Diet Between Pleasure(s) and Necessity(ies) in France and in the United-States
Based on a corpus of 1200 pages of home economics advice columns from American and French women’s magazines (Modes et Travaux and Good Housekeeping) between 1934 and 2010, this paper analyzes the respective positions of pleasure and necessity, and their links over time. The paper begins with a lexicometric analysis of words relevant for two dimensions : on the one hand the idea of pleasure, on the other hand that of necessity. The paper highlights the evolutions regarding the relative positions of both ideas, and the domains in which they are expressed (budget constraints and basic needs followed by dietetic and individualistic constraints). In reference to Norbert Elias, the way to express the tension between necessity and pleasure shows a civilizing process, in which explicit constraint is transformed into internalized self-restraint. Pleasure, a recent value, is never expressed without its links with necessity— : hedonism, no doubt, but always under constraint.