Do you think more about the food you eat than the sex you have? "Of all the truly seismic shifts transforming daily life today — deeper than our financial fissures, wider even than our most obvious political and cultural divides — one of the most important is also among the least remarked," the paper begins. "That is the chasm in attitude that separates almost all of us living in the West today from almost all of our ancestors, over two things without which human beings cannot exist: food and sex."
The two are "closely connected," as Eberstadt points out, "ordinary language itself verifies how similarly the two appetites are experienced, with many of the same words crossing over to describe what is desirable and undesirable in each case." But "if pursued without regard to consequence," she asserts, both sex and food "can prove ruinous not only to oneself, but also to other people, and even to society itself."
To avoid what Eberstadt calls the "destructiveness of free-for-alls," all societies have "rules and rituals" surrounding food, and likewise, laws and stigmas -- religious and social -- attached to sex. Our food rules and rituals may not always have been as strict our sex rules and laws, but they have nevertheless been stringent as needed. "Such is the meaning, for example, of being hanged for stealing a loaf of bread in the marketplace," Eberstadt writes, "or keel-hauled for plundering rations on a ship."
But what happens when we are freer to pursue and consume both food and sex than almost all of our ancestors? Eberstadt's answer appears to be that we've become mindful about eating, but thoughtless when it comes to sex.
And there's where her paper gets very interesting.
To help make her point, Eberstadt asks us to see the world today through the eyes of two women: a hypothetical 30-year-old housewife from 1958 named Betty (a woman who might resemble your grandmother) and her hypothetical granddaughter Jennifer, of the same age, today (you, perhaps).
Betty’s kitchen -- full of jars and cans that no one has thought to recycle yet -- is also loaded with dairy products, red meat, refined sugars and flours. Betty does a lot of freezing and thawing and gets most of her vegetables from a can. "If there is anything 'fresh' on the plate," Eberstadt writes, "it is likely a potato."
Betty's table always looks like Martha Stewart has set it. It's perfect and prepared with love for Betty's entire family, a squeaky-clean brood that's always present around it. Also, Betty eats just about anything that's put in front of her (lucky girl) — she cleans her plate because it's polite. But she has her likes and dislikes.
Jennifer, on the other hand, has very few cans and jars in her cabinets. She has no children and lacks a significant other, so her kitchen table is 'set' with her laptop. "Yet interestingly enough, despite the lack of ceremony at the table," Eberstadt points out, "Jennifer pays far more attention to food, and feels far more strongly in her convictions about it, than anyone she knows from Betty’s time."
Jennifer, as you might have guessed, dabbles in vegetarianism; she doesn't eat red meat and she's conscious of her fish intake and of the plights of salmon and tuna. She likes her food fresh and chooses tofu over anything dairy. Suffice it to say that Jen's favorite word is "organic" — she's is a Whole Foods kind of girl.
Jennifer also has a "moral attitude" about food that Betty doesn't. She believes that there are "right" and "wrong" food options, while also understanding that not everyone feels the same way as she does. But, Eberstadt reminds us, "she certainly thinks the world would be a better place if more people evaluated their food choices as she does."
Betty, however, couldn't imagine embracing morals around food. Her parents told her of the Great Depression, so she's aware of what it was like for some people to go without food, so she has, and always will, eat whatever she likes without feeling bad (or good, for that matter) about it.
But the tables turn when we consider both Betty's and Jennifer's views on sex, especially sex outside of marriage.
Betty follows a traditional Judeo-Christian ethic, so affairs, teenage pregnancy, risking 'gonorrhea' (a common STD of her day), are all "wrong" in her mind. Unlike Jennifer, who attaches morals to her food, Betty attaches morals to sex and believes the world would be a better place if everyone just kept their pants on.
Jennifer’s approach to sex is pretty much the opposite of Betty's. Apparently she has another favorite word, and it's "orgasm." She too disapproves of cheating, but other than that she feels that sex outside of marriage is perfectly fine and that living with and having sex with a man (or a woman) while not married is good in the sense that it provides a "trial run." And she doesn't spend much time thinking about the knocked-up teenage girls in her town or of the people with STDs. Their situations are personal, matters that those individuals themselves must grapple with and take responsibility for.
