Crickets Chirping

see here (probably NSFW).

Several people have sent this link (or variations on it) to me over the last week or so, but I neglected to blog about it for a couple of reasons. First, lots of other people were blogging about it and I didn’t really have anything to add. Second, I have some problems with it.

Don’t get me wrong. I love cooked bacon, but raw bacon is pretty gross. It’s quite unappetizing, even when draped over an otherwise lovely female form.

Furthermore, there’s something deeply disturbing about a woman covering her naughty bits with raw meat. Look at the picture again but this time think about the situation that led to this photo being taken.

The girl, the party, how she ended up there with her shirt off. “To attract men?” Does her “prank” belie a darker truth? Worn down by a life-long onslaught of sexist messages, has she come to believe that her value as a human being worthy of love is defined by her physical appearance? Cruel adolescent remarks about her body stuck in her mind. If nobody would love her with her own fat on the inside, might they love her with another animal’s fat draped on her outside?

Or consider the harshly lit supermarket where the bacon was purchased, the smog-belching truck that brought it there. The cold, grimy cutting equipment of the slaughterhouse where it was sliced and packaged. The cramped pen where the pig once lived in misery. A horrific supply chain stretching from breakfast plate to slaughterhouse. Every bite I take pulls on that chain, pulls another living creature through its awful machinery.

Here’s my meditation on the bacon bra: Simultaneously mindful of the both the life of suffering that animal experienced before its slaughter, and the damage done to women everywhere by this type of objectifying imagery, I am forced to reconsider my desire to consume either. I don’t want any of that in my stomach or my mind.

Oh.

Marry me, bacon bra girl.