REGIME CHANGE: GENDER, CLASS, AND THE INVENTION OF DIETING IN POST-BELLUM AMERICA.

The article discusses the history of dieting in the U.S. by focusing on how British attitudes towards weight and social class were embraced by American men during the post-bellum period of the nineteenth century and were eventually adopted by women in an effort to garner social power and status in the 1890s. Some other subjects considered include social mobility, nationalistic attitudes regarding American empire, social attitudes towards overweight people of the lower classes, and the historiography of dieting.