Food Too Cute to Eat
susandennis has a charming account of how she bought a pre-cooked Thanksgiving meal from a local grocery store. One of the items was a butter sculpture in the form of a turkey. At the end of the meal she put away the leftovers, and among them was the butter turkey, still untouched.
I could completely understand not being able to bring oneself to cut into it. I'd seen the picture of it in an earlier post, and even it its wrapping it was positively adorable. Cutting a piece out of it to put on one's roll or vegetables would feel more like a mutilation, an act of destruction, than of legitimate use.
Which may be why I've always felt so intensely uncomfortable about the edible game sets that show up periodically, usually around Christmas. Once you eat the candy pieces, what do you do with the remainder of the game? Do you just throw the board and non-edible pieces away, like the game were disposable? It feels like such a tremendous waste. And you can't avoid eating the candy to keep the game playable indefinitely, because the candy won't keep forever. People who've found unused sets from previous years, even ones still in shrinkwrap, often open them to find the candy pieces had broken down, creating a lose-lose situation.
It may also explain my ambivalence to anthropomorphized food in advertising and animation. I do know that I've avoided buying one style of squishy. They are in the form of cute cookie or ice cream bar with an animal face, but with a bite taken out of it. Don't ask me why, but there's something a little too visceral about the image for me to want to buy the product, even as merchandise to resell.
Paradoxically, I've never been so intensely bothered by the butter cows that are put on display at the State Fair. Maybe it's the difference in presentation -- they're clearly made as a sculpture, to be observed, rather than to be cut up for diners to enjoy. When it's time to break it down, it's done behind the scenes, after the year's State Fair has ended, and most of the butter is recovered and saved for the next year's butter cow.
I could completely understand not being able to bring oneself to cut into it. I'd seen the picture of it in an earlier post, and even it its wrapping it was positively adorable. Cutting a piece out of it to put on one's roll or vegetables would feel more like a mutilation, an act of destruction, than of legitimate use.
Which may be why I've always felt so intensely uncomfortable about the edible game sets that show up periodically, usually around Christmas. Once you eat the candy pieces, what do you do with the remainder of the game? Do you just throw the board and non-edible pieces away, like the game were disposable? It feels like such a tremendous waste. And you can't avoid eating the candy to keep the game playable indefinitely, because the candy won't keep forever. People who've found unused sets from previous years, even ones still in shrinkwrap, often open them to find the candy pieces had broken down, creating a lose-lose situation.
It may also explain my ambivalence to anthropomorphized food in advertising and animation. I do know that I've avoided buying one style of squishy. They are in the form of cute cookie or ice cream bar with an animal face, but with a bite taken out of it. Don't ask me why, but there's something a little too visceral about the image for me to want to buy the product, even as merchandise to resell.
Paradoxically, I've never been so intensely bothered by the butter cows that are put on display at the State Fair. Maybe it's the difference in presentation -- they're clearly made as a sculpture, to be observed, rather than to be cut up for diners to enjoy. When it's time to break it down, it's done behind the scenes, after the year's State Fair has ended, and most of the butter is recovered and saved for the next year's butter cow.