Sex by Angela Mea (Chapter from Food Words: Essays in Culinary Culture by Peter Jackson)
“Moreover, Probyn points out that replacing scantily clad young women with a plate full of expensive and delicious-looking food on the bonnet of a car is more likely to end in a sale: “Forget sex sells,” she insists, “these days food sells” (2000: 65).”
“Elspeth Probyn indicates that there is a sense that “sex on its own is no longer terribly interesting” (2000: 72) and, consequently, food writing and food programs have developed as a form of pornography whereby cooking has become foreplay and eating is fucking (Crumpacker 2006: 54).”
This is such a colorful and visceral metaphor that pulls emotions and visuals that one would traditionally associate with sex and applying them to food and edible knowledge. How does the act of consumption play into this collaborative act? How does the presence of another change the taste?
“gastroporn”
When we talk about food porn we are talking about the photographing or food in a manner in which it is extra appealing to us, a photograph that makes us want a taste. Gastroporn is another word for this, the presentation of food in a manner that is sexual or sensual. When we think about the taboo surrounding sex, can we identify the root behaviors or actions that makes one avert their eyes? How is nudity comparable to gastroporn?
“Chinese philosopher Mencius (fourth century b.c.) is reported to have said, “shi se xing ye” (appetite for food and sex is nature) (Farquhar 2002: 1). This “comradeship” between food and sex, as Judith Farquhar (2002: 28) puts it, results from the innateness of appetite, an intermingling of alimentary and sexual regimens which connect 195and disconnect at the point of the body (Deleuze and Guattari 1988).”
Whilst there is a small percentage of the population without a sexual drive, something that must not be overlooked when examining cultural and social behaviors, this idea that all it is nature to desire both food and sex is one I can for the most part agree with. Who does not want physical pleasure, sexual or not? Regardless of the mode it takes, pleasure is an experience and a desire we share as a species.
“While few—until recently—may have thought about the erotic dimension of a Christmas or Thanksgiving turkey being opened up, the empty cavity being lovingly stuffed, by hand, with a sumptuous mixture that will ooze moistness when cooked, or the sensuous feel of a silky ball of chapatti dough as it is kneaded and caressed,”
This description is beautiful in its complexity and intelligence but also grosses me out because I hate dealing with whole birds in the kitchen.
“The recognition of cooking as “foreplay” is something that can be dated back to pre-Christian times, before appetites became something in need of “civilizing” (Mennell et al. 1992).”
When we set guidelines on the civility of meals, we lost the innate, passionate acts of eating that human beings had participated in for years. Why do we insist upon separating our pleasures?
“The Golden Ass describes how Lucius watches Fortis as she prepares dinner and is aroused by her activities. The eroticism of the description, the power of the seduction, lies in the movement of Fortis’s body as she handles the food and stirs the pots, how she glances at him as she puts the spoon to her lips and tastes the dish, visual tropes that have become familiar to modern consumers as both male and female cooks have indulged in “real food orgasm” on our television screens (Probyn 2000: 4)“
This circles us back to the idea of cooking as foreplay. I also like the highlight of the lips, and the sensuality veiled in food and consumption.
“Moreover, Probyn points out that replacing scantily clad young women with a plate full of expensive and delicious-looking food on the bonnet of a car is more likely to end in a sale: “Forget sex sells,” she insists, “these days food sells” (2000: 65).”
“The sensual engagement with food in its “natural” form has been replaced by packet-opening, rehydrating, defrosting, and microwaving. And far from constituting “foreplay,” even when done from “scratch,” everyday family cooking in advanced industrialized nations—much like conventional (“vanilla”) sex—can become rather dull and routine, a duty or obligation to be performed largely by women. Indeed, Sherrie Inness notes that during the Second World War, American women were encouraged to perceive the serving of a family meal as a “quintessential icon of being a woman and a mother” (2001: 136), which is not a particularly sexy image.”
“spice-up”
I am hoping to further explore the food metaphors used in discussions surrounding sex that are so common we don’t even think of them as food related. Vanilla sex, spicing things up, these are words you can taste.
“Nigella Lawson—in particular—has blurred the boundaries between bedroom and kitchen in domestic spaces in evoking sexual metaphors during her cooking programs, “spanking” pomegranates, for example, while relying heavily on sexual innuendo and the sounds of sexual intimacy to convey “food orgasm.”
“In spite of the explosion of interest in food programs and food writing, however, cooking experimentation is reported as remaining a largely vicarious indulgence: something that people engage with as voyeurs, preferring to read about or watch (Short 2006) but—as with conventional pornography—unlikely to be lived out in practice (Parasecoli 2008: 3).“
A Shallot by Richard Wilbur
The full cloves
Of your buttocks, the convex
Curve of your belly, the curved
Cleft of your sex—
Out of this corm
That’s planted in strong thighs
The slender stem and radiant
Flower rise.
Is the author thinking of sex when he looks at food or food when he is having sex? Does the title being “The Shallot” imply that shallots are the object of his desire, or merely that it is the object he is viewing? How does the image of the shallot as a butt or a vagina impact the way one would consume shallots or sex?
The Food of Love by Angela Qian
Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.
—Samuel Butler
Probably everyone in the world is familiar with this sensation of longing and uncertainty, painful but nevertheless delightful. It is a feeling which most often manifests itself in the pangs of love.
Noting the use of the word “pangs”, most often used in tandem with the word “hunger. The physical manifestation of needing to consume.
But if the poem is a metaphor for desire, what should we make of the metaphor itself? The poem describes an apple. The apple is the object of one’s desire. We may say, perhaps, that the apple is a stand- in for the loved one. We, along with the apple-pickers, reach for it, straining. We desire it, can almost taste it; the fruit is red and ripe, sweet and tempting. And what would we do with the apple, once we had it? Well, the answer is obvious: we would eat it.
This is where I see the connection to consumption shine through my prominently within this field, when we want a food it is so we may consume and enjoy it. While sex is not the direct consumption of the object or your desire, in a way the act itself mirrors or imitates eating and consumption. Think about a passionate kiss or bite, the closeness between two bodies, do we not indulge in each other the way we do food?
With this in mind, I produced something like a love story, about a girl whose boyfriends drifting further and further away from her. Unable to bear this, she grows desperate, distraught; she’ll do anything to get him back. She begs, pleads, does everything she can think of. Finally, she murders him—and eats his flesh.
The language becomes violent, colorful, riotous, as the unhappy narrator’s frenzy mounts until the last scene, when her ex-lover makes his entrance, and she cuts open her veins and finds them to be filled with flour.
Two examples of stories I would love to read, both of which have themes of cannibalism and consumption of that which we love or are attracted to. How does cannibalism intersect with food and sensuality, how can a crime of passion be an act of consumption and sustenance?