Eating for Victory : Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity

 
      Victory gardens, ration books.
        While men fought overseas, women fought the war at home, by going to work
        and, more subtly, by feeding their families. Mandatory food rationing
        during World War II challenged, for the first time, the image of the United
        States as a land of plenty and collapsed the boundaries between women's
        public and private lives by declaring home production and consumption
        to be political activities.
      In this fascinating cultural
        history, Amy Bentley examines the food-related propaganda surrounding
        rationing. She also explores the dual message purveyed by government and
        the media that while mandatory rationing was necessary (enabling enough
        food to be sent to the U.S. military and Allies overseas), women, black
        and white, were also "required" to provide their families with nutritious
        food.
      Eating for Victory
        explores the role of the Wartime Homemaker (media counterpart to the more
        familiar Rosie the Riveter) as a pivotal component not only of World War
        II but of the development of the United States into a superpower.
 

 
Amy Bentley is an assistant professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University.