“The Food Babe Blogger Is Full of Sh*t”: Gender, Class and Branding the “Expert” Self

Abstract

This article examines the ongoing effort to “take down” Vani Hari’s activism-cum-lifestyle brand, the Food Babe, with particular attention to the viral success of Yvette “SciBabe” d’Entremont’s 2015 Gawker post, “The Food Babe Blogger Is Full of Sh*t.” Popular discourse pits the two babes against each other. However, by examining both babes’ multiplatform branded personas as technologies of self-governance under postfeminist, neoliberal brand culture, I show that the Food Babe/SciBabe case is more than a struggle over “science versus pseudoscience.” This case study illuminates a gendered double bind that is intensifying in the so-called “post-truth” era as obligations to maximize oneself and one’s family come into conflict with longstanding and deeply classed anxieties about feminized media culture.