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Indeed, the connection between women and food has been a conflicted one (perhaps one of attraction and rejection) that results largely from the roles traditionally assigned to each gender in patriarchal societies. While patriarchy culturally relegated women to the domestic sphere so that they could manage the kitchen, take care of the children, and so forth—chores characterized by their invisibility and devaluation—men took charge of activities that were considered of value (politics, construction, trade, etc.) and that, at the exclusion of women, dominated the public sphere. The division of labor thus originated in the physicality of the sexes; nevertheless, it transcended anatomy. For instance, Claire Colebrook observes the following with regard to the division of labor in Ancient Greece:
Ancient myths and legends woven into the fabric of patriarchal cultures serve to reinforce women’s subjugation through food and, to this day, continue to dictate the division of labor. The aforementioned narrative of paradise in Genesis offers one of the earliest textual representations of male authority as exercised through the simple act of eating. According to the account, because Eve eats from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, sin and death enter the world; she is also to blame