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Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

10-2015

Culminating Project Type

Thesis

Degree Name

English: Rhetoric and Writing: M.A.

Department

English

College

College of Liberal Arts

First Advisor

Dr. Tim Fountaine

Second Advisor

Dr. Beth Berila

Third Advisor

Dr. Judith Kilborn

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Abstract

I authored a food blog, Yum., in my early twenties. A food blogs is a sub-genre of lifestyle blogs, and many lifestyle blogs are written by women for a predominantly female audience. From the outside, I projected myself as a confident young woman ready to conquer the culinary world; on the inside, I felt constrained by a genre that demanded perfection and set unrealistic standards for women. Added to this pressure the fear I would not be taken seriously as a writer because I wrote about food and entertaining—what I considered to be feminine endeavors. I was conflicted about my role a writer, and I believe this internal conflict I felt when writing in a highly feminized space is worth exploring. Why did it seem as though femininity and feminism could not coexist in my food blog? A critical analysis of my past blog entries through a feminist lens helps me to reconcile my past as an unenlightened feminist. I believe increasing instances of food blogs that are overtly both feminist and feminine might help to redraw boundaries and establish a genre that is more up-to-date and welcoming of more women’s voices.

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