ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the Florentine body represents the Florentine self. Victorians reinforced Women's subordination by defining the female body as weak, sickly, and without legitimate desires. On Fiji, islanders define the body socially, as a legitimate object of social concern and social cultivation. Eating out of desire, that’s what makes a person fat, eating out of desire. Florentines focused on how eating gave the body not only pleasure, but also consolation. They recognized that eating made a person feel good and for some it was a major source of emotional comfort. Florentines defined the body not as a product of personal moral concern but as a product and reflection of the family, given by nature through the family. While fashion pushed them constantly toward thinness and objectification, it also provided a means to use the body as an active vehicle of self-expression. Eldas daughter Gigliola married an Italian-American and moved permanently to the United States.
