Food For (Dirty) Thoughts
Oct. 19th, 2005 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanI made it to the food box and back in one piece, although I did run over my own foot a couple of times with the bundle buggy. And the feet of a couple of teenagers. (Not on purpose, but they were taking up the whole sidewalk.) And tripped up a woman who for some inexplicable reason was walking backwards down the sidewalk and only gave me a dirty look when I said, "Watch where you're going." So no skin off my ass.
I even managed to do a couple of useful things when I got home, like clean all the crap out of the mailbox. I get almost as much paper spam as I do the electronic variety. The number of ads I get in my mailbox for weight loss aids and gyms has finally surpassed the number I get for fast-food joints. ThIs is the final proof I needed that my neighbourhood has finally slid over the dividing line from ghetto to yuppie in the two years I've lived here.
Did you know that back in the '60s there used to be an meal-replacement bar called AIDS? I'm not kidding. I have an old box.
I actually cooked a turkey a few nights ago. My first ever. It turned out awesome. Turns out that a meal that you put in the oven and wander away from for five hours was exactly the right choice for No Attention Span Woman. This resulted in one of my absolute FAVOURITEST things ever, and in my opinion, the only reason to have turkey dinners in the first place - cold turkey leftovers.
I ripped the carcass apart yesterday and made stock out of the bones. Turkey legs are such bloody big things, they always symbolize abundance for me. Whenever I am brandishing one I always think of a) bopping somebody over the head with it and b) a film I saw years and years ago called The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones. It was a typical 70's treatment of a Henry Fielding novel in the classic "Round the Bend" style that everybody thought was funny thirty years ago, before The Onion and All Your Base.
The reason it always pops into my head is because of a scene where the lead character stops at a roadside inn for the night. There is one other person in the dining room, a woman traveling on her own. The two of them start flirting by eating at each other - licking the juice of fruit off their fingers, taking huge bites of meat, tearing into hunks of bread, the whole time staring at each other and making each move very deliberate. It's all unabashedly physical, and at the end the two of them scurry off together to the bedroom.
The rest of the movie is long gone, but that one scene has stayed with me ever since.
The connection the film makes between food and sex isn't original, in fact it's pretty damn obvious. For centuries people have been drawing comparisons between the sexual "appetites" and the culinary ones. I think Shakespeare even did a couple of riffs on the theme. But something that has been really fascinating me lately is the similarity I can see in moral attitudes towards the two.
The news of the American culture wars leak over the border and I read more and more talk about abstinence-only education. People vote against the rights of gays to get married. Womens' rights to their bodies are whittled away. God sneaks back into the classroom.
Commercials talk about how their products are "sinful", or "tempting". I've seen guys in red suits with horns shilling fattening food and women in wings and halos extolling the "heavenly" virtues of their "light" counterparts. Food has become good or bad. People who eat the food describe themselves as good or bad.
And women on television get smaller.
Being fat has become a moral issue. Fat people are denied health care or given substandard healthcare. People actually debate whether the public should fund health-care for those who are obese, because "it's a lifestyle choice". As is catching AIDS. Or having a child out of wedlock.
I get shit on a regular basis at work because people regularly see me eating a big bowl of fruit on my breaks. For "being so damn good all the time". Not because, you know, I might happen to really like fruit.
And women on television keep getting smaller. And eating disorders explode.
Could you make a film like that now? Could you show a lascivious buxom woman bursting out over her corset and tearing into a (phallic) loaf of bread with her teeth, biting down into a turkey leg the size of her head? Keeping pace with the man every step of the way, and thoroughly enjoying herself while she does it.
Try to picture Jennifer Aniston or Kirsten Dunst doing that now.
That's the kind of thing I think about when I'm eating turkey.
I even managed to do a couple of useful things when I got home, like clean all the crap out of the mailbox. I get almost as much paper spam as I do the electronic variety. The number of ads I get in my mailbox for weight loss aids and gyms has finally surpassed the number I get for fast-food joints. ThIs is the final proof I needed that my neighbourhood has finally slid over the dividing line from ghetto to yuppie in the two years I've lived here.
