slutburger

I meant to write a post about Padma Lakshmi's now-infamous "slutburger" ad for Hardee's/Carl's Jr. a while back, but somehow the chance to do so when it was still relevant slipped by me. So, I'm gonna do it now instead, when I haven't seen it on the air in weeks and no one cares. Awesome.


Still, here she is:



Anyone besides me want to help her lick barbecue sauce off her ankle now?

I consider my post-ad-watching desire to put my tongue in Padma's burger-filled mouth to be well within the realm of normality. However, it seems plenty of folks would rather call her a sell-out and accuse her of all manner of sexual indiscretion, rather than kiss her. And this, I both do not understand and find rather grotesque.

A few weeks ago, my mom sent me this little blurb about it from my hometown paper. It struck me as one of the most out-of-touch things I've encountered in a bit. First of all, it's author claims the slutburger ad is "the sort of thing you'd expect from a Paris Hilton" but not a "classy beauty" like Padma. Because only girls with porn vids running rampant through the corridors of the internet would dare flash cleavage while eating a burger, right? Certainly no one with goods enough to nab a preeminent novelist the likes of Rushdie would do that, right? Well, why the hell not?!

The blurb from The Tennessean's food blog wants to act like it's all indignant that this woman so often associated with schmancy food would dare lower herself to hawk fast food, but this surface argument that it's author is attempting to make holds absolutely no water. For Exhibit A to that effect, I bring you this behind-the-scenes video in which Padma explains her own personal nostalgia for shitty fast food burgers. And frankly, the idea that Padma Lakshmi, gosling-like goddess of the haute cuisine scene, has a big heart-on for a burger just makes perfect sense to me. I mean, I love labor-intensive, esoteric food as much as the next girl, but really? If you offered me a guacamole cheddar burger from Bobbi's Dairy Dip, a craphole ice-cream stand over on Charlotte in Nashville, I'd be on it so fast you'd think it was made of fuck-me shoes. Even the most committed gourmands among us still get all woody over the occasional junk food indulgence. It's not like that stuff doesn't taste good, even when we've gone to the trouble of refining our palates.

No, the problem with Padma's ad is not that she's eating a fast food burger rather than braised pork cheek on a bed of salsify and Jerusalem artichokes. It's that, as the food blogger says, she has a classy image and yet, in lending her fair countenance to Hardee's/Carls Jr., she's joined the ranks of other sluterific pop-culture-friendly ho-bags like poor Paris. Now, I've defended Paris before. I actually love that carwash fetish-girl burger ad. I think her vampy camera mugging almost makes up for her role as an unenthusiastic cunnilingus receiver in the aforementioned titty flick. She's sexy, she's clearly having fun with her well-heeled harlot image and she owns that ad. So the idea that it would be an insult to Padma to compare her to Paris is, well, insulting to Padma.

In reality, the import behind the rhetoric in that little newspaper post is the underlying assumption is that "classiness" and overt sexuality are incompatible. And to that, I ask, why can't Padma lick sauce from her fingertips and let us marvel at her stellar pecan-colored tits in that push-up bra and not still be a perfectly respectable food snob and ex-wife of a literary supernova? To use the term "tramp" (and mean it derogatorily) to describe Padma just reeks of the kind of advocacy for the compartmentalization of female sexuality that does no sexually comfortable woman any good at all.

Now, this is not to say that other Carl's Jr./Hardee's ads don't play on some problematic traditionally gendered behavioral stereotypes in which dudes become dim-witted, narcissistic cavemen and women become nagging harpies (although hot ones). But no one of either gender fares very well in those ads, and undoubtedly, only dumbasses who send email forwards like this one would think they're funny anyway. See Sarah Haskins' video commentary to that effect below. Haskins makes a worthy point regarding advertisers thinking they're clever in targeting the basest of aspects of culturally prescribed "manliness" and even goes on to demonstrate how Paris has talents for multitasking that exceed the norm:



However, Padma's ad isn't crass or puerile at all. It is, in fact, dreamy and nostalgic. And I continue to feel that her conflating of her sexual charisma with her foodie street cred seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Doing so is, most certainly, in keeping with her career trajectory thus far. I mean, it's not like she got hired on as the host of Top Chef because of her food knowledge. She got hired on because she knows food and because she's startlingly beautiful. (Some among us might argue that Tom Colicchio's smirking blue eyes don't hurt the show much either.) Even long before Top Chef, she put out this book. And if that cover doesn't draw a visual analogy between her body and all the luscious, juicy fruits of the world, I don't know what does.

