‘In the first instance, performativity must be understood not as a singular or deliberate “act,” but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names.’ (Butler, p. The first concept that needs to be understood is ‘performativity’, a concept mostly developed in the late XX century by Judith Butler in her book Gender Trouble (1990), to later be developed in Bodies that Matter (1995), where she argues: Both approaches will be useful to define how Atwood writes about eating and food in correlation with gender, this in order to show how we as humans tend to genderized everything and how deconstructing and thinking about it can give a new view on our relationship with food. The aim and thesis of the following paper is to analyze The Edible Woman (1969) written by Canadian author, Margaret Atwood, and portray how eating (specifically not eating) is a gender performativity act within the plot and characters of such novel, both the main and side characters perform their gender through food, and this book in particular uses the idea of not eating as a form of resistance, this will be achieved through Judith Butler’s theory on gender performativity and also through research one on feminist food studies, mainly by Barbara Haber and Alice McLean. But in recent years with movements like body positivity, and theories like eco-feminism, the way we, as women, relate to food is starting to change and improve - this essay is again, an attempt to view food in a positive light, and how these limited tools we were provided through centuries have been useful, and still are, as a way to have a voice, and therefore as a manner of resistance.

Over the last half century feminism has rejected and antagonized the relationship woman has with eating, cooking, and food overall, since the second wave feminism women have started to reject any relationship with kitchen and cooking, because for so many years these have been part of what kept women quiet and chained to the private spaces, meaning the home.

The relationship between food and women has been one of constant change, from cooking, to eating disorders, to binging - food never seems to get a break when it comes to how humans, and particularly women, interact with everything involving it. Rojo, como si estuviera a punto de echarse a sangrar.’ - Rosario Castellanos, Lección de Cocina ‘Abro el compartimiento del refrigerador que anuncia “carnes” y extraigo un paquete irreconocible bajo su capa de hielo (…) El aspecto, rígido por el frío es el color que se manifiesta ahora que he desbaratado el paquete.

The edible woman duncan