#269: Gender Dynamics in Food Media and Marketing with Emily Contois, and the Links Between White Supremacy, Diet Culture, and Nutrition with Joy Cox

Food Psych Podcast with Christy Harrison

Media studies scholar and author Emily Contois returns to the podcast to discuss gender dynamics in food media and marketing; her new book, Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture; the avatar of The Dude; the parallels between Dad Bod and body positivity; and so much more. Plus, ”Ask Food Psych” guest co-host Joy Cox answers a listener question about the links between white supremacy, diet culture, and nutrition.

Emily Contois is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at The University of Tulsa. She researches, teaches, and writes on food, identity, and health in U.S. popular culture and media. In addition to numerous academic articles, she is the author of Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture (UNC Press 2020) and co-editor of a volume on food and Instagram. She is the Book Reviews Editor for Food, Culture & Society and serves on the boards of the Association for the Study of Food and Society, H-Nutrition (for the history of nutrition science), and the Bloomsbury Food Library. She has appeared on CBS This Morning, BBC Ideas, and Ugly Delicious on Netflix. Dedicated to public scholarship, she writes for Nursing Clio, blogs at EmilyContois.com, and is active on social media at @emilycontois.

Joy Arlene Renee Cox is an ordinary person who has been given an ordinary opportunity to share stories about people much more fabulous than herself. She is a Philadelphia native, born on the blessed thirty-first day of December. Joy is a claircognizant Capricorn that thrives through connection and love, rooting for the underdogs in life to take their rightful place as overcomers. She is also a doctor, receiving her PhD from Rutgers University–New Brunswick in 2018. Her field of work is centered on fatness, identity, and social change.

Reflective of the name she bears, Joy has the cheeks to out smile her detractors. Reflective of her work in print, she has the research to back up her claims. While the spotlight has never been a position she’d prefer to stand in, Joy does believe in speaking up and advocating for what’s right. She is the author of Fat Girls in Black Bodies: Creating Communities of Our Own, published through North Atlantic Books, and the host of the pro-fat, pro-Black podcast Fresh Out the Cocoon.

Joy has been featured in articles by the Huffington Post and SELF magazine. Joy has also been on several podcasts, such as Positive Nutrition with Paige Smathers and Food Psych with Christy Harrison. Dr. Cox is simply a conduit through which love, wisdom, and justice flow. Her pride is in her people and her values. Her strength is in her disposition and her intuition. Find her online at DrJoyCox.com.

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For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, go to christyharrison.com/foodpsych.

Ask your own question about intuitive eating, Health at Every Size, or eating disorder recovery at christyharrison.com/questions.