Vester Katharina
J Soc Hist. 2010;44(1):39-70. doi: 10.1353/jsh.2010.0032.
"Regime Change" argues against commonly held interpretations that see dieting as a practice established in the 1920s to control women at a time when they gained suffrage and greater economic independence. This article offers an alternative reading, arguing that diet advice literature arrived in the US in the 1860s and originally targeted a male, white, middle-class audience. While the hegemonic beauty ideal for the female body was at its heftiest, men started to build muscle and reduce weight. The ideal of the slender male body was associated with white superiority, social mobility and the national ambition for an American empire. When white middle-class women eventually started dieting in greater numbers in the 1890s, it was because they claimed the same mastery over their bodies as men—and demanded the same privileges as their male peers over immigrants, African Americans and working-class people, who were increasingly imagined as overweight. Revising the history of dieting to show its origins as a masculine practice appropriated by women to stake a claim to class and race privilege invites a rethinking of power and resistance in the disciplining of the female body.
《政权更迭》反对一种普遍的观点，即认为节食是在20世纪20年代确立的一种做法，目的是在女性获得选举权和更大经济独立时对她们进行控制。本文提出了另一种解读，认为节食建议文献于19世纪60年代传入美国，最初针对的是白人中产阶级男性受众。当女性身体的霸权美理想达到顶峰时，男性开始锻炼肌肉和减肥。苗条男性身体的理想与白人优越性、社会流动性以及美国建立帝国的国家抱负相关联。当白人中产阶级女性最终在19世纪90年代开始大量节食时，是因为她们声称对自己的身体拥有与男性相同的掌控力，并要求与男性同龄人在移民、非裔美国人和工人阶级（这些人越来越被想象为超重）面前享有相同的特权。修正节食的历史，以表明其起源是一种被女性采用的男性化做法，以此来主张阶级和种族特权，这引发了对女性身体规训中权力与抵抗的重新思考。
