Preserving food and the family

One of the things I admire most about my Pawpaw is that he knows how to can and preserve foods. Perhaps it seems silly to admire someone for that, but how many people do you know under the age of 60 that know how to do that? Can you? If you can, teach me! Ever since I can remember, I have eaten bread and butter pickles, fig preserves, strawberry jam and preserves, canned pears, mayhaw and quince jelly, and all of it handmade and canned by my Pawpaw. He has an extensive and flourishing personal garden where he harvests beans, cucumbers, and squash, as well as a few fruit trees from which he gets the fruit to make jellies and preserves.

            I love to watch him make pickles. He slices the cucumbers into fat chips and soaks them on one side of the sink before he cans them. I know that he takes many more steps than that to make the pickles, but I do not know all of them. From what I can tell, it is not a quick process; I imagine if it were, I would stand still long enough to watch and learn the whole process. But I do know of the outcome, sweet and vinegar-y pickles that are a perfect match for a grilled cheese sandwich on a chilly day.

            In the church cookbook printed last year, many of my family’s canning and preserving recipes were included. I am a few states removed from my hometown, and I always hesitate to try one of my favorite recipes, because I’m not sure if the end result will be the same as when my Pawpaw makes it. There is something about Pawpaw’s house and the vegetables and fruits that come from his garden that he grew that add to the taste. It might ruin my taste for canned goods and preserves altogether if I mess up something he can make so well. So I am hoping I will get the chance to learn from him how to can and preserve things; I would hate for those family recipes to disappear because no one knows how to do it! Perhaps that will be my New Year’s resolution—I am going to learn to can!

Christmas Candy

Although I am not very fond of the holidays, I do love getting the opportunity and the excuse to make Christmas candy. My younger sister showed me how to make Oreo Truffles a few years ago, and ever since I have made them for friends and family as Christmas gifts because I am a broke college kid. Oreo Truffles are one of the easiest candies to make, and they always look elegant and seem as though you put a lot of time and effort in to making them, so you will get lots of compliments for spending less than $10 for ingredients and having fun getting you hands dirty.

Oreo Truffles

1 (16 oz) package of Oreo cookies

1 (8 oz) package of cream cheese, softened

2 (8 oz) packages of semi-sweet chocolate chips

Crush a few of the cookies into fine crumbs and set aside. Crush all of the remaining cookies to fine crumbs with your bare hands by the sweat of your brow (put the cookies in a plastic baggie, please, the crumbs will stick to the bottom of your feet later if you spill them on the floor!). Place your crushed essence d’Oreo in a bowl and add the softened cream cheese—if you want to taste some of the cream cheese, like me (I love cream cheese), it’s ok, nibble it! You’re making the candy, you have a right to test the products and make sure it’s safe for everyone else to eat! Mix the crushed cookies and the cream cheese together until they are blended—you’re going to have to crank your elbow a little, work those cookies into that cheese! Then roll the cookie mixture into as many balls as you can, about an inch in diameter. I always make the perfect balls when I listen to my favorite song; something about singing and dancing in the kitchen while I make this candy allows me to roll the perfect ball between my palms. Now comes the messy part—melt one package of the chocolate chips in a microwave-safe bowl, and get a spoon. BEWARE! The bowl and the melted chocolate will be HOT when it comes out of the microwave (I figured I should warn you because I always burn my fingers, even though I’ve done this a hundred times). Drop a ball into the melted chocolate, one by one, and roll the ball around with the spoon to cover it in chocolate, then spoon it out and set it on a cookie sheet covered in wax paper. This takes concentration—I always focus the best with my tongue stuck out between my lips (family trait). When all the balls are covered in chocolate, sprinkle the tops with the crushed cookies you set aside earlier. Then put the tray in the refrigerator and let the candy chill for about an hour. You’ll have between 30 and 40 Oreo Truffles soon!

