SEXUALITY AND FOOD: A LONG LOVE AFFAIR
My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola
My eyes are wide like cherry pies
— Lana Del Rey
Few movie scenes over the last years have sparked stronger fascination than the Call Me by Your Name scene in which Timothée Chalamet’s character Elio masturbates with a peach. The teenagers’ heartthrob reportedly still signs peaches on a regular basis; a Vice article has been published in which the author tries the trick for himself; and by now, the peach emoji has all but outdone the aubergine in the land of internet sexual innuendos. Two decades earlier, in a context that couldn’t be more different, actor Jason Biggs penetrated the namesake apple pie of the sex comedy American Pie. Both scenes, be it relatively unsubtly, showcase a direct link between food and sexuality. However, there are many more intricacies to this relationship that don’t necessarily involve the penetration of food. This is a story of sensuality, human imagination, ancient wisdom, morals, fetish and food porn.
American Pie, 1999
Call Me by Your Name, 2017
Varsity Blues, 1999
Double trouble
When we fall in love, madly in love, our entire system shuts down. We can’t focus, can’t sleep and, a lot of times, lose our appetite. The reason for this might be very simple. Our bodies constantly trick us into doing what’s important for us to survive, both as individuals and as a species, by making those things feel good. Therefore, food, as well as love, give us a dopamine rush that keeps us coming back for more. This trick of the brain can become a lethal weapon, in case of addictions, or just temporarily throw us off balance. When we are in love, the dose of dopamine our brain releases is so high, we tend to forget about those other things that make us happy, hence we forget to eat. The opposite of this is the usage of food or other substances as a substitute for a lack of love and affection. Either way, our bodily reaction to fulfilling these very different needs is remarkably similar — and that goes for sex, too. So, if food stimulates us in a way that feels good, and sex does the same, how bad could a little double trouble be?
“Whipped cream has long been considered a good way to spike up one’s sex life: harmless, non-violent and good-tasting fun.”
The classic way to use food during sex is also best exemplified by a movie scene. In 1999’s Varsity Blues, the character Darcy tries to seduce a man by coming out of her bedroom completely naked — except she’s created a bikini top and bottom out of whipped cream, with maraschino cherries in the place of her nipples. Whipped cream has long been considered a good way to spike up one’s sex life: harmless, non-violent and good-tasting fun, it is a far cry from other, more extreme sexual fetishes. The way in which Darcy in Varsity Blues applies the cream onto her body strongly resembles another way of incorporating food into sexual foreplay: Remember those thongs and bras made of candy beads that seemed to be very on trend in the 2000s? Here, food is used as an ‘appetiser’. The aspect of undressing, an important part of sexual arousal for many people — which is why stripteases are still popular as ever —, is paired with the stimulation of other senses, most notably taste. It also plays into a phrase often expressed when feelings of love or lust become overpowering: “Oh, I could just eat you up!”
“According to Freud, however, if peaches appear in your dreams, they represent breasts, as do many other fruits.”
Lolita and other Freudian fruits
Cherry Girl, Joseph Caraud, 1875
When Darcy in Varsity Blues sticks cocktail cherries into her cream-bikini, imitating her nipples, this seems like a pretty random thing to do at first: After all, isn’t a bikini supposed to cover them? This small inconsistency is easily forgiven though, when looking at the connotations of the cherry. It’s a clever fruit to choose. Since medieval times, cherries have played a role of duality, one of innocence and virginity, but also of cunning sexuality. The fruit is the image in both ‘popping the cherry’ and ‘tying cherry knots’ — it is no coincidence then that Vladimir Nabokov let his Lolita indulge in a big slice of cherry pie. The notion of virginity can be linked back to medieval and Renaissance paintings in which the Madonna was often depicted either holding cherries, or in close proximity of the fruit. Later paintings, like Joseph Caraud’s Cherry Girl from 1875, already have much more of the ‘good girl gone bad’ vibe that persists today. In it, we see a young woman looking at us provocatively, touching a big bowl of cherries with both hands while dragging the dark red fruit dangerously close to her pristine white dress. As art historians Amy Jeffs and Mary Wellesley point out, the painting depicts a “good girl with bad ideas”.
It’s not the only fruit on the painted table, however. There’s also that peach from the introduction, that had a sexual connotation long before Timothée Chalamet had intercourse with one. (Click here for more suggestions involving peaches) Because of its vertical indentation running across, it has long been associated with vulvas and butts. According to Freud, however, if peaches appear in your dreams, they represent breasts, as do many other fruits. This brings us back from a more poetic concept — with cherries as markers of virginity —, to simpler, more direct symbolism. Along those same lines exists the obvious phallic shape of some foods: cucumbers, aubergines and the good old banana from sex ed. But perhaps these fruits represent a deeper, more culturally meaningful connection between food and sexuality than initially meets the eye. For example, in that famous scene from the Old Testament, in which a snake offers an apple to Eve, who can’t resist the temptation and gets punished for giving in to her urges — there seems to be quite a bit of sexual symbolism. At least to Freud, snakes in dreams clearly had something to do with penises.
