Letter from the Editors
Our BODY issue
What are you feeling, right now?
We asked this question back in June of last year, in the call for pitches for our BODY issue. The responses we received revealed just how layered, intimate, and politically charged the answer can be when we pause long enough to listen.
We received over 250 pitches, and as always, narrowing them down into a final lineup was agonizing. An analysis of a recipe for “strawberry breasts” as a Futurist response to misogyny in the time of Mussolini; subject lines like “the princess and the flesh-eating bacteria”; critical explorations of neurodivergence and experiences of food textures — we were honoured to have so many incredibly talented writers throw their hats into the ring, and wish we could’ve comissioned far more than our tiny team could take on.
That said, BODY was still one of our most ambitious issues to date: 13 pieces published over the course of the last 11 months, with support from contributing editors Apoorva Sripathi and Austin Romeo. Most of these pieces were original to this issue of FFJ; some were syndicated from other Substacks, non-fiction novels, and past FFJ issues. (Paid subscribers had access to audio readings of many of these pieces.)
BODY: Our full lineup
Bottomless: A journey through grief, gas, and gut instincts, by Shena Cavallo
In this piece, Shena traces how their relationship to their body — particularly their gut — became the most honest guide to their emotions and needs. The essay reveals how physical sensation can hold truths the mind struggles to name.
Questioning Lumps: Encountering obstacles in a smoothening world, by Clare Michaud (originally published in Beurrage)
This piece is an examination of lumps — in bodies, baking, and modern life. Like all of Clare’s thoughtful and deeply intimate writing, it challenges us to see the everyday with more clarity.
Esophageal Yearning: this sounds violent / but it’s fun, by Taylor Hunsberger
This poem, about learning to cook while experiencing body dysmorphia, is body horror with a side of playful kitchen experimentation.
Where Does All the Food Go?: On body size and Nigerian beauty standards, by Rejoice Isaacc
Rejoice chronicles the scrutiny, pressure, shame of being a skinny woman in Nigeria — where curvy woman are seen as the pinnacle of desirablity — revealing just how constructed our cultural ideals of the body truly are.
Pregnancy in the Time of Healthism Abundance: On pregnancy fitness influencers, algorithms, and breast-is-best pressure, by Dr. Sarah Duignan (originally published in AnthroDish)
This essay traces the social norms, moral pressures, and capitalistic excess exerted onto pregnant bodies. Pregnancy, Duignan shows, becomes a site where cultural anxieties about control, wellness, and femininity collide.
Bite Me: Cosmetic cannibalism and selling identity through scent, by Lily Wakeley
This piece is about our desires to render ourselves edible through cosmetics — with preferences for scents and aesthetics that we may feel are biologically ingrained but have roots in colonial, racial, gender, and class-based control.
Milking Bodies to Make a Nation: Women and cows as founding mothers, by Apoorva Sripathi (originally published in FFJ Issue #01 - MILK)
This piece weaves together the history of milk production, caste oppression, and patriarchy in India to explore the exploitation of women and bovine bodies in the making of a homogenous Hindu state. Re-examining Apoorva’s words in the context of BODY offers new perspectives on the micro and macro-politics of bodily control.
Be the Boar: Sex, sows, and courtship on a Danish pig farm, by Katy Overstreet (originally published in FFJ Issue #03 - SEX)
This piece looks at how industrial meat production seeks to turn the bodies of sows into reproductive bio-machines — yet the process of artificial insemination unsettles the boundaries of interspecies agency and desire.
Soy Boy: How soy milk went from proto superfood to alt-right rallying cry, by Julia Norza (originally published in FFJ Issue #01 - MILK)
Julia unpacks how the insult “soy boy” mutated from nutritional misinformation into a full-blown culture war weapon — one that’s still wreaking havoc on anyone who dares to live outside rigid, toxic ideals of manhood.
To Eat is to Perform: Reclaiming eating practices, one handful at a time, by Lara Mohammed (guest edited by Apoorva Sripathi)
Lara explores the cultural tension surrounding table manners within the British Iraqi diaspora, tracing her discomfort with traditional eating practices back to colonial narratives about “proper” behaviour.
