Female Body as a Site of Power and Resistance: The Sexual Politics of Eating in Fay Weldon’s The Fat Woman’s Joke and Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman.

Abstract

Patriarchy   insists   that the hallmark of an ideal woman is slenderness and a beautiful physique. Women often try to conform to the patriarchal standards, by deliberate undereating and also by undergoing various cosmetic surgeries. Women resort to various eating habits in order to be a part of the media and film industry. Both Fay Weldon and Margaret Atwood endeavour to examine the ‘sexual politics’ associated with gender images and how women imprison their bodies into an ideal image trap. The heroines of Weldon and Atwood, in the novels,The Fat Woman’s Joke  andThe  Edible Woman, resist the commodification of the female body, in their own ways- one by excessive eating and the other by restricted intake of food. For them, the body becomes a means by which they can assert their individuality and not a manipulated identity, as defined by the phallocratic culture.