"Vegaphobia"

As I researched for my Women’s Studies final project, I discovered an article that discussed something called “vegaphobia.” Matthew Cole and Karen Morgan’s article “Vegaphobia: derogatory discourses of veganism and the reproduction of specieism in UK national newspapers” discussed the negative ways in which vegans and veganism is portrayed in English newspapers and the implications of that negative perception. Cole and Morgan first define veganism as the “opposition to violent and exploitative human-nonhuman relations,” or in other words, rejection of the exploitative and harmful use of animals and animal products by people (135). They then connect animal cruelty—what veganism rallies against—to “specieism…a form of prejudice against nonhuman animals” (135). Cole and Morgan assert that specieism is akin to racism and sexism in that it discriminates against and takes advantage of a group (nonhuman animals in this case). The connection between vegaphobia and specieism is made by Cole and Morgan’s thesis: “Just as anti-feminist discourse perpetuates and legitimates patriarchal social relations, so, we argue, does anti-vegan discourse perpetuate and legitimate specieist social relations” (135).

            Cole and Morgan argue that “veganism is understood by most vegans…as an aspect of anti-specieist practice,” so when veganism is vilified or marginalized, specieism is reinforced (135). The authors discuss the way veganism is institutionalized as deviance when discourses constantly reaffirm stereotypes and when “the dominant practices of meat-eating are used to set the discursive parameters” of society’s perceptions (136). Cole and Morgan defined negative articles relating to veganism as “those which deployed one or more derogatory discourses, usually featuring one, or a combination, from a routinized set of anti-vegan stereotypes” such as “ridiculing veganism; characterizing veganism as asceticism; describing veganism as difficult or impossible to sustain; describing veganism as a fad; characterizing vegans as oversensitive; and characterizing vegans as hostile” (139); these negative discourses of veganism ultimately reduce vegans and veganism to a marginal, trivial status, and negate the importance of the lifestyle/diet and its anti-animal cruelty basis, which perpetuates specieism, or violence and discrimination against nonhuman animals. Cole and Morgan point out that in all the newspaper discourses they researched, “the absence of animal rights philosophy as a basis for veganism [was] a consistent theme,” thus allowing the negative discourse of ridiculing veganism to occur (140). If veganism appears “self-evidently ridiculous” and petty, the importance of the lifestyle choice is lost, trivialized, and not taken seriously. Characterizing veganism as asceticism, or extreme self-denial or abstinence from food, “clears veganism of any associations with pleasurable eating experiences,” thus the notion that vegan food is tasteless and disgusting perpetuates. Which, by the way, is totally untrue—vegan food products have come a long way since they were first produced, and are now just as tasty as “regular-people food.” There’s a reason why the last two winners of Cupcake Wars have been vegan bakers with their vegan cupcakes….

            Other negative discourses of veganism Cole and Morgan discovered were the practices of describing veganism as impossible to sustain, or as a fad. Describing veganism as impossible to sustain, they argue, “reassures omnivorous readers that veganism is doomed to failure, and that they should not feel guilty for not attempting it,” therefore vegan food and diet is made “other” (143). ‘The food is so hard to find, or too difficult to make, anyway, so why bother trying to eat vegan?’ To describe veganism as a fad, as a temporary occurrence, is to discredit veganism and vegans as hypocritical. ‘It is only a matter of time before vegans can no longer resist eating meat, and if they do eat meat after vehemently speaking out against meat, then that makes vegans hypocrites; at least I’m not a hypocrite, I say I like meat and I eat meat.’ Cole and Morgan associate the trivialization of veganism by attributing it to faddism with women in that “faddism is frequently associated with women’s subculture as a trivialization strategy” (144). The authors also associate women with the characterization of vegans as oversensitive; here sexism is combined with sentiment, making the argument that women are more inclined to empathize and feel compassionately towards animals because of a “shared experience of (patriarchal) oppression” (145). The “gendered stereotypes of women as ‘over-emotional’ or irrational” is connected to vegans perceived as “sentimental ‘animal lover[s]’ unable to cope with the harsh realities of nature,” thus again trivializing vegans and veganism (145).

