Diners, Dudes, and Diets
How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture
By Emily J. H. Contois
208 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 21 halftones, notes, bibl
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Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-6074-5
Published: November 2020 -
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-6073-8
Published: November 2020 -
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4696-6075-2
Published: October 2020
Studies in United States Culture
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In a work brimming with fresh insights about contemporary American food media and culture, Contois shows how the gendered world of food production and consumption has influenced the way we eat and how food itself is central to the contest over our identities.
About the Author
Emily J. H. Contois is assistant professor of media studies at the University of Tulsa.
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Reviews
"A fascinating work of cultural studies that makes evident the continued power and threat of explicitly gendered food production and consumption in the 21st century. Recommended broadly for students and scholars of fields related to gender, culture, and consumption."--Library Journal
âIn an important new book, Emily J.H. Contois expands our understanding of food and masculinities in 21st-century North America. In fresh and lively close reading of food media and advertising . . . Contois very convincingly demonstrates . . . if we do not stop to ask ourselves why the diet soda âfor menâ is in a grey can and claiming not to be a diet soda, she warns, we are going to miss a lot of what passes for common sense around gender identity.ââInternational Journal of Food Design
âThe âdudeâ and the âweight loss closetâ provide two unique analytical tools to explore the gendered nature of food culture as well as trends toward a more inclusive food media. Contois offers a lens onto the recent past as well as the current food trends that fill our television screens, making it possible to be more critical of the way we approach food and the underlying assumptions of how gender is acted out through food media.ââMen & Masculinities
âA sharp-as-hell dissection of how cultural notions of masculinity and femininity are weaponized in the kitchen, the grocery store, the dinner table, and everywhere else. Fascinating, mordant, enraging, illuminating.ââ Helen Rosnerâs âGreat Food-ish Nonfiction 2020â
âAs a survey of a generation worth of food marketing and messaging, the book offers a useful overview of how corporations package food, identity, and gender norms for consumption. Perhaps even more valuable, and hopeful, is the closing section, âDude, What Happened?â which explores how the election of Donald Trump, the MeToo movement, and the pandemic have caused many of the companies with the most egregiously gendered approaches to food to seek more neutral, inclusive territory.ââCivil Eats
âFocusing on the concept of dude foods, the book follows the evolution of food marketing for men. In doing so, Contois shows how industries used masculine stereotypes to sell diet and weight loss products to a new demographic. She argues that this has influenced both the way consumers think about food and their own identities.ââFood Tank