Did you know that back in the '60s there used to be an meal-replacement bar called AIDS? I'm not kidding. I have an old box.
I actually cooked a turkey a few nights ago. My first ever. It turned out awesome. Turns out that a meal that you put in the oven and wander away from for five hours was exactly the right choice for No Attention Span Woman. This resulted in one of my absolute FAVOURITEST things ever, and in my opinion, the only reason to have turkey dinners in the first place - cold turkey leftovers.
I ripped the carcass apart yesterday and made stock out of the bones. Turkey legs are such bloody big things, they always symbolize abundance for me. Whenever I am brandishing one I always think of a) bopping somebody over the head with it and b) a film I saw years and years ago called The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones. It was a typical 70's treatment of a Henry Fielding novel in the classic "Round the Bend" style that everybody thought was funny thirty years ago, before The Onion and All Your Base.
The reason it always pops into my head is because of a scene where the lead character stops at a roadside inn for the night. There is one other person in the dining room, a woman traveling on her own. The two of them start flirting by eating at each other - licking the juice of fruit off their fingers, taking huge bites of meat, tearing into hunks of bread, the whole time staring at each other and making each move very deliberate. It's all unabashedly physical, and at the end the two of them scurry off together to the bedroom.
The rest of the movie is long gone, but that one scene has stayed with me ever since.
The connection the film makes between food and sex isn't original, in fact it's pretty damn obvious. For centuries people have been drawing comparisons between the sexual "appetites" and the culinary ones. I think Shakespeare even did a couple of riffs on the theme. But something that has been really fascinating me lately is the similarity I can see in moral attitudes towards the two.
The news of the American culture wars leak over the border and I read more and more talk about abstinence-only education. People vote against the rights of gays to get married. Womens' rights to their bodies are whittled away. God sneaks back into the classroom.
Commercials talk about how their products are "sinful", or "tempting". I've seen guys in red suits with horns shilling fattening food and women in wings and halos extolling the "heavenly" virtues of their "light" counterparts. Food has become good or bad. People who eat the food describe themselves as good or bad.
And women on television get smaller.
Being fat has become a moral issue. Fat people are denied health care or given substandard healthcare. People actually debate whether the public should fund health-care for those who are obese, because "it's a lifestyle choice". As is catching AIDS. Or having a child out of wedlock.
I get shit on a regular basis at work because people regularly see me eating a big bowl of fruit on my breaks. For "being so damn good all the time". Not because, you know, I might happen to really like fruit.
And women on television keep getting smaller. And eating disorders explode.
Could you make a film like that now? Could you show a lascivious buxom woman bursting out over her corset and tearing into a (phallic) loaf of bread with her teeth, biting down into a turkey leg the size of her head? Keeping pace with the man every step of the way, and thoroughly enjoying herself while she does it.
Try to picture Jennifer Aniston or Kirsten Dunst doing that now.
That's the kind of thing I think about when I'm eating turkey.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 02:55 am (UTC)It isn't God, it's just some unspecified designer. :)
I'm sure I have seen a similar scene in a movie, or at least a rip-off of one somewhere.
I'm sure it was a Rob Schnieder film.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:23 am (UTC)It's one of the few movies of his I /tried/ to watch.
Judge Dredd appears to be the only one I have seen.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:52 am (UTC)Why am I writing so much!?
Date: 2005-10-20 04:16 am (UTC)I take such joy in eating with my hands. I love greasy fish and chips, and fuck your cutlery! It was only when I let go of obsessing over calories, what was good and bad, stopped throwing up things that were bad (and the list got bigger the longer I continued), that I started eating better. I only started to taste food, good food, when I stopped thinking of it as an emotional band-aid, or an enemy. I eat more veg now that I ever have. There is more cheese in the world than cheddar ("It's the single most popular cheese in the world!"). Loving food again helped me embrace a certain hedonism, and following that, embrace myself and my body, and its relationship to the world around me.