            Cole and Morgan conclude that negative discourses of vegans and veganism serve to not only marginalize or trivialize it, but to allow meat-eaters to “avoid confronting the ethics of exploiting, imprisoning, and killing” animals, as well as to allow the negative discourses to normalize the exploitation of animals (149). As a whole, I agree with Cole and Morgan’s conclusions about the negative discourses’ affect on the perception of vegans and veganism, however I think the argument that characterizing it as impossible to sustain may have some weaknesses. I know my own experience trying to go vegan was confusing, frustrating, and ultimately unsuccessful. I felt as though I did not know enough to even begin, and I found it difficult to find foods I could eat. Every time I read a label, I would see some ingredient that was an animal by-product, or one that might be an animal by-product. It seems as though if you are not intimately familiar with all the forms of animal products, then you are not adequately equipped to choose the right foods and make the best choices that align with one’s anti-animal cruelty/exploitation beliefs. I was always in fear that I would make a mistake in feeling confident I had a product that had caused no harm to an animal or that had no animal products in it, but what if I was just unaware of it? Perhaps it is not correct to characterize veganism as impossible to sustain, but those who say it is difficult to sustain may have a point.

Works Cited

Cole, Matthew and  Karen Morgan. “Vegaphobic: derogatory discourses of veganism and the reproduction of specieism in UK national newspapers.” The British Journal of Sociology 62:1 (2011): 134-153. PsycINFO. Web. 5 Dec 2011.

I Skinny Bitch'd it for a week and a half, and that was enough for me!

Since Skinny Bitch is one reason of the myriad that I chose to become a vegetarian, I thought I might try to take it a step further and actually do the vegan thing, as the authors of Skinny Bitch promote. I thought doing the four week meal plan in the back of the book would give me some good first-hand experience for my semester project about the eating practices of vegans. I decided I was only going to eat vegan—going 100% vegan would take a little more preparation than I have time for. Avoiding all and every product that contains a trace of animal product is so much bigger than I can wrap my head around at the moment…(are you aware of all the things that contain something from an animal??)

            Anyway, so I spent over $100 at Earth Fare as I prepared to hop on the Skinny Bitch diet for four weeks. I picked up a Vegan pizza, vegan butter, fake turkey, fake bacon, fake hamburgers, sesame oil, whole grain muffins. Needless to say the cashier had to pry my debit card from my hand to swipe it. I was not only unhappy about the amount of money, but I don’t like to eat frozen foods, and a lot of the vegan stuff was from the freezer section. I made a club sandwich with the Tofurkey and fake bacon one day—it wasn’t bad, but the fake bacon was a little off-putting when I opened the package and it smelled like Beggin’ Strips for dogs….

            So I Skinny Bitch’d it for 10 days and then I quit. I enjoy cheese way too much. And I kept slipping up on accident because I wasn’t aware something had a cream-based sauce, or I didn’t know there was cheese wrapped up in the sandwich. It was frustrating not only because I wasn’t aware of every single ingredient, but also because where I live there are very few vegetarian options much less vegan options.

            So for the rest of my project, I plan to research the implications of veganism on society, individuals, animals, health, and consumerism, looking to see what it takes to live this kind of lifestyle, where it’s most prevalent, and why people decide to do it. Hopefully I can interview someone who is a practicing vegan to get a better first-hand account, because I must say my attempt was inadequate. I’m a fairly healthy eater anyway with lots of whole grains and vegetables, but like I said, cheese is a staple for me, I can’t do without it!

"Um, yeah, can I get a large french fry...?"

As a twenty-something college student, image is a big deal. Specifically physical image. When I put my jeans on in the morning, I turn around and check in the mirror that I don’t have love handles spilling over the waistband. When I sit in a desk, or anywhere for that matter, I suck in and pull my jeans up so what fat I do have doesn’t bulge over the top of my pants. I buy clothes that give me a certain figure, as close to an hourglass shape as I can get, and it really sucks when I’m bloated, even a little bit, because then it throws the shape all out of whack.