It's hardly new news that food is sexy. There's also nothing revelatory about the idea that Padma Lakshmi is incredibly genetically blessed. So, saying she can't have her burger and make you want to fuck her too doesn't do much besides advocate the annoying cultural directive that women should lock their libidos in the bedroom and pretend they aren't all fuck-happy in their waking lives. I can't speak for Padma, but I do know that kind of compartmentalization is exhausting for me. And it also smacks of the kind of retrogressive restrictions on the behavior of women that, well, get us nowhere in terms of claiming our sexual personae as our own.

...Which is all just to say, if anyone wants to make me a guacamole cheddar burger with a good, black, crusty layer of carcinogenic char, I'll do my best Padma for you, all sexy-like.

Was I loud?

I have a handful of nearly completed posts that've been filling the silences in my head, if not the ones on this blog. I just haven't gotten around to cleaning them up yet. I will, but not tonight. Tonight, I want to talk about this:

The single most astounding aspect of watching men with other working women is their degree of gullibility. My friend was not faking in an over-the-top, porn-style screaming way. But she was amping up to orgasms very quickly and then not doing much shaking or trembling to indicate coming. She’d simply say “wow, did you feel me come?” or let her “you’re going to make me come”s do the work for her. She also did a funny thing that I’ve only seen from blondes: swear to indicate her pleasure’s intensity. Are there women who do this naturally, genuinely? I don’t mean that she was dirty talking, simply that she was saying “oh fuck” or “fuck yeah” to encourage him in an affected, simpering voice. Not whimpering, which would be hot.

(via Nightmare Brunette's Tumblr)

Well, are there women who do this naturally, genuinely? I must confess, yes. But more on this in a moment.

The above Nightmare Brunette post reminded me of a night, few months ago. I was lying naked next to someone in a bed in an antiseptically designed (though pleasantly decorated) condo in an unpleasantly distant suburb of my city. We heard the mewlings of some poor woman directly upstairs from us and I began to smirk. She was all "Oh, Baby! Fuck me! Fuck me harder. Yeah. Fuck me. Fuck me harder!" in a painfully redundant loop that never crescendoed, never slinked down into murmurs, never released into gasping inarticulation. Her exclamations just flat-lined at a put-on frenzy that in no way mimicked the rising and falling action of orgasmic sex. I mentioned this to the person lying beside me in bed. He said he'd heard her "histrionics" (his word) a few times before, but it had never occurred to him that she might be putting on a big ol' porny show for the benefit of her gentleman caller. Astounding, indeed. It is baffling to me that some men really can't tell.

The truth is I'm largely unconscious of my own mid-coital sounds. Often, afterwards, I'll notice my throat feeling all scratchy and strained, like I've been working the heavy-duty ujayyi breath for a couple of hours. "Was I loud?" I'll squeak out over roughened vocal cords. Mostly, they tell me I vocalize at an average decibel level. Loud enough to seem appreciative, but not shriekingly expressive enough to draw a visit from the police. But the ones who're self-conscious about it? Who have roommates or thin walls? They whisper, "Shhh, shh..." to me and sometimes try to cover my mouth. That, of course, eggs me on. After all, the exhibitionist in me loves the layer of erotic charge a roommate's ear can cause to accrete atop our furious trysting. However, for the most part, mid-fuck, I'm not thinking about the sounds I make and can scarcely hear myself. As it should be, I think.

Still, yeah, I have heard myself say, "Oh, fuck!" now and again. In a manner nothing short of authentic, no less. I think I say it much in the same way I would if I stubbed my toe or if I crumpled into a chair at the end of a day. "Oh, fuck." Whispered, like punctuation to sensation. Off-handed and directed back to myself-- a decapitated sliver of inner monologue escaped into the outer conversation. Neither simpered nor whimpered, but breathed. Well, maybe occasionally it's whimpered. When whimpering is that for which it is called.

recurrent anxieties of the reproductively viable

First of all, I'd like to thank this particular Anonymous for her moving and insightful narrative on dating in a post-abortion consciousness. I highly recommend all my readers, particularly the male ones, click the link above and take the time to read it.

