When I decided to write something about the confluence of food, women and art, I did expect some complexities to arise but to what extent they might start haunting me if you’d ask, I didn’t imagine. Now after some research I’m left with more questions than well quoted answers and that is how this article must end, too.

To begin with, I’d like to mention what the painter Chloe Wise in an interview with Vogue said, “I think that the comparisons between the female body and food items have a lot of levels. On the level of art history, the female nude is a very, very common theme where you’d see a female reclining, posing elegantly, sometimes without knowledge of the viewer or the male gaze.”

Paintings of women are often linked with the inherent and silent treatment of women as edible objects. This notion has been adopted by many artists since the 18th century, showcasing women as aesthetically appealing objects to be displayed and consumed by male gaze. On Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin’s paintings, Marcel Proust writes, “You have seen objects and fruits that look as alive as people, and people’s faces, their skin, its fine down or unusual color, that have the look of fruit,” and, “From Chardin we have learned that a pear is as alive as a woman, a plain earthenware vessel as beautiful as a precious stone.” But when the boundaries between food and the woman's body are blurred, how does the body retain its sense of self? Is it even possible to embrace objectification or does one simply succumb to the process? Because be it food or bodies, they wilt or die.

In an article, Rituparna Patgiri explains how female bodies consume food differently, they tend to perform in an aesthetic manner even in the most basic human action. “Women play a significant role in cooking and cleaning. But when it comes to eating, she is not expected to prioritize herself. Ideas of womanhood and femininity are linked to the non-desire or non-greed for food. Even when they are eating, women are not supposed to ‘gorge’ on food. They are expected to be genteel and be restrained while eating,” she adds.

When it comes to consumption, women are self conscious and socially conditioned in a way that makes them unknowingly adhere to gender norms. I remember when the first time I proceeded to eat a burger, I was cautioned by a female friend to eat it with care. I didn’t listen to her but every time I’ve ever had a burger, I do think of her words and I feel like she planted a man inside my head who’s constantly watching me. The fact that women aren’t supposed to eat in a messy manner or cover their mouths while eating, chew in a specific way or be peculiar about the portions that they feed themselves, and even the conscious effort to not follow these standards, everything subscribes to male fantasy, enrages me to a great extent. This also reminds me of Margaret Atwood’s famous quote from her work “The Robber Bride”, which goes like “Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out or too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”

So the question arises, “When do we stop continually watching ourselves? When do we manage to just exist, act without the voice in our heads telling us to turn ourselves into a sight?”

We all know the answer, don’t we? While reading on this subtopic, I came across so many pieces about how women may be more sensitive than men to the harmful effects of smoking, because, well, women are child bearers. But why do we keep forgetting that women are also just “women” in the first place?! The stigmatisation of smoking intensifies inequity for women who smoke. Smoking prevention or cessation strategies never take into consideration humans in general, overlooking that when a man smokes, the byproduct becomes a negative externality for everyone including the pregnant woman we are so mindful about.

Poulomi Pallav Bose’s artworks take into account the importance of dismantling stereotypes about women and tobacco. Many of her paintings like “Ruth” (2021), “Psychedelia” (2021), “Bad Bride” (2021), “Luna” (2023), portray women as smoking and taking control of their agencies.

When asked about the intent behind this, Bose replied, “Smoking is seen as something that often defines a woman’s character in culture. My protagonists sometimes smoke because it subverts what traditional femininity is expected to look like. It’s a symbol of choice, a simple prop that does not define anything else. It questions the why of the association of an object like a cigarette with a character trope.” With growing emphasis on feminist studies of culture and social tropes, more questions are likely to emerge and we must keep looking for ways to answer them even when it seems quite difficult to find. Because if we don’t, who else will?