Jennifer's convictions are libertarian in nature. "She is pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, indifferent to ethical questions about stem cell research and other technological manipulations of nature (as she is not, ironically, when it comes to food), and agnostic on the question of whether any particular parental arrangements seem best for children. She has even been known to watch pornography with her boyfriend, at his coaxing, in part to show just how very laissez-faire she is."
So, in a period of just over 50 years, the moral attachments to sex and food have been reversed. Betty thinks food is a matter taste, literally and figuratively, whereas her attitudes surrounding sex are governed by moral law; and Jennifer thinks exactly the reverse.
What are we to make of this?
Eberstadt insists "two generations of social science replete with studies, surveys and regression analyses galore" have produced clear findings: "The sexual revolution – meaning the widespread extension of sex outside of marriage and frequently outside commitment of any kind — has had negative effects on many people, chiefly the most vulnerable; and it has also had clear financial costs to society at large."
Furthermore, she writes that "the rules being drawn around food receive some force from the fact that people are uncomfortable with how far the sexual revolution has gone – and not knowing what to do about it, they turn for increasing consolation to mining morality out of what they eat."
Do you agree? Disagree?
I hesitate to share all of my thoughts about this with you because I want to hear your opinions unaffected by my own. But I will say this:
I admit that I have a little bit of both Betty and Jennifer in me. I love to eat and I love to have sex. I prefer red meat and lasagna over turkey burgers and tofu, which, by the way, I think is disgusting in taste and (blech!) texture. And, even though I'm now married and don't engage in sex outside of my marriage, I've been single at various stages in my life and always behaved more like Jennifer than Betty, especially when with women who thought themselves 'Bettys' who were in bed with me and, yes, Jennifer and, from time to time, also Veronica.
But do I think more about the food I eat than the sex I have? No, I don't. Do I think that society's discomfort with sex is driving some people to attach morals to what they eat? Absolutely not. (America's "red" states are overflowing with frigid obese people.)
For me, the bottom line is this: In matters of food, I am not as concerned with the maintenance of my body as I should be. In matters of sex, while I am responsible, I am also absolutely, positively guilty of following the "all you can eat" philosophy. And I don't feel bad about it one bit.
© 2009 Kim Ficera
Hmm...What I found myself thinking reading this was that the beauty culture seems to demand that you attach morals to food in order to "deserve" sex.
Who knows, maybe Betty had a lot more orgasms than Jennifer because she probably wasn't sucking in her stomach, thinking about the latest actress to do a photo spread showing how she "got her body back" 12 weeks after delivering a baby or suffering Cosmo-induced performance anxiety. :)
Posted by: Donna | February 26, 2009 at 09:25 PM
This is really thought-provoking, Kim! Isn't it important, though, to place this argument into a historical context? The generations b/w Betty and Jennifer saw much turmoil, and the Women's Movement took women like Betty out of their kitchens, encouraged them to get/finish educations, find jobs, embrace their sexuality (i.e., it's OK for women to have orgasms too, and women don't have to be pregnant every 9 months). Part of what Gloria Steinem & Betty Friedan did was alter, literally, the way women thought, so Betty's life may not have changed all that much, but what she taught her child was drastically different than what had been ingrained in her. It was her child, then, who raised Jennifer to care about her body, both in terms of food and sex. And, FYI, I've been a vegetarian for 25 years, and I can only eat tofu if it's been fried. Otherwise the texture makes me gag--yuck.
Posted by: Meri Weiss | February 27, 2009 at 05:25 AM
Wow, really interesting...I mean, I agree and disagree. Yes, it seems people (alright, women) are more concerned with what they eat than what they screw, BUT, I also think this is a case by case basis. I've been called a prude, but I'm highly selective about with whom I take my clothes off. Once they come off, I'm game! But if I don't know you, I ain't havin sex with you.
I've debated with my bif many a time that the sexual rev. and women's lib has NOT been 100% positive for women. Yeah, you CAN act like a man sexually, but why the fuck would you want to? A woman, automatically, whether she likes it or not, has much more at risk, WAY more on the table, than a man when she has sex with him. Risk of STD contraction is higher and remember pregnancy? Oh wait, Plan B! of course!
I don't mean to discount all the good things women's lib has done. For example, for a straight woman in a relationship, i imagine the pill is a god-send. I know I'd be on it if I needed to be.
Posted by: JennaDQ | March 03, 2009 at 07:54 AM