            Besides the fact that you actually need fat in your body to function, it’s absolutely imperative that you walk around as though fat doesn’t exist in your body, and if it does you deny it vehemently and avoid gaining it like the plague. The only place I want fat to fill my body is in my butt so I can achieve the Kim Kardashian booty. Fat is not a good thing, so magazines, television, movies, and the rest of society tells me, unless it gets you a big butt or a nice pair of double d breasts. Seems to me those two areas are the only places fat is acceptable.

            So since fat is the most taboo subject in pop culture today, my eating habits are directly correlated with it. I really hate the assumption that skinny=healthy; as a person who is not overweight or underweight and a vegetarian to boot, I hate feeling bad when I want to eat a Kit Kat bar (my favorite) or a cinnamon roll or pasta smothered in cheese. There is the need to be hyper-vigilant about what I put in my mouth, especially when I’m eating around other people. So I have this whole regiment where I eat Subway—a lot (I think I should get some kind of faithful customer award)—and then sneak french fries from McDonalds or Sonic once in a while and don’t tell anyone about it. What kind of walking contradiction am I that I am such a proponent of healthy eating choices but I slip up so often with my french fries? So, friends of mine, I seriously doubt you know how many french fries I pack away in a week…

            Although I am not a calorie-counter per se, seeing the numbers on the Subway napkin that compares Subway sandwiches with hamburgers from McDonalds and Burger King makes my heart race just a little bit. Especially the calorie count for french fries….

            While I am not recovering from an eating disorder as the author of the blog ED Bites is, the author made an astute comment in relation to calorie counts on menus in the post “Mind F*ck”: good intentions can have very bad effects. The author writes of the panic felt at the little numbers listed beside every choice on the menu, a panic I understand although perhaps in a different way. I feel bad enough that I break down and swing by McDonalds for french fries once in a while without visualizing obsessively each calorie counted as a bubble of fat that might hang over the waist of my jeans. Perhaps it helps some people make better choices, but all I can imagine is the waiter saying, “dang, I can’t believe she saw that sandwich has 2345942370978 calories and she still ordered it…”

Distancing and Food Production

Partly responsible in my choice to become a vegetarian are the issues surrounding genetically-modified foods and products, how they are produced, and how far those foods travel to get into my pots and pans. Since the world is increasingly more globalized and interconnected, food—a staple all people share—comes from all over the place. I eat fish from China, rice from India, blueberries from Canada, and drink red wine from Spain. Sometimes I’ll get oranges from California or orzo pasta from Illinois. Not many things I eat, though, come from my local community, or even Georgia for that matter. I sometimes stop at the roadside produce stand in my town and buy locally grown tomatoes and lima beans, (although I have my suspicions about whether it’s truly local produce) but not often. So I’ve taken into consideration two things I eat often, Nutella and Tilapia fillets, and thought about where these items are produced, who labors to produce them, and especially the concept of “distancing,” defined by Deborah Barndt as “the increasing distance between production and consumption,” as well as “the deepening separation of humans from nature,” and the disconnect between laborers and the “fruits of their labor” (133).

            Nutella is a product I was wholly unfamiliar with until earlier this year when my French professor brought some to class; it was instant love: chocolate + peanut butter = this heavenly thing called Nutella. Although Nutella is more hazelnuts than chocolate, and nothing like peanut butter except that like peanut butter you spread it on bread or crackers, I thought it was the best thing to show up since sliced bread (and you spread it on sliced bread—even better!). I was aware of Nutella commercials on my television, but I had only noticed them in recent years, and I knew Nutella was a product more widely used in Europe. But a quick look at the label on my personal jar of Nutella told me that my Nutella was made in Canada, and distributed by Ferrerro USA, Inc. out of New Jersey. But it is a product more commonly and more widely consumed in Europe and is only now making headway in America. It seems as though Nutella bounces all over the globe before it ends up in my pantry. And after some research, I learned that Nutella was originally created by an Italian man, Pietro Ferrerro, in the 1940s when chocolate was scarce because of World War II, thus he created a product using hazelnuts because they were plentiful in the northwest region of Italy (NutellaUSA.com). This “traditional Italian breakfast item” was brought to America in 1983 and has steadily grown in popularity ever since (NutellaUSA.com). In fact, Ferrerro USA, Inc.’s official website claims that Nutella “rapidly gains distribution and awareness across the US, [and is] destined to become as big a success here as it is in Europe” (Ferrerro U.S.A., Inc.).

