FRUIT as Female GENITALIA

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We often hear people referring to the vagina euphemistically as food or fruit. For example, the cherry is very much associated with female virginity, and the common phrase of "having your cherry popped" indicates sexual activity.

According to Joan Smith's book Hungry for You (1997), 'It's a striking feature of men's imagery of women-as-food that it's frequently vegetarian' (87), which helps to explain why the vagina is often portrayed as a fruit. 

Smith reveals that the connection between fruit and the female sexual organ has a lot to do with the mentality of men. She suggests that the vagina is replaced with fruit, because 'men like to see their lovers as tender birds of prey' (87). Men do not like to consider their women as 'creatures with hooves, teeth and a predatory appetite of their own' (87). Therefore the fruit is used because of its subtlety as men stereotypically want women to be calm and reserved. 

I looked at apples, figs and peaches. Both peaches and figs are very soft. Their skin is quite fluffy and hair like, which as the outer layer almost mirrors the pubic hairs of a vagina. The insides of peaches are very juicy and liquid similar to figs which have a moist centre, which is  scientifically not very indifferent to the vagina. 

The shaping of these fruits is very key to their comparison to the vagina, once halved.

The seeds of the apple are concealed at the centre, similar to the peach, with an oval shape core. The inside of a fig, this fig in particular is red, soft and flesh like. All, have a similarity to the diagram of the vagina below:

 As the skin of all the fruits are different to their insides, this  links to the privatisation of the vagina.

I looked at D.H Lawrence's poem "Figs" (1923) which addresses this theme of a secret vagina. You can find it here:

http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Lawrence/figs.htm

Figs are the fruit mostly associated with the female sexual organ mainly because for the Greeks, figs were a symbol of fertility. Lawrence emphasises on the secrecy of the fig, through his semantics of privacy, 'Folded upon itself, and secret unutterable' (35). He connects this with the moral for women to act respectfully: 'That's how it should be, the female should always be secret' (27). This poem represents the standard for women to be virginal. The fig is likened to the vagina, due to it's skin that veils its insides, leaving everything to the imagination: 'where everything happens invisible, flowering and fertilisation' (42). Furthermore, Lawrence comments on the act of a woman losing her virginity: 'That's how the fig dies, showing her crimson through the slit' (47-8). The language used here is implicit, but hints resentment towards sexual intercourse on a woman's part. This is maintained, by the line: 'That's how women die too' (50), which shows, that a woman's purity, so curiosity and wow factor is lost, once the 'bursten fig, [makes] a show of her secret' (49).

Overall, the likening of particular fruit to the vagina displays the ideology of the stereotypical patriarchal male. Although, the type of fruits has a lot to do with shape and in some cases colouring and texture, the type of fruits that tend to be compared to female genitalia are soft and can be bruised (controlled), like the subordinate female.

Works Cited List

•  Smith, Joan. Hungry for You: From Cannibalism to Seduction: A Book of Food. London: Vintage, 1997. Print.
• D.H Lawrence, "Figs". 1923.