The only bone I'd pick is that I wish she wasn't anonymous. I know, I know, the story of one's abortion is inevitably a personal one and she has the right to privacy if she chooses to take advantage of said right. But the writing is so good and the story so very necessary that it seems a shame she doesn't feel comfortable attaching her name to it. It's also slightly dismaying that, while she disavows shame for having undergone such a procedure, she can't quite bring herself to fully, publicly own it either. That said, I'm not really comfortable speculating on her possible motives for remaining discrete. I can only say I wish it weren't so.

Moreover, though, I think she's getting at something pretty interesting. That being this thing wherein men can't seem to help having reactions and opinions regarding the function and repercussions of abortions. Even thoughtful, well-meaning, open-minded men. And the troubling thing, for me anyway, is that it doesn't matter what those reactions or opinions are-- they all just feel wrong, on an inexplicably emotional level.

Now, I've never been in a position to have to present an unexpected pregnancy to a lover. I've been lucky and gotten careful. Or so I tell myself. I can't go on the pill because those artificial hormones wreak coked-out-rockstar havoc on my brain chemistry, so, for the most part, I've had to either shack up with a chick or find alternative methods of prophylaxis. But that's not to say that there haven't been plenty of months when I've smiled quite broadly at the 36-hour-late reddish smear in my underwear. It's a good feeling when you can banish the split-screen cold-florescent-clinic-on-one-side-toy-strewn-living-room-on-the-other vision from your head one more time.

But nonetheless, I've had two versions of the abortion discussion with different men in my life. Both have left me feeling unsettled about the person I've been fucking.

The first type of discussion I've had has contained the relaying of the story of when [insert specifics of a boy here] accompanied a former girlfriend to a clinic. These stories are often quite wrenching. Given, I have a history of hooking up with some pretty soulful guys, so the ones I know, anyway, are rarely left unaffected. They speak of the relief they've felt when the girl they loved but knew they wouldn't marry admitted she wasn't not ready for a baby either. They speak of the helplessness and of how the line between being supportive and pushing their beloveds towards something they're never completely sure she wants can be terribly illusive. And they speak of their white-knightish moments of falling in love all over again with the crumpled, anesthetized girl in the recovery room.

Now, if you're the next girl in line, and the guy you're dating tells you that he may never fully fall out of love with the girl who might've born his child, primarily because he can't get the image of her, small and drugged and cramping, out of his head, you come to understand the unintended bonding agent that is the post-abortion romance. The guys I've known who've been through this experience with women they've loved have felt the guilt and relief and conflict without really knowing which of their emotions, if any, were appropriate to share. Now, I don't mean to diminish whatever feelings-- torn, guilty, sad, detached, or relieved, like Anonymous was-- that the women themselves have felt. But I do mean to point out my own naive mystification at the emotional involvement of the men who've been through it, in their weird, undefined role that falls somewhere amidst bystander, instigator and hand-holder.

Abortion affects men-- the good ones, anyway-- in ways for which they have minimal tools for the management thereof. The smart ones, the ones who value female reproductive rights, the ones who say all the right things about gender equality when talking in political abstractions, still have no idea how to handle the reality of abortion. Mostly, the defer to us. As well they should, of course, but then what becomes of their own lingering anxieties? The anxieties so politically murky that it's hard for them to even articulate them without feeling like they're trampling sacred female ground?

I know I can't answer those questions. All I do know, though, is that I've felt some empathy for those guys and, inevitably, mourned that whole bit about them still being a little in love with other women. Because it seems like the ones who've been able to articulate those stories have been the ones blessed with both the greatest emotional largess and most bountiful intellectual gifts. A guy who can both enchant my brain and pierce my cold, cold, slutty heart with a story about how he tried not to be a jerk while his girlfriend was saddled with all the repercussions of their collaborative error? Yeah, I'm a goner. Why wouldn't I feel a little wistful that such a guy is inextricably bonded, through a shared event (I'm resisting calling it "trauma" here because Anonymous' point is well-taken: abortion can often seem traumatic to men (and, well, me, because I've never been through it) when it is really merely an avenue out of an impending, much realer, more enduring trauma), to another girl?

