Food and Femininity TINA SIKKA Newcastle University, UK Te nexus of food and femininity represents an important area of contemporary research on gender, media, and food. In this entry, the categories of food and feminin- ity are examined as they relate to cultural and social capital, taste and class, gender ideology, care work, postfeminism, media technologies, and race/ethnicity. Some of the most foundational work in this area is by Bourdieu, whose research on food, taste, and class, while not explicitly concerned with the study of gender, contains signifcant insights that have become more and more salient. In Distinction, Bourdieu argues that the physical manifestation of the body represents class taste visually with respect to how the body is taken care of (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 190). He connects the cul- tural capital accrued through socialization to food choice, gender norms, and bodily expectations. Bourdieu argues that, Te most sought-afer bodily properties (slimness, beauty etc.) are not randomly distributed among the classes (for example, the proportion of women whose waist measurement is greater than the modal waist rises sharply as one moves down the social hierarchy). (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 207) Tis connection between idealized body norms, bodily comportment, and beauty is rooted in class and status positions as well as being part of the relationship one has with food choice which, particularly for women, has to be controlled, rationed, and disci- plined in order to meet bodily expectations. A signifcant amount of related research has been carried out around dietary regimes as sites of discipline. Scholars have also used Bourdieu’s work to engage in a more nuanced analysis of food choice, cultural capital, distinction, and gender through the discourse of care and care work. Vincent and Ball (2007), for example, argue that it is women who are expected to socialize children, and part of that involves shaping their food tastes in line with cultural expectations. Hegemonic femininity and responsibilities around family and reproduc- tion involve socializing and feeding children in ways that refect dominant forms of “culinary competence” (Hollows, 2003, p. 186), while also retaining one’s own disci- plined relationship to food and the body. Bordo’s research on the body, femininity, and food examines the ways in which regulation of the female appetite is rooted in “nightmarish archetypical as association of voracious hungers and sexual instability” (Bordo, 1984, p. 155). A hearty and even hedonistic appetite, on the other hand, is coded male. Bordo demonstrates how food and dietary control has been internalized and used by women as a way to conform to hegemonic femininity. Heyes (2007) calls this “corporeal normalization” and demonstrates how this enforced normalization of the feminine is made manifest in Te International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication. Karen Ross (Editor-in-Chief), Ingrid Bachmann, Valentina Cardo, Sujata Moorti, and Marco Scarcelli (Associate Editors). © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/9781119429128.iegmc203