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eir bodies. Since food manners were closely related to the status of families, deviant behavior could embarrass the family in the public. Women thus were able to manipulate their husbands and families in an environment were their voices were strongly restricted. Self-starvation usually escalated at puberty, the moment when families usually began negotiations for husbands for their daughters. Food refusal also provided for women an excuse for neglecting food preparation and family responsibilities. Additionally, women through refusing food, or giving it away to the poor, could also reject their family’s values and express their dislike of wealth. Yet, the author stresses, functions should not be equated with meaning. Food did not mean to medieval women the control it provided. Its meaning was rather connected to associations of women with the physical, and man with the spiritual and rational. Starving and suffering for women was the identification with Christ who suffered for the salvation of humanity and saved the world through physical, human agony.

Similarly focusing on the gender implications of food consumption, Brumberg in his paper outlines how appetite has to be read as voice. The context is now 19th century Victorian society. He shows how the cultural predispositions of that era led to the emergence of anorexia nervosa, the refusal of food without apparent physical reasons, even before the fashion revolutions of the 1920’s and 1960’ and Twiggy. Because appetite in this era was associated with sexuality, women were concerned to keep it under control. Women were particularly afraid of foods that could stimulate sensual reactions rather than morality, such as spicy food, coffee and alcohol, and especially meat. Women who openly displayed their appetite were regarded as acting out of place and assuming a male prerogative. Because food carried such complex meanings, manners at table marked social distinctions, and were the arena for potential embarrassment. The ideal of Victorian femininity was the woman who responded not to the low demands of the body, but only to the higher senses that exclusively served moral and aesthetic purposes. The embodiment of this spiritual orientation was the thin body. The denial of food meant advancing in the moral hierarchy, and the body became the barometer of a woman’s moral state. To look and be 'saintlike' was the ideal of that era, with the thin body symbolizing the purity of the soul, while the fat body carried the stigma of moral and physical decadence. Correspondingly, the fragile, thin woman became the symbol of the higher 'leisure' class, a symbol of status because she was unfit for production and reproduction. Body image rather than body function became the paramount concern and appetite was less a biological drive than a social instrument. Preoccupied with female perfection and moral superiority through the denial of food, anorexia nervosa was born in this environment of bourgeois society. The definition of women’s bodies as aesthetical objects and the focus on thinness that is perceived as so oppressive by many is thus rooted in the cultural disassociation of female bodies from reproduction.

The paper of Devault is different in the sense that it concentrates on the implications of gender for the sharing of food preparation and that of other activities and routines within households. She explores how the 'pleasure' that many women derive from feedin