And then there's the other kind of abortion discussion I've had. The one in which the guy squirms in his seat and sputters and calls me "conservative" when I say that the choice in favor of aborting isn't automatic for me. Don't get me wrong-- I want the choice there. I really do. Heaven help the Supreme Court Justice who takes it away from me. But the thing I always want to ask (but always seem to forget, so disconcerted am I, in that moment) the guy who had implicitly assumed I'd banish whatever fetus of his seed found its way into my womb is, "What part of the word 'choice' do you not understand?"

Truth be told, if I got pregnant this week, and decided I wanted to birth something, I'd be fucked. Thus far, my lifestyle has been fairly unaffected by the recession, but I'm not tiling my bathroom in gold bullion, either. I buy shoes. I buy books. I buy lipgloss and fancy $12-a-canister tea. I own two gorgeous Kate Spade bags. I'm single, I'm childless, I pay my bills and I have a little cash left over sometimes. No doubt, the arrival of Brown Rabbit Jr. would decimate all semblance of a life I've cultivated. Beyond that, I have a relatively steep mortgage that buys me all of 785 square feet in a walk-up that's a good mile from the nearest metro station-- a mile and a half from the nearest organic grocery. My condo is bursting at the gills with books, shoes, cookware and roughly half the furniture that filled my house in Tucson (which had nearly three times the square footage of my current abode.). Where on earth would I physically put a kid?

And then there are all the other questions: What would I do about work? I work some long hours sometimes. Would I ever have friends again? Probably not. Would I be able to stomach having more conversations with someone pre-verbal than with all the smart, creative adults with whom I've populated my life? Eesh. Doubtful. And then, of course, there's the writing. My junior year in high school, I took English with the woman who's now the book editor for The Nashville Scene. She was a poet-- and a good one. But she told me a story about how it was different for a woman to have a family and write than it was for a man to have a family and write. A friend of hers from graduate school was wildly prolific and had produced a nice stream of publications. He had three kids. My teacher had two kids and was working on a third. She said she didn't think she'd ever write seriously again. Her friend had a wife. She did not. You can't be a writer and a parent unless you have a wife. Or so the moral of her story went.

So, you get the picture. Getting pregnant and opting out of abortion would mean an end to my life as I know it. This much is altogether too apparent. But today, at 32, aborting really isn't my only option. Eight years ago, I was making $8000 per annum. I was in grad school. I was suffocating in stifling, monogamous monotony. I was collecting fine art degrees that the American economy continues to deem useless. The chances of me having the wherewithal to manage childrearing were comically minute. Today, having a kid would be difficult. Really, really difficult. But it would be dishonest for me to nonchalantly reassure one of these men that it could never happen. Because, well, it's just not impossible anymore.

So, I suppose I've been resentful about that assumption. The assumption that says believing that a woman has a right to make reasoned decisions about her own reproductive well-being equates to a woman being obligated to abort her fetus were an accident to occur, I mean. And while the revelation-of-battle-wounds type of discussion provokes what may well be misplaced empathy for the collateral damage done to the souls of men, the other type of discussion leaves me fuming. How dare these men insinuate I'm betraying my own feminist persuasions because I insist on viewing my choice to abort or not to abort as just that: a choice?

Ultimately, however, I just feel like congratulating Anonymous all over again. I truly appreciate her demystification of the experience and the fact that, for her, it was a completely managable event that didn't really have much in common with the psychological bigness we all (or, at least, I) have been conditioned to attribute to it. In this way, Anonymous did an amazing thing. She refused to give the assumed trauma of The Big A power over her. And isn't the refusal to bend to the socially proscribed powers that be, even the victim narrative of the "abortion survivor," a big part of why any of us who identify as "feminist" take on that mantle in the first place?

If I knew who she was, I'd buy her a lemon cupcake-- but a small token of my good will.