Claypots Evening Star-South Melbourne Market

Why food without fetish:

Sex and Food are primary drives; primordial, ingrained, reptilian but also extremely complex. Our relationship to sex and food retain a great semblance due to the common evolutionary vestige, such that the study of one often will shed equal light on the other. Consider taboos, social norms, fashions, rituals, they all equally apply to both sex and food.

The main culprit here is our capacity to objectify, that is, to be able to step out of the primal drive itself and view it from the outside, reflect on our own bodies eating, sexing- the objectification of self. Most of us refer to this capacity as consciousness.

It should come as no surprise then, that both sex and food lend themselves so readily to social commodification. Particularly in consumer societies the commodification of food and sex runs rampant. A sex shop is very similar to a supermarket in its appeal and display of goods and a restaurant is a kind of a brothel in the way consumables and the act is objectified.

I can envisage circumstances in the past where the social representations of sex and food were somewhat different, as there may still be societies in the future where eating in public will be considered rude and taking photographs of food will become a taboo.

But for the time being we are stricken with Food Fetish. Ingredients are exalted and endowed with social meaning as we objectify the edible matter and turn it into voyeuristic fetishes.

I try to avoid the Fetish of Food as much as I can. I try to remind myself that a spade is a spade and food is food. A starving man cannot wait to read the menu or watch cooking shows on tv!

I remind myself:
Good food is shared food and it can only be as good as the people you share it with.

–Renan Goksin