Rituals of erasure: Gendering strategies among American women

Themes of collaboration, resistance, creativity and ambiguity emerge in women\u27s everyday conversations and ritualized behaviors around food. Questions of female gaze, audience, and agency are also addressed through a range of practices as women negotiate their appearance and the discourse of femininity. This dissertation addresses contemporary anthropological and feminist perspectives on the body with ethnographic data; it expands the current discourse of bodylore to include the diet and beauty practices of working women in America. Rituals of erasure, activities which emphasize the removal of indications of age and experience from women\u27s bodies, and the body as calendar, a model for understanding patterns of transgression and redress in women\u27s bodily management practices, are two theoretical contributions this dissertation makes to bodylore as well as women\u27 s studies. The collaboration of the women in this study over strategies to maintain their bodies involves exchanges of specific information about dieting and beauty enhancement and leads to discussions of more pressing and intimate life concerns. The nexus of appearance work and social relations is also investigated in this ethnography, specifically the ways women build and maintain a sense of social connection through exchanges related to their praxis. Resistances and counter-discursive strategies emerge in women\u27s responses to others\u27 comments and critiques of their competence in the discourse of femininity. Paradoxes arise as women engage in activities which may ultimately contribute to their experiences of oppression and are addressed openly and candidly throughout this ethnography by the women themselves. The voices which constitute the data of this dissertation belong to average working women; they bring agency, ambiguity and resistance into their discursive praxis