It says a lot about our society that lusty women are only allowed to be lusty for one thing: a man (not men mind you!). It's misogynist, heterosexist, and simply imaginary.
I always want to write a giant post on the subject of want; now I guess I don't have to. ;P
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 05:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 05:14 am (UTC)Food is Food. whether it's a Green salad or a Bloody Rare Steak or a piece of Chocolate cake.
There are a lot of people who will discuss the most intimate, kinky and bizarre details of their sex lives but will blush and hide their faces when the dessert cart is brought out.
I think it's a holdover from the Puritan jerks who founded this country.
Actually enjoying any aspect of your life was seen a evil.
Hence the wierdness about food and sex in this great land of ours.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 06:09 am (UTC)I think showing eating in the way you describe would be really transgressive.
I wonder, sometimes, what I look like when I'm eating. Too fast? Too much? Talking too much? Or just right - enthusiastic and pleased?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 06:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 08:48 am (UTC)I am tired of having people assume that I must eat loads of fast food or other crap because of my size. And to see the lollipop headed women praised in media.
Is it really that bad in the US media? I only go back for short visits and watching TV is not on my high priority list of things to do with my limited time there.
As for a remake of Tom Jones, I could see Kate Winslet or Charlotte Church doing that scene.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 11:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 11:56 am (UTC)Jennifer Aniston orKirsten Dunst doing that now.With pleasure.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 01:01 pm (UTC)I'm running on that level of sleep because I was writing a policy analysis on emergency contraception. I learned a fuck load and now feel evening more irate by half the debate going on in this country about when, where and to whom it should be provided. The lines people draw in the sands are completely arbitrary some days.
As for meals that you can leave for 5 hours, you may want to look into a crock pot and a recipe book for it. Essentially it is a slow cook heater. Good for soups, stews, etc. The idea is to start it sometime before you leave work and then when you come home your meal is done. Little attention required.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 01:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 01:30 pm (UTC)The media in the west protrays my diet as evil and bad. I'm ruining the ranchers lives in alberta after all.
So much for a low fat high fibre diet being seen as good ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 01:50 pm (UTC)That needs to be a t-shirt.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 01:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 02:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 02:34 pm (UTC)That's a very different animal than the media concept of thinness, (the one sold to us fat people) which is to hold up thin people as shining examples of self-discipline and self-denial.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 02:41 pm (UTC)When you look inside it's inevitably paired with another article about who has gained too much weight recently.
It's fucking sickening.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 02:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 02:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:13 pm (UTC)or skinny Kiera Knightly, who would be stunning if she put on about 15 pounds
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:38 pm (UTC)I've long been appalled by the practice of attaching moral weight to food. If I eat a "bad" food, am I a "bad" person? I agree that certain foods have more nutitional value than others and a wise person will try to eat a diet that emphasizes those foods. That being said, there's not a damn thing wrong with eating a less-healthy but very yummy food upon occasion.
I read once that people with a healthy attitude towards food are likely to have a healthy attitude towards sex, and I wonder if this food-guilt is designed to promote sex-guilt in women, creating a nation of women who are afraid to indulge any appetite at all for fear of being thought of as bad, immoral, lacking in self-control etc. It's a thought that horrifies me.
I've also heard from several guys that they hate taking a woman out for a nice dinner only to have her pick at her food. I'll bet lots of men would prefer that lusty, busty woman from the movie. I know I would.
Re: Why am I writing so much!?
Date: 2005-10-20 03:40 pm (UTC)Is it lunchtime yet?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:41 pm (UTC)Re: Why am I writing so much!?
Date: 2005-10-20 03:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:56 pm (UTC)Fat and sugar, on the other hand, are wired straight back into the monkey-brain because high-calorie foods kept our ancestors alive during times of scarcity. You don't have to develop a taste for those, you're born with it.
