The Reinvention of Porn

Caught your attention, didn’t it? Yes, this is me making a racy entry…about the word porn. So for those of you who clicked on this entry in the hopes that I would be talking about the latest and greatest out in the valley, you have come to wrong place. This is merely a word nerd’s blog.

So, yesterday was a gorgeous day, and I don’t know what it is…well, scratch that, I do know what it is about a hot day that automatically makes me think of good food. First of all, I am a self-proclaimed foodie. If you were to look at my Pinterest page, you will see at least five or six boards dedicated to food, and one lowly board dedicated to fitness--it only has about six pins in it, as opposed to the 30+ pins I have in each of the food boards (30 being my conservative number: it’s probably double that). I even have one whole board dedicated to only desserts!

We’ll talk more about Pinterest at a later date. What I have is a typical case of what psychologists call association. Association is a learned behavior, and at a young age, growing up down the country with a large extended family that liked to gather at major holidays, one of my main associations is that on warm days that started to signify the start of summer, my grandfather would fire up his hand-made pit barbecue (it was a small brick structure). So to me warm weather has always been synonymous with a good grilled burger, or as I’ve grown up, a great steak.

Usually at work, I’m stuck back here in my windowless hovel, blissfully or painfully unaware of what the weather is outside. But yesterday, I made it out of doors (only because I had to go get an incomplete form filled out for final grading (BTW classes are over so I can dedicate my life to more mundane busyness, the topic of the next blog entry). But I made it out into the sunshine and it was a gorgeous day—the ones that only appear at the beginning and end of summer. The trees are freshly green, the sun was shining with nary a cloud to mar its imperfection, the humidity was low and there was a slight breeze wafting gently and making the trees whisper: It was the poetry of nature.

Amazingly, I am able to recall all this beauty retrospectively because at the time, I was merely bustling between buildings trying to get that paperwork completed in the 11th hour. The warmth of the weather seeped into my consciousness though, because when I returned back to my office, I found myself thinking about a nice juicy steak or burger.

And here’s where the original topic of this blog comes in. In my thoughts of that nice juicy steak or burger led me to the internet, where I just started typing in the URLs to various local restaurants and checking out their menus, drooling over the succulent pictures. Soon I had engaged in conversations with a few of my co-workers and realized I was watching food porn!

And today, as I look back at my activity yesterday, I contemplated how the word porn has been co-opted from its seedy, taboo, negative connotation into a whole new category that describes anything done to an extreme. I’m constantly telling my students about the mutability of the English language, and this word is a prime example of what I mean.

So as a word nerd, I looked the word up. The actual definition now, according to dictionary.com, is any type of media (“television shows, articles, photographs, etc.,”) “thought to create or satisfy an excessive desire for something, especially something luxurious.” And the sample definition was, “the irresistible appeal of food porn.” Look at how this word has morphed into something totally different than its original intent. Everyone pretty much knows that the word “porn” is the shortened version of “porno,” which in and of itself is a shortened version of “pornography.” The word and the practice of pornography are both pretty old, the word being coined around 1840, somewhere around the Renaissance era. Most people are familiar with the suffix –graphy which just refers to something that is recorded, either with words or pictures (think of other words like biography [literally the recorded account of a life] or photography). Porno- comes from the Greek word for harlot. Amazingly enough though, the shortened version of the word didn’t gain real recognition until the 1960s. No surprise there: in the era of free love, why not co-opt and expand those taboo definitions. The words “nigger” and “queer” underwent similar metamorphoses. The dictionary points out two very distinct characteristics, the first of which is perhaps a bit archaic and the second which has been transmuted (sort of). The first characteristic is the phrase “especially those having little or no artistic merit.” Not only would those in the porn industry object to this definition, but those who now have those expanded the definition beyond the second characteristic, “designed to stimulate sexual excitement,” and translate it into any stimulated excitement (ie. drooling over a web picture of a burger) could also say that what they experience isn’t looking at something vulgar and grotesque, but lavishing upon the beauty of something they love.

And even though that love of beauty is acknowledged, tacking the word porn onto anything gives it a pseudo-negative connotation. While we most of the time are rather open about our obsession, we also carry a small corner of secret shame or even guilt that maybe we shouldn’t like this thing quite so much. Words like obsession or addiction are peppered into our porn language. Even the word foodie was morphed from the drug addicted equivalent, “junkie.”

