Oral oddities
I've discovered that I find it y awkward to eat a banana in its peel in public in the US. I dont know why though... somehow no one else seems to. By "in its peel" I mean biting the top off after peeling, as opposed to breaking part of the banana with one hand and eating it. I've seen women do the latter, but why on earth anyone would soil a hand when it's unnecessary befuddles me. Let's face it, the banana is one the easiest, (and healthiest) foods to eat on the move. And if one is careful, it can be peeled such that one's hands don't get dirty. So why do people insist on this impractical practice?
Is it because of the sensuality that is implied by women who have their mouths around an object? how many images have we been bombarded with of women eating strawberries, cherries, licking icecream etc? Somehow, they've never been depicted eating a banana, which is the most obvious phallic image out there. Perhaps that's because to be eaten, a banana must be bitten? Is that so, then? Are there Bobbitesque implications it may now carry? Perhaps eating the banana off the peel is akin to the female praying mantis eating the male after copulation? Or Ishtar, the Mesopotamian Goddess of love and war (oh, don't we know they're two sides of the same coin) beheading her lovers? Or the vagina dentata perhaps? Maybe women who eat bananas commonsensically are perceived as dominating and aggressive?
However, Ive never really seen men eating bananas in public. And the few women that I HAVE seen eating bananas in the way I consider normal, have been mostly athletes. If these are coincidences, they're rather odd, no?
Perhaps I've never had to question the eating of bananas in public because I always ate them in the security of my home, chopped up into lovely round slices. I only started eating them outdoors once I got to college, and never thought anything of it until someone made a comment that may have been something like "ooooh". I still continued to eat them though, defiantly beheading them with my teeth, viciously, looking people who dared to look at me in the eye.
Is that why I never got hit on?
Is it because of the sensuality that is implied by women who have their mouths around an object? how many images have we been bombarded with of women eating strawberries, cherries, licking icecream etc? Somehow, they've never been depicted eating a banana, which is the most obvious phallic image out there. Perhaps that's because to be eaten, a banana must be bitten? Is that so, then? Are there Bobbitesque implications it may now carry? Perhaps eating the banana off the peel is akin to the female praying mantis eating the male after copulation? Or Ishtar, the Mesopotamian Goddess of love and war (oh, don't we know they're two sides of the same coin) beheading her lovers? Or the vagina dentata perhaps? Maybe women who eat bananas commonsensically are perceived as dominating and aggressive?
However, Ive never really seen men eating bananas in public. And the few women that I HAVE seen eating bananas in the way I consider normal, have been mostly athletes. If these are coincidences, they're rather odd, no?
Perhaps I've never had to question the eating of bananas in public because I always ate them in the security of my home, chopped up into lovely round slices. I only started eating them outdoors once I got to college, and never thought anything of it until someone made a comment that may have been something like "ooooh". I still continued to eat them though, defiantly beheading them with my teeth, viciously, looking people who dared to look at me in the eye.
Is that why I never got hit on?
posted by Princess Joya | 9:03 pm
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