Sweet indulgence
Via Stephanie Sarley.
Cheap Thrills and Forbidden Pleasures (XIII), Jo Ann Callis, 1993
To photographer Jo Ann Callis, who made a series of evocative pictures of desserts in the nineties called Cheap Thrills, there is a definite link between food and sexuality, marked by the concepts of pleasure and sin. Talking to photography podcast Magic Hour, she explains her interest in food: “Especially sweets, because they’re like little jewels. And they’re sexy. The language around sweets is about guilt: ‘I shouldn’t have eaten that…’ So there’s pleasure, you see, but then you have to pay for it. You step on the scale… But that has to do with sex, too, you know. There is pleasure and then there is the sin.” Much like sex, some food can feel like a forbidden fruit; something indulgent and guilt-ridden. Another way to make this link more obvious was shown by Instagram-famous artist Stephanie Sarley. In 2016, she became an overnight sensation with her ‘fruit art’ videos, in which her hand is seen touching fruits ranging from oranges to papayas and peaches. In these videos, Sarley plays with the juiciness and fleshiness, as well as with the shapes of the fruits, but her art is clearly about more than just outward resemblance.This ‘fruit fingering’ was deemed so risqué that Instagram blocked her account due to ‘sexually explicit content’, only to undo this mistake after enormous backlash from Sarley’s fans. Her work plays into the pleasure-sin complex that food and sex share, and the controversy about the videos shows that even a piece of fruit can fall victim to social (media) censorship when it’s part of a woman’s art drawing attention to female masturbation.
Shape matters
The perceived sexual connotation of (the shape of) food can be the source for more than creativity in the form of art. For thousands of years, people have perceived foods like bananas and oysters to be part of a special food group called aphrodisiacs, which is said to increase sexual desire and pleasure, and improve performance. The oldest texts on this topic come from China and date back almost five thousand years. Although very little scientific evidence for these claims has been found, to this day, allegedly aphrodisiac foods are still eaten in many cultures around the world for the reasons mentioned above. Historically, different kinds of reasoning have been used to grant certain foods aphrodisiac qualities. The first category, again, has to do with appearance: Carrots and bananas are thought to increase male performance, and oysters, due to their similarity to female genitalia, are considered to increase desire — yes, the world of aphrodisiacs is very straight male-oriented. Although a biological aphrodisiac effect has been widely discredited, an interesting placebo effect might actually occur. The branding of these foods as sexual has become such a trope that our brains have become used to perceiving people eating oysters or bananas as sexual and sexy. Less sexy is the second category of aphrodisiac foods, which also has not been proven to work, but has a seemingly more solid sense of logic behind it: animal genitalia. Through the consumption of these genitals, one would absorb their properties. Thirdly, there are some harder to categorise foods like cloves, sage and chocolate. Interestingly, the latter has also been a longtime foreplay favourite.
“Our brains have become used to perceiving people eating oysters or bananas as sexual and sexy.”
Selling sex
All previously mentioned cases highlight historical, cultural and visual links between sexuality and food. The internet’s favourite obsession with this crossroad, food porn, is a completely different beast, though. The term is used to describe photos or videos of food that excite their audience’s senses, and may or may not include all of those aspects we’ve seen before: fruits, vegetables, sweets. Where the comparison between images of food and pornography falls flat, however, is its complete ignorance of the difference between sexuality and sensuality. Surely, these images stimulate something within us — but humans are complex, and we are capable of experiencing excitement different in nature than sexual arousal. If made well, this type of content can stimulate our sense memory, of tastes, textures and smells, and can make us feel hungry or make our mouths water. This is sensuality: A full awareness of our sensual experience, a moment of passion in mundane everyday situations. To name a few clichés, it can be the warmth of a sunset on our cheeks, the feeling of wet grass under our feet and yes, also the intense saltiness and loud explosion of a potato crisp crushing between our teeth. Sensuality and sexuality can, and often do, go hand in hand. In fact, sex without sensuality is hard to imagine, and would just be reduced to reproduction. But they are not the same thing and using this term to describe an experience quite complex is an overt simplification. Again, sex is by far not the only thing that stimulates and excites us. The advertisement of this type of content as ‘porn’ instead serves as a reminder of another one of those old truths: sex sells.
Text: Yannic Moeken
Copy Editing: Charlotte Faltas
Photography: Fanette Guilloud
Sources:
André-Naquian Wheeler: I Tried the ‘Call Me by Your Name’ Peach Scene and it Was Amazing
Nina Mimova: Food and Sex
Cory Stieg: Six Ways to Recreate the Varsity Blues Whipped Cream Scene Tonight
Amy Jeffs and Mary Wellesly: Sexing Up the Cherry
Sarah Rense: A Video of a Papaya Is the Most NSFW Thing You’ll See Today
Frank T. McAndrew: The Freudian Symbolism In Your Dreams
Magic Hour Podcast Ep. 30: Jo Ann Callis
