The Art of Pleasure
Pleasure. According to Merriam Websters Dictionary Pleasure is Desire, Inclination. A state of gratification. A source of delight or joy. What is your relationship to pleasure? How do you feel about it? What thoughts come to mind when you hear the word pleasure? Are their any judgements that come up for you? Do you feel any kind of way about others and their freedom or resistance to experiencing or exploring their relationship to pleasure?
Pleasure feels like a word that has so many different opportunities to express itself. My focus today on the word has a lot to do with how we enjoy our food. How often does food bring you pleasure? Is it the food itself, or is it the setting? Does cost need to be a factor, and what are those costs? Its complex in my humble opinion.
I think about the relationship many of us have with food, and for now I will speak of my own experience. From being a little girl and encouraged to be a part of the “clean plate club” an elite organization only those who finished all of their food could be a part of. How even if I didn’t like something I was compelled to finish everything on my plate. I think about how that paired with this culture waste reduction morality we exist in really makes food a place a complicated place to explore. Add in access due to environment, zip code, socioeconomic status, time, freedom to engage, individual relationship to food, and many other variables I can’t think of in this moment and ones encounter with not only the ability to explore food but willingness to try new things makes it complicated and at times overwhelming. There is so much guilt I have when throwing away a batch of cookies that didn’t make it. How suffering and sorrow also is another facet of that experience.
In all of this talk in the previous paragraph, did you think at all about the intersection of blackness, gender identity, ability, and orientation may impact the way one may experience pleasure with their food. As a Queer identifying Black Woman, there is something radical I feel about indulging in pleasure. How I have to seek out and combat years of conditioning where mine or anyone who looks and experiences life as i do may have had to fight for a solid relationship with pleasure. How there are layers of guilt I combat due to my access to certain environments, the imposter syndrome felt when I have the “audacity” to move in places that weren’t created with me in mind. Finding pleasure in my food in an act of radical resistance. In choosing to explore and rewrite the ways I get to engage with food. From the way I create new recipes in the kitchen, to the ways I celebrate my ancestors with love while mixing different ingredients, how I connect my past and present to the many wonderful people around me. It is with great pleasure, love, and intentionality that I get to spend time in a space, honing my craft, refining my skillset, learning and growing, not with numbers as my focus, but love and pleasure.
Food, and most especially for me, dessert, is an extension of the person who made it. Those products for consumption mass produced by machines are just that, things made by machines that lack love and soul. Sure they can be good, delicious even, and especially in the presence of great company pleasure is experienced all around. I mean I’ve been known to have my way with a pint of ice cream. But, when you bite into something where you taste the love within it, do you notice how it hits different, or does it? How do you change the way you react to it, how your body responds? Do you notice the slight feelings of bliss that wash over you? Like that wow factor when you consume something made with intention isn’t always something that you notice everyday, or in every interaction with food. Like so much of our culture and our value is built around what we can produce, what we can do, own, purchase, wear. But what about what you can feel, and why does that seem to be guarded in terms of access.
