-Moore 2016, p. 93). Secondly, “Fat Monica” provided substance to the character of Monica: haunted by her experiences as a fat child and young woman, Monica develops her trademark control-freak tendencies. Indeed, this particular scene marked the turning point for her character: after overhearing Chandler’s remark, Monica is seen rejecting her Mother’s offer to “finish off” two pies (with the response from her father: “she’s finally full!”), marking her initial decision to diet.
In a later scene, Monica enacts her “revenge” by revealing her newly thin body to Chandler (to the sound of excited claps and “whoops” from the audience), who instantly persues her romantically. When watching this episode of Friends as a teenager, I remember laughing along with the fat-girl jokes and feeling happy for Monica when she got her “big reveal” revenge. With the benefit of hindsight (and a feminist lens), I now see Monica as a somewhat tragic figure who is reflective of my own body journey , one that is probably recognizable for many other women. As a “chubby” young woman, I constantly sought ways to lose weight, believing that it would make me both a “better” and more attractive individual. In the playground, I recall my 14-year-old girlfriends and me sipping on Slim-Fast shakes and nibbling at pieces of fruit, feeling guilty if we strayed over a number of calories. Likewise, I remember feeling embarrassed if I had to eat in front of boys, worrying that they would presume I was a “pig”. Now, as a thin control freak myself, Monica’s desperate attempts to escape the shadow of her “old” body feel painfully relevant to watch. Her former fatness is presented as being part of her character: she is terrified of re-gaining weight, the joke being that this has made her extremely uptight. As the audience, we recognize that these obsessional tendencies are born out of her traumatic memories as a fat girl. This is a narrative that so many women recognize from their own lives, one that has become normalized and even expected from young girls. Indeed, Friends is not unique in its depiction of fatness as a curse upon women. In the West, these messages are so ubiquitous that they often go unchallenged. For example, films such as Shallow Hal and Precious offer “stereotypical, extreme, and obvious” examples of fatness; the fat women characters are unattractive, lonely and seemingly stupid (Harris-Moore 2016, p. 1).
The purpose of this book is to explore why women diet and what this can tell us about operations of power and gender in relation to the body . In order to do so, the project will explore the discourses that construct the body and dieting, subsequently analysing the potential impact for women. Moreover, the book asks how power ’s relationship to the body is carried out in the everyday, exploring the processes of self-surveillance that are integral to dieting. This will be done through an exploration into the dichotomy of power that has often governed feminist debates, drawing upon the work of post-structuralist feminist scholars to understand the complex relationships that women have to their bodies (see Deveaux 1994; Bartky 1990, 1997; Bordo 1993).
Context: Feminist Debates on the Body
The question of why women diet gets at the heart of feminist understandings of the body . It is a question that many feminists have sought to answer that is deeply wrapped up with notions of power . Thus, the importance of the body to feminism cannot be overlooked, as McLaren (2012, p. 95) notes: “feminists view the body as an important site of political struggle”. Yet, within feminist scholarship, the body is an extremely contested area that has been explored through a vast web of perspectives, ranging from radical, Marxist and liberal feminist thought1 (see Wolf 1999; Orbach 1986, 1998; Chernin 1981; Greer 1971; Millett 1970; Roiphe 1994; Bolton 2013). The different stances on the body , within topics such as sex work or the beauty industry, have led some scholars to suggest that feminism is amidst an “identity crisis” (Alcoff 1988; Grosz 1993).
Although there is massive diversity within feminist scholarship on the body , the debates have often centred upon the question of oppression and liberation . On the one hand, some radical feminists view power as an oppressive force that works upon the body , with feminine practices being symbolic of a patriarchal form of control and subjugation. These scholars subscribe to an essentialist understanding of “womanhood”, with women’s biology rendering them subject to male-dominated control (see Greer 1971; Bolton 2013; Millett 1970; Brownmiller 1984; Jeffreys 2005, 2014). On the other hand, some liberal and post-feminist scholars view the body as a vessel for liberation ; feminism should enable women to take control of their bodies and embrace traditional understandings of femininity without judgement. This purposely sits in stark contrast to the feminism of the second-wave, which some scholars have referred to as a “victim” ideology (see Wolf 1993; Roiphe 1994; Paglia 2011). Of course, there are multiple positions that don’t fall within this dichotomy, such as post-colonial and post-structuralist feminist scholarship, which challenge monolithic understandings of power (see Collins 1986, 2000; hooks 1981; Davis 2003; James 1996; Bartky 1997; Bordo 1993). Nevertheless, this dichotomy is still in operation throughout feminism. For instance, whilst scholars such as Bindel (2004) view sex work as a degrading act that oppresses the female body, liberal feminists such as Hardt (1999, p. 100) suggest that it can be an empowering “choice” for a woman to make. Likewise, whilst Jeffreys (2005, 2008) sees beauty practices as a form of self-mutilation dictated by patriarchal understandings of the body , Davis (2013) understands seemingly extreme beauty procedures, such as cosmetic surgery, as being: “first and foremost…about taking one’s life into one’s own hands”.
This book situates itself within these debates, building upon the work of post-structuralist feminists, who have sought to overcome this dichotomy in a variety of different areas (see Butler 1990, 1993; Grosz 1993; Gatens 2013; McLaren 2012; Ramazanoglu 1993; Turner 2000). For instance, Dellinger and Williams’ (1997) piece on make-up in the workplace sought to “move beyond the depiction of women as either oppressed victims or freewheeling agents”, concluding that make-up could be both a hindrance to career progr...