Fat shaming, feminism and Facebook: What ‘women who eat on tubes’ reveal about social media and the boundaries of women’s bodies

Abstract

Women’s bodies and appetites attract a disproportionate level of media coverage, and reveal heightened cultural concern around ‘appropriate’ behaviour. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the ‘Women Who Eat on Tubes’ Facebook group, which raises important questions about the nature of ‘the public’ and monitoring of female desires, as well as the historically gendered surveillance of women’s relationship with food and eating. This chapter explores the emergence of ‘Women Who Eat on Tubes’ as a social phenomenon, and what its existence, and challenges to that existence, reveals about sexism, misogyny and gender in early-21st century digital culture.