"There is always food in the freezer": Negotiations of respectability, health and food among women in disadvantaged conditions

Drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews with 15 women living in low-income households in Denmark, this article explores how disadvantaged women discursively negotiate their own respectability in conditions that do not allow them to keep up with social norms concerning health, proper eating, and being a good citizen. Our findings show that the women refer to their own socially marginalized position in society and difficulties in living up to dietary health discourses and at the same time insist on their agency, competence, and value. The analysis suggests that their identification with gendered ideals of domestic work has offered some of the interviewed women a positively subject position that can be used to negotiate respectability and social recognition, allowing them to counter their discursive delimitation. Food work offers a sphere in which they can distinguish themselves positively and from this, many of them "talk back" and claim a positive, recognized subject position connoting agency, value and respectability.