In regards to Barndt’s idea of distancing, I think it is very obvious that there is a gap between production and consumption of this product because (1) it’s made in Canada, (2) it’s made of hazelnuts (grown largely in Turkey and Italy [USDA]), (3) it’s distributed by a company based in New Jersey, and (4) it finally makes its way down here to Georgia, where I eat it. I also think Nutella is an example of what Barndt calls “the distancing from natural products and processes inherent in biotechnology, processing, preservation, and packaging” (133); I don’t even know what a hazelnut looks like, or really what it tastes like. The ingredient list on the back of my jar of Nutella reads: sugar, palm oil, hazelnuts, cocoa, soy milk, reduced minerals whey (milk), lecithin as emulsifier (soy), vanillin (an artificial flavor). All of these ingredients are processed to make this gooey spread, plus there are at least three artificial or man-made (non-natural) ingredients included. Also, Nutella is an example of “the deepening separation of humans from nature;” again, don’t ask me what a hazelnut tastes like (Barndt 133). I wouldn’t be able to pick one out of a lineup even with peanuts and pecans.

The other product I eat often that I chose to analyze concerning Barndt’s theory of distancing is Tilapia fillets. The package I get from the freezer section of my local Wal-Mart gives me about six individually sealed frozen fillets, white-fleshed with a pinkish-red color down the middle. I love to cook these fillets in the pan, or broil them, and serve them with asparagus, rice, or a multitude of other sides, and I usually season the fish with garlic powder, onion powder, and roasted garlic & herb seasoning. The side of the package tells me the fish are a product of China, but that the package is distributed by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. out of Bentonville, Arkansas. And after doing some research, I learned that Tilapia is actually a non-native fish to China; these fish are native to Africa, but thrive “better in tropical climates, so most of it comes from Asia or Latin America” (Einhorn). The U.S. does have some Tilapia fisheries, but Bruce Einhorn claims domestic fish farms “can’t come close to meeting demand.” Tilapia is “ecologically sustainable,” grows quickly, is cheap to produce, and takes on the flavor of ingredients it’s cooked with, thus consumption of Tilapia has raised dramatically in the past few years (Nicholls). Walter Nicholls points out that “in the mid-1980s, the average American had never heard of this firm-fleshed North African native,” and that over 300 million pounds of the fish were consumed in 2006 with the “overwhelming majority of imports [being] frozen fillets from China.”

Here again, there is an obvious distance between production and consumption of this product. Although there are some Tilapia fish farms in the U.S., China is the largest producer of Tilapia from fish farms, who process and ship the frozen fillets over here to the U.S. Then, Wal-Mart packages the frozen fillets into their little red bag and puts them into a truck to be driven all the way over here to Georgia, and then I carefully select my bag from the freezer section. The “distancing of natural products and processes inherent in biotechnology, processing, preservation, and packaging” is also evident here because although fish are a natural product, the Tilapia in my freezer grows up on a fish farm controlled by humans, then when it is killed, it goes to a plant to be cleaned, chemically preserved, and frozen, and is then packaged into its neat little bag (Barndt 133).

