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?”
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