None of this truer than in the food porn industry that has popped up. Media have taken over the idea that food is a passion for many people. It’s not just Julia Child anymore, but food competition shows and entire networks dedicated to food, with shows ranging from meals to economize time or money to hedonistic Dionysian treks across the globe for “The best, biggest, or unique [insert food here].” I daresay the food porn industry has grown larger than its sexual counterpart, bringing new meaning to the colloquialism “do fries go with that shake?”

To coin a lyric of George Michael, “What do you call pornography?”

The Setback that Became a Setup

I was unintentionally inspired by one my students to scribble up this post. She was hoping for some writing assignments from me and I suggested, as I so often do to students (that reminds me of yet another task I need to complete), that she start a journal. One of these days, I will even pre-purchase little mini-journals for my class. I even gave her the link to my blog so that she could see an example of an online journal. Sadly, I had to give her the caveat not to laugh since I didn’t have a recent entry. And as there were supposed to be weekly entries, not justly monthly so that I can get back on my goal of writing and completing my novel this year, I figured I should give it the ol’ college try once again.

If you’ve read the April 15 entry “The Unsatirical Me,” you essentially know what I’ve been dealing with for the past few months. The good news is that since that health care plan meeting, my father has rapidly improved and returned to the land of lucidity. In addition, I adapted some organizational techniques that have helped me feel like I have some measure of control over things (which as we know is merely a cognitive illusion, but allow me to delude myself). The organizational techniques are lists: a list of the various costs associated with my father’s everyday recovering functions and of those items that I need to apply for various programs, from veterans’ benefits to cemetery plots; and a list of all the different tasks that I’ve accomplished to give me an idea of items that I need to follow up on. Managing my dad’s life has become a bit of a full-time job for me, where I wake up almost every morning asking myself, “What do I have to do for Dad today?” I have become a fulltime caregiver, and as I say to others, it is a role I was born to inhabit.

Why say this? Long story short, my grandmother was a missionary in church, and she always talked about service to others. She kept me well-informed and frankly, grounded. It is due to her guidance that I can sit here and type this today with barely any resentment or malice toward the hand I was dealt. I accept it and embrace it. Recently, my mother-in-law gave me a gem of knowledge: “instead of asking to be removed from a situation, ask for the capacity to handle more.” And more we shall receive.

Inevitably, we as children become caregivers sooner or later. Our parents get older, and as my grandmother said, “We are adults once and children twice.” I’ve faced some of my sooner in having to deal with my mother’s illness as a young child and having to confront a solution as an early adult, regardless of how temporary that solution became. I’ve watched my aunt struggle and ultimately succumb to an illness, and I’ve seen my grandmother, who’s lived to 100 and outlived 7 of her kids, slowly whittle away. But she’s still here.

Now, in my soon-to-be forties, I am confronting a much different issue with my father, watching him decline rather rapidly for a man who’s less than 70. This is with a full-time job, a part-time job, a husband, a house, and a 2-year-old son. And with thoughts of my mother and grandmother never far from my mind, not to mention a sibling, sister-in-law, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and nieces to think about, there’s always a lot on my mind. Mind you, these six folks that I mentioned are not really my direct responsibility, but the physical, mental, and financial health of any and all of them directly impacts me. One niece, the one by blood is graduating from high school this year, and as my only niece, she is part of my responsibility. I‘ll admit, I feel like one of those lairds of old, where the head of family held that responsibility for their entire clan. As this branch of Floyd and Cooper, it is a responsibility my husband and I bear, because he is the eldest of his siblings, and because I am the more stable of mine.

I will happily admit that Sunday, I took a day off from being care giver. I was at my grandmother’s house, and had a good time just kind of relaxing and not worrying about what I have to do for Dad, or anyone else, save my son, who was with me. The relaxing part is that my mom takes it upon herself to do almost the entire side entrees and the desserts, asking only that one person provide the main meat and another person a secondary meat. I usually get saddled with the (not-so-great) burden of providing drinks. So essentially, it’s a day of relaxation until cleanup, and since there are usually a number of hands on hand, cleanup doesn’t take long.