Chocolate Temptation

“- Why is there no organization such as Chocolate Anonymous?

  - Because no one wants to quit.”

I had difficult time to choose what to write about. I tend to be too serious in my previous blogs, too heavy and almost revolutionary. Too much strain on me (and maybe on you too)! So I thought, I need something light to write about, something pleasurable. And than I heard this commercial on TV “…it is sooo light and fluffy with just the right amount of chocolate…” I knew right away – I am writing about chocolate. I love chocolate and I had a serious craving in the moment.

First thought was – I don’t even need to write anything, I can just display chocolate advertising pictures and videos, put some extracts from books about chocolate and it would be self-explanatory (tempting thought of an overtired and exhausted college nontraditional student). But my inner voice told me it would be almost cheating. And here I am, researching everything and anything possible about chocolate (and as always I generate so much information, that I don’t know what to choose and where to start).

Some say it’s a staple food. Others say if chocolate is not in heaven they don’t want to go. Some call it a healing herb and for others it is linked to the power and status. A closer look reveals that chocolate is not just a food (there is even debate on that – is chocolate a food or drug) but a whole empire with accompanying social characteristics – there is stratification, inequality, power relations, gendered roles and gendered media marketing, oppression and slave labor (good luck on escaping serious topics!). There are books and movies about chocolate, blogs, articles and scientific research, dedicated fans and even chocoholics. I even found an annual West Coast Chocolate Festival. There is a whole world of chocolate out there. Chocolateland! Do you know that they’re building the first chocolate theme park in Amsterdam?

It would be too ambitious to even try to tackle with all the social problems of this magic land, so I decided to look at how chocolate is presented as the symbol of sexuality (am I trying to merge two of my classes here – gender studies and sociology of food? Maybe! J )

In the book entitled Better Than Sex: Chocolate Principles to Live By, British author Theresa Cheung states that it was her long-standing “love affair with chocolate” that prompted her to write this little pocket-size guide to better living through chocolate —“without feeling guilty.” According to her “a massive 60 percent of women would rather have a one-to-one with a chocolate bar than have sex!” The intimate connection between women and chocolate has long been recognized.  Richard Barber’s book Chocolate Sex: A Naughty Little Book begins by stating: Women lust after chocolate.  Their desire for it is overpowering; no matter how hard a woman tries to restrain herself with visions of tight black dresses or tiny bikinis, she knows in her heart she will ultimately succumb to chocolate’s seductive call.

There is a category of food labeled as comfort food, and chocolate is identified as being the most craved for. The term “comfort food” first was used in 1977 in Webster’s dictionary and refers to food consumed to reach some level of enhanced emotional state. According to the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America comfort food consumption has been seen as a reaction to emotional stress, and therefore, as a key contributor to the epidemic of obesity in the United States. Laurette Dube’s research showed that consumption of comfort food is triggered in men by positive emotions, and by negative ones in women. (How interesting – men eat chocolate when they are happy and we eat when we feel bad? If we follow this line of thought than if women eat more chocolate than men, it means that women are generally in a negative mood all the time. And if men eat chocolate when they have positive emotions, and they don’t crave chocolate as much as women, does it mean that men are in negative mood too? Oh, my – I am really confused here J )

In the book “Chocolate: a healthy passion", Shara Aaton and Monica Bearden compare men’s and women’s chocolate cravings. They say,  both men and women enjoy chocolate, though women tend to be more vocal in their “needing” chocolate (p.165). Eighty-five percent of men and 86% of women claimed to give in to their craving whereas only 57%  of women reported a positive affect after their indulgence. Interesting, why do women feel guilty after eating chocolate? See, we eat chocolate to feel better and instead we feel guilty about it?

A modern feminist philosopher, Susan Bordo in her article, “Hunger as Ideology,” talks about dessert advertisements. In the Victorian era, the portrayal of women eating and demonstrating sensuous surrender to rich, exciting food was considered a taboo. Victorians had conduct manuals that educated elite women on how to eat in a feminine way. Display of any desire for food or participating indulgence and overeating was forbidden. According to Bordo modern women violate this taboo by seeking emotional satisfaction, intensity, love, and excitement from the food they consume (Fahim).

The consumption of a sweet food high in fat is naturally taboo for women and presumably the idea of  “sinfulness” comes from here. To overcome women’s hesitation, marketers and advertisers had to be creative. Susan Bordo believes that advertisers have replaced this food taboo with a sexual one. They have turned chocolate into a sexual, self-indulgent, private experience that invokes a taboo similar to that of masturbation. (I hesitated for a moment here – I guess I have taboo on using proper sexual terminology). The consequence is that now when a woman feels the urge to eat chocolate, which she knows will damage her figure, she is already equipped with an inner-response to reason with her moment of self-restraint: she believes that chocolate consumption represents and enhances her femininity via satisfying her sexuality. This precisely contradicts her knowledge that chocolate will harm her feminine appeal (Fahim).

Bordo argued that “advertisers are aware of women’s insecurity about their bodies; therefore, many advertisements aimed at women portray the ideal female body. The women who advertise for chocolate are generally slender, confident, upbeat and sexy individuals who appear as though they do not eat that is high in fat.” As a rule, chocolate commercials are narrated by a woman with a smooth sensual voice and ends with a beautiful woman eating a piece of chocolate very sensually. These advertisements are manipulations of reality all in order to sell a product.

Oh, I really should stop writing and get some chocolate. As a good consumer, trained and manipulated properly, I believe that I will feel (not necessarily look) more feminine and desirable. It’s too much temptation to handle. It will be a sweet surrender.

But before I go, here is some more dessert for you - enjoy!

CHOCOLATE TONGUE TWISTER: A CHEEKY CHIMP CHUCKED CHEAP CHOCOLATE CHIPS IN THE CHEAP CHOCOLATE CHIP SHOP.

References:

Aaron, S., Bearden, M. (2008). Chocolate: A Healthy Passion. NY Prometheus Books.

Barber, R. (1994) Chocolate Sex: naughty little book.Warner Books.
Cheung, T. (2005). Better than sex: Chocolate pronciples to live by. Conari Press

Fahim Jamal (2010). Beyond Cravings: Gender and Class desires in chocolate marketing. Sociology at Occidental College Scholar.

Nutter Katleen. Chick Chocolates?
http://www.londonfoodfilmfiesta.co.uk/Artmai~1/Chic.htm

Photoes and Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzOchsY4RhQ

http://hubpages.com/hub/amsterdam-sex-drugs-and-chocolate

http://whatscookingamerica.net/Cake/MoltenChocolate.htm

http://humanbodyart.blogspot.com/2008/11/chocolate-body-art-paintings-in-sexy.html