This intellectual/bodily juxtaposition is evident through how Gilbert chooses to portray the characters in her book. Gilbert used her privileges (as being a citizen of the masculinized Global North) to juxtapose her newly accumulated spiritual mind against the bodies of people of the Global South. The Global North is often framed in masculine terms while, in contrast, the Global South is feminized because the global capitalist system is inherently tied to gendered notions of consumerism, colonialism, and environmental degradation. I draw upon the theoretical framework provided by ecofeminist scholars to demonstrate how privileged white women who travel to the Global South to “find themselves” can absorb culture in an apolitical way. Through placing Eat, Pray, Love in dialogue with feminist thought, I argue that the Western-appropriated notion of spirituality has catered to privileged people within the Global North, all of whom have the economic privilege and geopolitical abilities to travel and participate in a consumerist system that frames spirituality and self-exploration within gendered terms. In my analysis, I use Elizabeth Gilbert’s novel Eat, Pray, Love as a starting point to understand the complexities of neoliberal “spirituality” and self-help tourism. In this paper, I examine the links between privilege and the gendered neoliberal notions of self-exploration via travel. Eat, Pray, Love A Self-Help Guide for the Colonialist Neoliberalīy Madison Werner Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash

Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert