I was in Whole Foods not too long ago, scanning the produce shelves for cheap, comely comestibles. I honed in on a crush of green beans, but just as I near the beans, a middle-aged couple approached the adjacent zucchini display. I idled behind them as they made their selection.
“Do you think these are big enough?” the woman asked, holding a six-inch long zucchini up for inspection.
“Well, apparently it’s the standard size,” the man said, rifling through the pile of uniform-proportioned zucchini.
“They look awfully small. Maybe we should get two for each person. One might not be enough for me,” the woman says as she started indiscriminately grabbing at zucchini.
As you can imagine, well, I almost barfed. The indecorous waggishness with which the couple bandied on about the length and girth of zucchini was perverse, and I turned away in woozy disgust. I then stumbled into a stack of cucumbers. My flailing, helpless hands grasped nothing but filthy, filthy gourds! I pushed myself away and tried to flee to the cheese department, but my body reared uncontrollably into a tiered display of bananas. The elongated stiff fruits pressed themselves against me with fervid urgency. I managed to suppress the scream that welled in my throat and crawl to safety in the coffee and tea aisle.
Scenes like this happen to me a lot, given that women are allowed to freely handle and purchase sensually-shaped produce. Maybe I’d be happier in the Muslim world, where women protected by laws that ban them from buying “male” vegetables such as cucumbers. Men are allowed to buy “female” vegetables such as tomatoes, although she is later taken from him and smashed into a pulp on the ground. As she should be, the plump little harlot.
