M.H. thought we might like to get to post about the sexualization of food again, so she sent us a link to a post at Redbook that is one of the more bizarre and blatant examples I’ve seen in a while. The article, titled “Blow Him Away in Bed: Oral Sex Tips” (an excerpt from Redbook’s 500 Sex Tips), is illustrated with various foods.
Here’s an example of one of their helpful hints:
Other tips are illustrated with images of a pickle, popsicle, mushroom, banana, a baguette, and a butternut squash, among others.
I cannot help but feel that if you write something that requires you to type “keywords: squash, tomato, vegetable, phallic, fellatio, oral sex, blow job, penis,” you may want to reconsider the topic, but that’s just me.
UPDATE: Readers are correctly pointing out that this example differs significantly from most of our other examples of sexualization of food by not being degrading in the way many of the others were. I think this is more just a curious example of the wide array of foods we sexualize, as well as how silly a lot of sex tips in women’s magazines are.
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
Comments 59
Athryn — May 22, 2011
Well, they can't show actual penis images without being marked as porn, so I would imagine that sexy vegetables are the next best thing.
Nora — May 22, 2011
This is my absolute anti-kink, thinking of sex and food at the same time just makes me shudder, blech. Thanks for putting me off food AND sex today.
Emma — May 22, 2011
Has anyone ever used an equivalent picture of fruit/veg to represent female genitalia (as opposed to breasts/buttocks)? I can't quite imagine that happening, somehow.
syd — May 22, 2011
Comparing it to the previous article, IDK. Usually, food-as-penis is used as a joke, while woman-as-meat (or meat as woman) is supposed to be degrading, and many of the previous images were outright sexual (and often bizarre....the spaghetti.....what?). It's not as if the illustrations of food are changing the subject. And considering the target demographic of Redbook, I think the editors are expecting a "naughty giggle" to excite the reader's day, without the pictures being of something she'd be embarassed to read in public.
Anonymous — May 22, 2011
So, the Greecian column and firecracker seem kinda randomly thrown in with all the food pictures...did they run out of ideas for phallic foods or something?
m — May 22, 2011
sometimes it feels like you could draw a rectangle and someone would use it as a euphemism for the male genitalia... What really bothers me though is the article in itself. It seems to have all the components of really bad advice for women, from the generalizations of men to making the sex act all about him and pleasuring him (I'm not saying that pleasing someone is a bad thing, but they're repeating that idea to a disturbing degree here), to the unabashed heteronotmativity that expects all readers to be female, all females to perform oral sex on men and all stright women to want to do this to "their man", not a random hookup. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth. (heh)
The grisly murder of fruit « Scenes of Eating — May 22, 2011
[...] as I was compiling this post, Sociological Images posted some images of food arranged to stand in for human sexual parts. As in the gunshot orange image, the brightly [...]
Boner Killer — May 22, 2011
Nothing inspires me to eat healthy that imagining a big phallus! Oh Darwin-in-a-grave, these are as wretch-provoking as they are comical. Thank you for sharing.
Grafton — May 22, 2011
I thought the vegetables quite pretty.
Yeah, yeah, 'Redbook' is heteronormative. Shocking. And, well, if oral sex is fun for you, it's probably fun because of your partner's reactions. The article did give tips on how to make it more pleasurable for the person on the oral end of the equation -- have him bathe, trim his pubes, control the movement so he doesn't choke you. Yeah, those things are to prevent it being unpleasant, but if you don't think your partner's response to oral sex is the primary fun of it, I suspect you are out of luck.
What struck me was that the article appears to have come from a world without foreskins.
Elsewhere on the Internet–2010/11 | Scenes of Eating — April 12, 2013
[...] Sexualizing Food in Redbook: Sociological Images blog posts some of the anthropomorphized (or… genitalmorphized?) images from a recent Redbook spread. The post links to some past posts about gendered or sexualized foods. 05-22-2011. [...]
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