Food Psych #269: Gender Dynamics in Food Media and Marketing with Emily Contois, and the Links Between White Supremacy, Diet Culture, and Nutrition with Joy Cox
Introduction & Guest Bio:
Media studies scholar and author Emily Contois returns to the podcast to discuss gender dynamics in food media and marketing; her new book, Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture; the avatar of The Dude; the parallels between Dad Bod and body positivity; and so much more. Plus, “Ask Food Psych” guest co-host Joy Cox answers a listener question about the links between white supremacy, diet culture, and nutrition.
Emily Contois is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at The University of Tulsa. She researches, teaches, and writes on food, identity, and health in U.S. popular culture and media. In addition to numerous academic articles, she is the author of Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture (UNC Press 2020) and co-editor of a volume on food and Instagram. She is the Book Reviews Editor for Food, Culture & Society and serves on the boards of the Association for the Study of Food and Society, H-Nutrition (for the history of nutrition science), and the Bloomsbury Food Library. She has appeared on CBS This Morning, BBC Ideas, and Ugly Delicious on Netflix. Dedicated to public scholarship, she writes for Nursing Clio, blogs at EmilyContois.com, and is active on social media at @emilycontois.
Joy Arlene Renee Cox is an ordinary person who has been given an extraordinary opportunity to share stories about people much more fabulous than herself. She is a Philadelphia native, born on the blessed thirty-first day of December. Joy is a claircognizant Capricorn that thrives through connection and love, rooting for the underdogs in life to take their rightful place as overcomers. She is also a doctor, receiving her PhD from Rutgers University–New Brunswick in 2018. Her field of work is centered on fatness, identity, and social change.
Reflective of the name she bears, Joy has the cheeks to out smile her detractors. Reflective of her work in print, she has the research to back up her claims. While the spotlight has never been a position she’d prefer to stand in, Joy does believe in speaking up and advocating for what’s right. She is the author of Fat Girls in Black Bodies: Creating Communities of Our Own, published through North Atlantic Books, and the host of the pro-fat, pro-Black podcast Fresh Out the Cocoon.
Joy has been featured in articles by the Huffington Post and SELF magazine. Joy has also been on several podcasts, such as Positive Nutrition with Paige Smathers and Food Psych with Christy Harrison. Dr. Cox is simply a conduit through which love, wisdom, and justice flow. Her pride is in her people and her values. Her strength is in her disposition and her intuition. Find her online at DrJoyCox.com.
We Discuss:
What Emily has been up to since her first appearance on Food Psych®
Her book, Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture (Bookshop) (Amazon)
Food in media, and as a form of media
Gender dynamics in food media and the food industry
The “dude-ification” of food
The avatar of “the dude,” and how it reinforces systems of power and oppression
How the diet industry uses “dude food” language to market dieting to men
“Gender contamination,” and the marketing of “feminine” products to men
How the 2016 election changed American culture
Dad Bod, and how it straddles the fence between pushing against and upholding patriarchal ideals
The parallels between Dad Bod and body positivity
Why the celebration of Dad Bod is fundamentally heteronormative
How food media uses misogynistic rhetoric to sell men on cooking
The labor involved with managing food at home, and how it is a barrier to equality
The kitchen and its symbolism
The dynamics of eating in public
Emily and Christy’s experiences with social media
Guy Fieri, and what he embodies in food media
Resources Mentioned
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Submit your questions for a chance to have them answered on the podcast
My online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
My book, Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating
Help spread the anti-diet message by subscribing to the podcast
Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture by Emily J. H. Contois (Bookshop) (Amazon)
“2020’s Covid Thanksgiving is the perfect time to relax the gender binary” (Emily’s article for NBC)
The Social Dilemma (Netflix Documentary)
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier (Bookshop) (Amazon)
"Covid-19 Does Not Discriminate by Body Weight" (Christy’s op-ed for Wired)
Ask Food Psych with Co-Host Joy Cox
Listener Question:
“What is the connection between white supremacy, diet culture and nutrition?”—Various listeners
We Discuss:
How traditional foods in African and Indigenous cultures often differ from European/Western foods
How colonization affects what foods are accessible, celebrated, or demonized
Food as a tool for assimilation
The role of food in different cultures
How white supremacy shows up in our beliefs about nutrition
Gentle nutrition, and how Christy introduces it to her clients
How diet culture often promotes a singular ideal
Diet culture in non-Eurocentric cultures
Making room for choice
Resources Mentioned:
Fat Girls in Black Bodies: Creating Communities of Our Own by Joy Cox (Bookshop) (Penguin Random House)
Joy’s podcast, Fresh Out the Cocoon