In a world this large with billions of people to feed, it is understandable that the distancing of some foods could seem necessary to get as much food to as many people as possible. However, that is not necessarily the case since there are millions around the globe still starving; an interesting point that the documentary The Future of Food makes is that the problem of hunger is an “access problem.” Many of the countries where there are starving people do not have the affluence to purchase all these commodities—“They don’t have the money to buy food or access to land on which to grow it” (McMahon 204). Even if biotechnology has made some products cheaper, there is still the issue of importing it, which involves cost for the distance it has to travel by boat, air, or land. Scholars such as Martha McMahon have pointed out that “local small-scale farming [is said to be] far too inefficient” in the face of globalization and new biotechnologies (204). The food production of small-scale farmers is deemed “less, or is not counted at all because it is produced for family, community, or a local market rather than for the export trade,” thus “concentration, specialization, and reaping the advantages of comparative advantage” are thought to be the best way to produce food for the world (204).  (Think of the hazelnuts harvested largely from Turkey and Italy, and the multitude of Tilapia fish farms in China.) However if we were to “resist globalization,” as McMahon puts it, I don’t think I would be able to enjoy my Nutella or Tilapia or any other imported product such as some fruits, vegetables, or seafood  that make their way to my local grocery store without globalization. I guess I would have to till my 4’x4’ front yard and grow some veggies or set up a fish tank in my living room.

Works Cited

Barndt, Deborah. “On the move for food: Three women behind the tomato’s journey.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 29:1/2 (2001): 131-143. Print.

Einhorn, Bruce. “From China, The Future of Fish.” Bloomberg Businessweek. 21 Oct 2010. Web. 20 Oct 2011. <http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b4201088229228_page_6.htm>

Ferrerro. Nutella USA: The Original Hazelnut Spread. Web. 20 Oct 2011. <http://www.nutellausa.com/history.htm>.

Ferrerro U.S.A., Inc. Ferrerro USA History. 2011. Web. 20 Oct 2011. <http://www.ferrerousa.com/ferrero-usa/history/?IDT=8928>.

The Future of Food. Dir. Deborah Koons Garcia. Lily Films, 2004. Film.

McMahon, Martha. “Resisting Globalization: Women Organic Farmers and Local Food Systems.” Canadian Women Studies 21:3: 203-206. Print.

Nicholls, Walter. “Two Sides to Every Tilapia.” The Washington Post. 8 Aug 2007. Web. 20 Oct 2011. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080700470.html>.

USDA. “World Hazelnut Situation and Outlook.” World Horticultural Trade and U.S. Export Opportunities. March 2004. <http://www.fas.usda.gov/htp/Hort_Circular/2004/3-05-04%20Web%20Art/03-04%20Hazelnut%20Web%20Article.pdf>.

Skinny Bitches' Body Image

Patricia Leavy, Andréa Gnong, and Lauren Sardi Ross introduce in their article “Femininity, Masculinity, and Body Image Issues among College-Age Women” the notion that female and male bodies are associated with the physical body and the mind, respectively, according to Cartesian Dualism’s mind-body dichotomy. In a feminist approach, the mind-body dichotomy separates the mind and the body as two separate entities in which men and masculinity are associated with the mind and women and femininity are associated with the body. Their argument claims that the mind-body dichotomy constructs a “hierarchy between the two categories….Mind, and those things associated with the mind are placed on a higher plane than its oppositional form: body,” and thus “conclude that the current standard of femininity disproportionately associates women’s worth with their bodies” (261). However, Leavy, Gnong and Sardi Ross acknowledge that men’s bodies are at times connected with the body, but in a way that associates their bodies with power and privilege, unlike the female body. The feminist critique of this theory asserts that the superior subject in the mind-body hierarchy is “inherently masculine,” and that the mind-body dichotomy “falsely segregates” the two planes that in turn allows for gender inequality and body image issues among women (262). Leavy, Gnong, and Sardi Ross further develop their thesis by reviewing the ways in which social institutions reinforce the mind-body dichotomy in regards to gender by pointing out the “social rewards for conforming to femininity ideals” that exist as long as “narrow oppositional conceptions of femininity…locate femaleness within the body” (263).