Sugar on My Tongue: How flavoured orgasms taught me I don’t need permission to feel good, by Giulia Alvarez-Katz (guest edited by Austin Romeo)
When Giulia realized her orgasms triggered flavours, she began to reconsider her relationship with gluttony, desire, and shame. Her essay explores the radical potential of pleasure as power.
Man is a Dining Animal: A (very) short history of the fork, by Zoë Johnson
Inspired by Lara Mohammed’s reflections on the presumed “civility” of eating with a fork, this piece traces the fork’s surprising journey from Middle Eastern courts to British dining tables — and how it always carried meanings far beyond the act of eating.
My Trans Body Longs for Love and Salt: Does difference in taste mean difference in love? (Part I: Pickle Cravings, Part II: Sharing Meals, and Part III: Comfort Food), by Lira Green
In this three-part memoir, Lira traces her experiences of transition, first love, and heartbreak as a young trans woman in an American college town, and the role played by food along the way. In her story, salt — in the form of crispy dill pickles — emerges as a symbol of gender, desire, and the aching tension between difference and belonging in a hostile world.
‘I am but a blank exotic canvas’: Navigating gender and racialization in the world of hospitality, by Anna Sulan Masing
Using excerpts from her new book, Chinese and Any Other Asian: Exploring East and South East Asian Identity in Britain, in this piece Anna offers her reflections on the sexualization of racialized bodies, including in the world of hospitality, and how this gaze can distort one’s sense of self.
There are so many interlaced threads between food, body, and gender to pick up on in these pieces. Intimate personal essays like Shena’s and Lira’s explore internal perceptions of body, while narrative essays by Lara, Lily, Julia and Guilia explore external perceptions and pressures on bodies. Apoorva’s piece expands to the role of women and bovine bodies in building the body politic of the nation state; Katy’s piece looks at the sexual politics of inseminating non-human animal bodies for eventual human consumption.
As well as being the longest-lasting of any FFJ issue so far, BODY also generated a ton of invigorating reader engagement. Lara’s piece on table manners is now one of our most-liked essays of all time, and we were buoyed through the direness of the current political moment by some comments that readers left on other pieces. It is without a shred of irony that we can say “Disturbing. Thank you for your work.” single-commentedly makes the last three years of hard work on FFJ worth it.
Reader feedback on Katy Overstreet’s piece Be the Boar
Reader feedback on Lira Green’s piece My Trans Body Longs for Love and Salt (Editor’s note: This is a really special piece, and one of the most unique we’ve featured in FFJ. Please do check it out.)
BODY reminds us that we are, at our core, feeling beings — “minded bodies” — moving through the world in flesh that feels, hungers, labours, and resists. Our bodies shape and are shaped by how we’re seen, how we live, and how we eat. The pieces in this issue of Feminist Food Journal explore these relationships with honesty and intimacy, taking us into moments of bodily rupture and repair, into kitchens and bedrooms, doctors' offices and college campuses. As editors, we are moved by the vulnerability and rigour our contributors brought to this issue, and we’re nostalgic to see it conclude. If you haven’t had the chance to read everything BODY has to offer, we encourage you to dive back in. And as you do, we invite you to tune into your own body: your breath, your hunger, your fullness, your fatigue, your pleasure, your pain. What are you feeling, right now?
Gratefully, as always,
Zoë and Isabela
If you enjoyed BODY, we encourage you to become a paid supporter of FFJ: for just US$30 a year, you can help us keep our work going. There are nearly 4,000 of you here, but just over 100 people pay, and every paid subscriber really helps! Premium subscriptions include access to audio readings of pieces by authors themselves, BTS and paywalled content, and soon, our Feminist Food Friends meet-ups, which will be launching in the fall.
We’re taking a short break before launching our CELEBRATE issue. If you find yourself missing FFJ, in addition to BODY, we have a massive back catalogue:
MILK | WAR | SEX | EARTH | CITY | SEA
MEAT | BODY
and a ton of podcasts that make for great summer listening. See you soon!