Emily J. H. Contois

How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture

Diners, Dudes, and Diets

Zenia Kish

Image by image and hashtag by hashtag, Instagram has redefined the ways we relate to food. Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish edit contributions that explore the massively popular social media platform as a space for self-identification, influence, transformation, and resistance. Artists and journalists join a wide range of scholars to look at food’s connection to Instagram from vantage points as diverse as Hong Kong’s camera-centric foodie culture, the platform’s long history with feminist eateries, and the photography of Australia’s livestock producers. What emerges is a portrait of an arena where people do more than build identities and influence. Users negotiate cultural, social, and economic practices in a place that, for all its democratic potential, reinforces entrenched dynamics of power. Interdisciplinary in approach and transnational in scope, Food Instagram offers general readers and experts alike new perspectives on an important social media space and its impact on a fundamental area of our lives. Contributors: Laurence Allard, Joceline Andersen, Emily Buddle, Robin Caldwell, Emily J. H. Contois, Sarah E. Cramer, Gaby David, Deborah A. Harris, KC Hysmith, Alex Ketchum, Katherine Kirkwood, Zenia Kish, Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager, Jonathan Leer, Yue-Chiu Bonni Leung, Yi-Chieh Jessica Lin, Michael Z. Newman, Tsugumi Okabe, Rachel Phillips, Sarah Garcia Santamaria, Tara J. Schuwerk, Sarah E. Tracy, Emily Truman, Dawn Woolley, and Zara Worth

Identity, Influence, and Negotiation

Food Instagram

The phrase "dude food" likely brings to mind a range of images: burgers stacked impossibly high with an assortment of toppings that were themselves once considered a meal; crazed sports fans demolishing plates of radioactively hot wings; barbecued or bacon-wrapped . . . anything. But there is much more to the phenomenon of dude food than what's on the plate. Emily J. H. Contois's provocative book begins with the dude himself—a man who retains a degree of masculine privilege but doesn't meet traditional standards of economic and social success or manly self-control. In the Great Recession's aftermath, dude masculinity collided with food producers and marketers desperate to find new customers. The result was a wave of new diet sodas and yogurts marketed with dude-friendly stereotypes, a transformation of food media, and weight loss programs just for guys. 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.

Emily J. H. Contois

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