I think that's where a lot of the "bad food=tastes good but good food=grass and tree bark" thing comes from.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 04:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 04:10 pm (UTC)Absolutely, which is why I think it's an excellent thing when parents feed their kids a lot of different foods when they're young. It trains the taste buds to appreciate different tastes and texture.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 04:16 pm (UTC)unless you've changed a lot (i haven't seen you in years), i wouldn't have thought you were in the group of "fat people" - more in the same one i am now of "people of healthy and normal weight". that aside, i just wanted to say that it's unpleasant for the thin girls to have people automatically considering them cold and prudish, too - the moral value placed on food and weight is unhealthy for the thin *and* the fat.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 04:19 pm (UTC)i've had men try to chat me up *because* i was eating, and enjoying it.
of course i growled, and told them to get away from my food
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 04:27 pm (UTC)No, I don't have an eating disorder. Yes, I eat three meals a day. No, I do not want to force feed myself to "make my stomach expand".
And while I'm at it, I'd like to send out a big "fuck you!" to the guy who told that if I gained 10 pounds, I might look normal.
Re: Why am I writing so much!?
Date: 2005-10-20 04:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 04:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 05:05 pm (UTC)I love not having people ask me that question anymore. However, what I hate even more now is my own reaction to having had put on some weight. I note myself to be occassionally obsessing about it. I'm by no means fat or even approaching large, but I notice myself looking at my body more critically. I'm trying to figure out how to combat this nonsense as I know that this is being mostly driven by stupid expectations.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 06:52 pm (UTC)I'm considered to be quite thin, and my fellaguy's favorite personal porn is when I eat a burger that's larger than my head, with chili and slaw juice running down my arm.
Some people actually do have high metabolisms, eat giant piles of food, and still have visible bones. They're no more good or bad than Camryn Manheim is, and just as hot.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 06:59 pm (UTC)I've some friends who do that moral weight/ food thingamabob, and it makes me insane. I'm forever saying "No, that's not "bad" food" and "No, you haven't "misbehaved" this weekend, you moron."
'Cos to me... Food is food. The human body needs it for nourishment. I love to eat. I try to eat in a healthful manner, and I like to do things that help me expend some of my hyperactive nature, so I tend to burn it off faster. That said, I'm the person most likely to actually eat an entire meal from takeaway when we order at my office.
Rant at the stupid public at large:
Food, sex, your body, the air you breathe: enjoy it! You dunno when you will lose your ability to do so - what's holding you back? (not youyou, the general you, you see? ... ow) This mythical idea that thin = sexy? It's NOT. Be healthy! Enjoy yourself! Revel in something gooey and fatty and not-healthy once a month - what are you waiting for? A special occassion where you can eat what you want to? BOLLOX on that! Today is a special occassion - you're still alive. Celebrate that, dammit!
Excellent post, peach.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 07:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 07:52 pm (UTC)Can't picture Orlando Bloom that way either, now that I think about it.
Kiera Knightly, on the hand, strikes me as much more earthy. I can definitely see her eating a huge meal. That might be influenced by the fact that both the roles I've seen her in were somewhat boyish.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 07:54 pm (UTC)It's not a lot of fun for fat women to get told they need to lose weight in order to be pretty. I don't imagine it's a lot of fun for skinny women either.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 07:58 pm (UTC)Just sometimes, things just move and feel different which plays tricks with my brain.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 11:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 09:48 pm (UTC)My own (untested, off the top of head) assumption is that being raised on a low-fat diet is what trains your palate to prefer that. If you were raised on a normal North American diet and didn't like fatty foods, that would be pretty unusual.
I find if I go low-fat for long periods of time, eating fatty foods makes me feel really gross. It turns out that gall-bladder problems run in family, so this is by no means a bad thing!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 09:50 pm (UTC)Thank you.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-02 08:54 am (UTC)