I am fascinated by what I consider “new stories” and “new adventures.” Yesterday, while flipping through The Week, I happened upon this take on what is “new.” I’m interested to hear your take on Eberstandt’s theory.
“Put down that cheeseburger and listen up,” said George Will in The Washington Post. In a provocative essay in Policy Review, scholar Mary Eberstandt offers a deliciously provocative analysis of the relationship between our attitudes toward sex and food. In some very fundamental ways, Eberstadt argues, food and sex have traded places. Two generations ago, most Americans observed strict moral codes regarding sex but happily ate frozen steaks and canned vegetables. Today society encourages sexual freedom but condemns those who don’t eat locally grown organic veggies and free-range chickens. So we are left with “mindful eating and mindless sex.” There’s nothing wrong with eating more healthfully, of course, said India Knight in the London Times. Eberstandt’s point is that we seem to have transferred the notion of “taboos and rules” from sex – giving the rise to an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, divorce and out-of-wedlock births.
