EVENT | Intersections of Race, Gender and Class in Vegan Vlogging 19.03.19

As the sixth talk in the Early Career Research Talks series, Ella Fegitz will give a presentation entitled ‘Intersections of Race, Gender and Class in Vegan Vlogging’.

In this talk, I explore the intersection of gender, class and race in the construction of the vegan self in Western culture, and the inequalities that it engenders. An analysis of contemporary vegan vlogging shows how the subject that emerges is white, middle-class and gendered, both explicitly and implicitly ways. Explicitly, because the most visible vegan subject in vegan vlogging is almost always a white, cis-woman. Implicitly, because it reproduces gender discourses of food practices conventionally associated with white middle-class femininity, in terms of moral elevation through physical deprivation and constraint, which are very different from discourses about black femininity and their relationship with food. Ultimately, this talk will explore how veganism is not neutral, but is gendered, raced and classed.