            The aspect of femininity-rewarding social institutions I am interested in at this time is the practice of dieting. Leavy, Gnong, and Sardi Ross emphasize the “significant socio-cultural pressures on women to be thin” through which “women attempt to achieve [the] ideal through self-imposed body-based controls,” like dieting (264). They point out several “primary agents of socialization,” like the media, which would include magazines such as Cosmo and Seventeen as well as diet books such as The South Beach Diet or The Atkins Diet, that they call “femininity how-to manuals” that have an instrumental role in the practice of dieting (265). To conclude results from their suppositions, Leavy, Gnong, and Sardi Ross conducted a series of interviews among college-aged women and some college-age men to gather the nuanced responses in which these socio-cultural pressures manifest themselves. They state that the conversations quickly “shift to a focus on the physical body, flesh, and appearance” when the women were questioned about femininity (271). This emphasizes the connection between women and femininity with the body, as well as anxieties about body image where “in order to succeed, women understand they need to be thin, but not too thin; athletic, but not masculine,” etc (272). An interesting point Leavy, Gnong, and Sardi Ross make is: “Women are taught to use their bodies to get what they want,” which I feel links women and bodies to dieting practices (272). A particular diet-book came to mind when I read this: Skinny Bitch. Leavy, Gnong, and Sardi Ross also assert that “American culture places an emphasis on a woman’s weight over their personal characteristics,” a notion I think is communicated through the pages of Skinny Bitch (274).

            Skinny Bitch touts a vegan-oriented diet/lifestyle, a self described “no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous!” The message clearly promotes food practices (dieting) as a way to control body image in order to receive validation, from the self or otherwise. Quoted in Caroline Heldman’s article “Out-of-BODY imaGe” in Ms magazine, Sarah Murnen makes an interesting statement: “girls are taught to view their bodies as ‘projects’ that need work before they can attract others, whereas boys are likely to learn to view their bodies as tools to use to master the environment” (54). I think Skinny Bitch turns women’s bodies into projects in a way with declarations like, “Are you sick and tired of being fat? Good. If you can’t take one more day of self-loathing, you’re ready to get skinny;” and “This knowledge [in the book] will empower you to become a skinny bitch” (Freedman and Barnouin 10). Statements like these suggest that a certain body image, the body image promoted in society and the media as the standard feminine ideal, is something to be learned through a set of steps, or in other words, a “project” to be completed so as to earn an “A” in society’s classroom. Leavy, Gnong, and Sardi Ross suggest there is a “cost-reward system” at work in obtaining society’s ideal feminine body, an idea exemplified in Skinny Bitch’s opening pages: to avoid “self-loathing” one must become skinny to at once satisfy the self and society at large (274). However, the authors of Skinny Bitch, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, do make a point to declare: “you need to get healthy if you want to get skinny,” and provide several chapters that explain the evils and dangers of simple carbohydrates, refined sugars, dairy products, and meat (11). But again I have reservations about the underlying messages in Skinny Bitch; while promoting the idea that their suggested diet/lifestyle changes will give women better health and confidence, Freedman and Barnouin also write “better sex, great abs, [and] a tight ass” are to be had by making the changes in eating habits they have proposed (117). They also exclaim, “You are worthless to your colleagues, friends, and family if you do not value yourself enough to take excellent care of you” (117). But all these rewards and motivations are concerned with the physical body. It seems as though being healthy and intelligent and confident are not enough, but one has to be healthy, intelligent, confident and skinny. Freedman and Barnouin make an interesting comment, “We are the commanders of our bodies” (126)—but are we (women) really commanding it when so many influences around us are telling us how to command it?

Works Cited

Freedman, Rory and Kim Barnouin. Skinny Bitch. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2005. Print.

Heldman, Caroline. “Out-of-BODY imaGe.” Ms. 18:2 (2008): 52-55. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 27 September 2011.

Leavy, Patricia, Andréa Gnong, and Lauren Sardi Ross. “Femininity, Masculinity, and Body Image Issues among College-Age Women: An In-Depth and Written Interview Study of the Mind-Body Dichotomy.” The Qualitative Report 14:2 (2009): 261-292. JSTOR. Web. 27 September 2011.