Archive for the ‘Vaginality’ Category

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Background foods and food discoveries

June 15, 2018

The spur: this brief moment from the NYT obit for chef, author, tv personality, and social critic Anthony Bourdain, by Kim Severson, Matthew Haag, and Julia Moskin, on-line on the 8th as “Anthony Bourdain, Renegade Chef Who Reported From the World’s Tables, Is Dead at 61”, in print on the 9th as “Anthony Bourdain, Renegade Chef, Dies at 61; Showed the World How to ‘Eat Without Fear'”:

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He first became conscious of food in fourth grade, he wrote in “Kitchen Confidential.” Aboard the Queen Mary on one of the family’s frequent trips to France, he sat in the cabin-class dining room and ate a bowl of vichyssoise, a basic potato-leek soup that held the delightful surprise of being cold. “It was the first food I enjoyed and, more important, remembered enjoying,” he wrote.

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Posted in Language and food, Language of sex, Memory, Movies and tv, My life, Names, Phallicity, Slang, Vaginality | 4 Comments »

The rose and the flames

June 3, 2018

(After some extended moments of reflections on religious belief, this posting will venture into the sexual wilds, and the later material will not be suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)

Two design drawings by Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky (from a set available to the public in an Instagram file): one a rose window (alluding indirectly to such images at Stanford’s Memorial Church, which serve as potent Christian symbols); and one suggesting tongues of flame / fire (alluding to those that figure in the Christian religious holiday of Pentecost, which fell this year on Sunday, May 20th). Two religious symbols, with associated linguistic expressions (rose window; tongues of flame/fire, to speak in tongues).

First, things: the rose, and flames.

Then, these things serving as symbols in Christian ways of thinking (actually, each can have several different symbolic values, even within this specific sociocultural context).

Then, these symbols, with these values, deployed in art, music, film, and fiction, and even in food and in plant names.

Then, the original things — rose and flames — serving as symbols in other sociocultural contexts: in particular, as sexual symbols, for body parts and for sexual acts.

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Posted in Art, Books, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and food, Language and religion, Language and the body, Language of sex, Music, Phallicity, Signs and symbols, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »

Annals of advertising: Dollar Shave Club

March 6, 2018

I don’t know how, but somehow I missed the ad videos from Dollar Shave Club — until Kim Darnell stumbled across their “Buttery Dunes” video a few days ago. A follow-up to “Butter Safe Than Sorry”. Those were in 2017. Back in 2013, DSC came out with “Let’s Talk About #2”, an ad for its line of butt wipes.

Full of double entendres, raunchy images, puns, and absurdity.

I’ll take them in reverse chronological order.

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Posted in Double entendres, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language in advertising, Phallicity, Puns, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »

Revisiting 14: belly buttons

December 6, 2017

In my recent tortellini posting (on the 4th, “I say it sounds yucky and I say the hell with it”), I quoted from the Wikipedia article:

Tortellini [and their larger versions tortelloni] are ring-shaped pasta, sometimes also described as “navel shaped”, hence their alternative name of “belly button” (ombelico).

Now metaphoric navels (informally, belly buttons) have come up on this blog before, in a 10/26/10 posting “The counterpart of phallic symbol”:

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Posted in Language and food, Language and the body, Signs and symbols, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »

The pizza boy as cultural figure

October 12, 2017

(Mostly cultural analysis, focused on gay porn. But plenty of very plain talk about men’s bodies and mansex, so this is not for kids or the sexually modest.)

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The pizza boy archetype, as depicted by young Melbourne artist Allain de Leon in DNA Magazine, April 2013

The figure is a package of symbolic content and associations, among them: the desirable youth; the delivery figure, someone who comes to your door bearing pleasurable goods for money; pizza as an American cultural emblem of warm informal social associations; and a cluster of associations of food with sex, some more general, others specific to pizza slices and whole pizza pies

The trigger for this posting is a recent ad for C1R/Catalina Video, with a sale on a new release — Pizza Boy 4 – Slice of Pie — and the three earlier films in the series, starting with Pizza Boy: He Delivers (William Higgins, 1986). The ads, which are way XXX-rated, are available in a posting on AZBlogX (“Another slice of pizza boy”). But here: a salacious image of pizza boy Steve Henson from the first film, a classic of gay porn:

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Posted in Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and food, Language and sexuality, Narrative, Phallicity, Portmanteaus, Signs and symbols, Sociocultural Roles, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »

Unguinal genitalia

August 25, 2017

Yes, genitals on your nails (Lat. unguis (Nom.), unguinis (Gen.) ‘fingernail’). Not for kids or the sexually modest.

