By Margaret Bostrom, PhD candidate, Department of English
My dissertation, “‘Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?’: Feminisms, Fitness, and the Politics of Wellness and Welfare in the 1980s” takes its title from the opening line of The Salt Eaters, the first novel by black feminist writer and cultural worker Toni Cade Bambara. The Salt Eaters is set in the late 1970s and takes place primarily in the fictional community of Claybourne, Georgia. Its story involves a large cast of characters, many of whom are struggling to understand their place in a changing political landscape. As Bambara’s characters grapple with the traumas and victories of the civil rights and black power movements, they also work to nurture and sustain their personal and communal well-being in the face of persistent racist, sexist, and economic violence.
In The Salt Eaters, Bambara poses important questions about trauma and healing. My research examines Bambara’s novel alongside the writings of other black feminist and women of color thinkers who emphasize the importance of analyzing individual and collective well-being differentially, and in relation to specific political and economic conditions. My project then uses insights from Bambara’s novel and her other writings to analyze the cultural work performed by two major 1980s pop culture figures, Oprah Winfrey and Jane Fonda. Winfrey and Fonda are both associated with popular self-care trends from this decade: in Fonda’s case, self-care as fitness, and in Oprah’s, self-care as talk show confessionals and personal empowerment. Like Bambara’s novel, The Jane Fonda Workout and The Oprah Winfrey Show offer their own answers to the question of what it means to “be well.” My research asks how Fonda’s workouts and Winfrey’s talk shows relate to the privatization of social services and the dismantling of public healthcare and housing initiatives throughout the 1980s, as well as other political and economic shifts during this period.
A highlight of my research—other than the fun of watching old episodes of The Oprah Winfrey Show and close reading The Jane Fonda Workout—has been hearing other people’s thoughts about Fonda and Winfrey and listening to their memories of watching Oprah or wearing leotards and leg-warmers to feel the burn with Jane. I love how talking about Fonda or Winfrey lets anyone become an amateur ethnographer; almost everyone has something to say about one, if not both, of these famous women, and I’ve gotten to hear many people’s intimate memories of these figures, as well as thoughts about what they are up to in the present.
A challenge, actually, has been keeping up with the present, because both Winfrey and Fonda continue to make headlines and deliver speeches, and they both remain dynamic, powerful, and often polarizing public figures. They have all the social medias (well, at least Oprah does), and it is easy to let the Twitterverse distract from the questions that originally framed my research. Returning to The Salt Eaters as a primary text helps with this. Bambara’s writings inform my analysis of Winfrey and Fonda by reminding me to ask questions about labor, materiality, and political economy. Bambara’s novel also reminds me to situate apparently emergent trends—like the openly racist policies and rhetoric of the current administration—within longer histories of struggle, and to trouble my own learned understandings of race, sexuality, and difference.
— Margaret Bostrom is a doctoral candidate in the English department and a graduate instructor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for the 2018-2019 academic year. Her work has been supported with research grants from CSWS and the Eugene chapter of the Fortnightly Club.