ABSTRACT
In common with other factors affecting our bodies, feeding is very much socially conditioned. Our bodies are what we feed them. But what we feed them is conditioned by economic, historical, biographical, ideological, and discursive factors. These, in turn, vary systematically with culture, class, and sex. This is particularly evident in conditions of food scarcity and abundance. I will accordingly focus on these conditions in this chapter, beginning with ways in which scarcity has varied, and continues to vary, with class and sex in Europe and Asia. I will then consider how class and sex, as well as ideological and discursive factors, including fantasy, mediate what women and men feed their bodies in conditions of abundance. Finally, I will consider the implications of all this for feminism.
