“Food Porn” as Postfeminist Play

Abstract

The styling and online circulation of food photography has become a phenomenon endemic to social media. In this article, I explore this digital “food porn” within the feminized space of food blogs and contextualize it within a postfeminist culture rife with contradictions about women’s bodies, consumption, and sexuality. Drawing on postfeminist and feminist corporeal theory, I historicize the longstanding associations between food and the female body, eating and sex. I then analyze digital “food porn” as a form of women’s media production that draws on conventional representations of the female body in pornography, fashion, and popular culture. It is these qualities that distinguish digital “food porn” from “food porn” on other media platforms, and allow it to offer useful insights into the postfeminist subject’s construction of digital femininity. I maintain that digital “food porn” can be read as a playful, pleasurable, and entrepreneurial response to postfeminist contradictions.