From Katie Schmitz a few days back, a link to “This Vagina Nail Art Is Perfect For When The Patriarchy’s Got You Down” on the Femalista site on 8/19/17:

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Snowclonelet composites, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »

Months and days

May 13, 2017

Something I’m moderately sure of is that May is National, maybe International, Masturbation Month. All ny sources seem to agree on that. From the current version of Wikipedia:

The first National Masturbation Day was observed May 14, 1995, after sex-positive retailer Good Vibrations declared the day in honor of Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, who was fired in 1994 by President Bill Clinton for suggesting masturbation be part of the sex education curriculum for students.

International Masturbation Day has since been expanded to include the entire month of May as International Masturbation Month

(Note both vaginal and phallic symbols.)

Already there’s a question: why May 14th, back in 1995? Then things get quickly complex: an earlier version of the Wikipedia article, which I posted about here in 2013, identified Masturbation Day as May 7th (a date apparently selected by Good Vibrations in 1999) in the US, May 28th in some other countries. (Other US sources say May 28th is Masturbation Day.) Meanwhile, the current Wikipedia article says with great assurance that Masturbation Day is July 21st. The Wikipedia sources are in no way authoritative: they just assert dates. Thanks to the earlier Wikipedia article, I have May 7th on my calendar as National Masturbation Day, but now I’m all at sea. The 7th, the 14th, the 28th, or July 21st? And why? Why, in fact, May for the Month?

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language of sex, Phallicity, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »

Mothers

May 9, 2017

I’ll start with Roz Chast’s cover art for the May 15th New Yorker, “Motherboard”, a droll celebration of Mothers Day in embroidery. With notes on uses of mother. From there to a sepia-toned mother and baby photo (more baby than mother) from 1965: mother Ann Daingerfield Zwicky, baby Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky. On the occasion of Ann’s birthday, today, May 9th; Ann would have been 80 today (but she died at 57). And then something celebratory: a lot of gorgeous foxgloves, a plant that Ann much liked; locally, they’re at their peak around the time of Ann’s birthday (and Mothers Day, which she detested; and Derby Day, which she loved).

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Posted in Holidays, Language and plants, Linguistics in the comics, My life, Names, Vaginality, Zwickys | Leave a Comment »

Shelf Life

May 2, 2017

The cover of the March 27th New Yorker, “Shelf Life” by Luci Gutiérrez:

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Oh, a set of shelves. And a map. Of Manhattan. With objects on the shelves evoking particular neighborhoods. Cool.

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Posted in Art, Books, Linguistics in the comics, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »

Saint Phalle

April 26, 2017

(There will be references to sexual bodies, both male and female, and to mansex. Admittedly, in the context of  art/sculpture and novels, but still… )

Saint Phalle — St. Phallus (with phalle as an alternative to phallus) — would appear to be a reference to, say, Jean Genet as a celebrant of phallic masculinity (though there are other candidates for sainthood in this department), but it is in fact my morning name today, referring to the artist Niki de Saint Phalle. She has been the subject of one previous posting here — from 2/18/15, “Saint Phalle phallic philately”, at first about her condom paintings, then more generally about her as an artist — but now her name has been called to my mind by two recent postings: from 4/24 “A mini-phal” (on mini-phal ‘miniature Phalaenopsis’) and from 4/25 “You can call me Al” (with a note on mini phal ‘miniature phallus’).

To come: more on Genet (and Sartre’s book Saint Genet); on Niki de Saint Phalle and her name; and on de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely as artists, separately and together.

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Posted in Art, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Morning names, Names, Phallicity, Signs and symbols, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »

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