Happy Valentine's Day everyone (or whatever day you happen to be reading this)! To commemorate this time where couples spend the day loving each other and the rest of us single people love ourselves, I obviously decided to write about an act that's all about love: eating the booty. No, I won't be talking about how to do it or explaining what it is, but I do want to talk about why our popular culture is so obsessed with this sexual act.
If you are not at all comfortable with anything sexual or if you're in "polite company," I encourage you to stop reading. This will not be a lewd sex talk, but I must respect people's possible discomfort.
You're still reading? Great! As I said, I won't describe what "eating the booty" is, so if you don't know, I leave that responsibility upon you (but be prepared because it is sexual). From now on I will assume you know what I mean when I say "eating the booty" or it's other euphemisms, but chances are you're a Millennial who knows what I'm talking about anyway (unless you're not, in which case: Hi Mom, I bet you thought that college education was being put to good use).
So where did the term "eating the booty like groceries" come from? Well, if you're like many young adults, you heard the term come from the popular rap song "Post to Be" by Omarion, Chris Brown and Jhené Aiko. The song, which was released in late 2014, really only has one memorable lyric; which is a testament to this terms power because it's only mentioned once in the entire song. The lyrics are as follows, "I might let your boy chauffeur me, but he gotta eat the booty like groceries, but he gotta get rid of these h**s for me."
The act itself has certainly been around much longer than the song though. The song was just a venue for the act to make it's way into mainstream fame (or infamy depending on your perspective), similar to how "50 Shades of Grey" brought BDSM into the spotlight. The sex act was more widely known as tossing salad or rimming before the song was released. However, trying to understand the origins of the act is impossible and irrelevant to my argument anyway; I mean, for centuries people have been finding inventive ways to have sex, it's not like everyone kept a sex journal like Nicky from "Orange is the New Black," and if they did we certainly wouldn't find it.
But back to booty eating in today's world. Why has it been so publicized recently? As I said, it's one song lyric that's the responsible for the term's frequency taking off in early 2015 (see the graph below). Well, in my opinion, it is a form of what I will call "socio-sexual transgression", which is a fancy way of saying it makes sex taboo again -- which is actually a good thing. As society progresses and the more we realize sex is a natural interaction that everyone has been a part of in some way (think how you were created), the more we need to find to concepts that push the boundaries of social acceptability.
For years, oral sex, pre-marital sex, gay sex, masturbation and non-monogamous sex were all considered sinful and a moral wrong in more Puritanical times. And I'm sure many people still feel the same way, but the direction our society is heading (at least from a millennial perspective) is more sex positive.
As long as consent is present and people and using the right precautions, mostly everything is fair game. If you're in my age group, then I'm guessing most of the things I just listed don't shock and horrify you to the core (if they do, remember I warned you we'd be talking about sex). However, I am willing to bet that there's more discomfort around booty eating. Tell your friends you had typical oral sex nobody really cares as much; tell your friends you ate the booty, now that's a shocker, and if you don't believe me, try it for yourself.
Even writing this article took some careful deliberation. People are very progressive here at Whitman — we even had a lecture about masturbation during orientation — but I'm sure this article will still throw people a curve ball. But here's the kicker, my writing of this article and the production of "Post to Be" are helping our culture become more progressive (which is also my way of trying to get this article published). Look at the popularity of the terms eating the booty, analingus and rim job over time on the Internet -- they have a brief explosion of frequency and then steady decay.
It's becoming talked about so much that it's the new normal; it's less interesting to talk about. It's still somewhat taboo, but I'm willing to guarantee that won't be the case forever. If you need evidence, just think back to how one could be imprisoned for having gay sex until the Supreme Court case "Lawrence V. Texas" in 2003. So thank you Omarion, Chris Brown and Jhené Aiko for moving our society along. And most importantly, thank me for writing this article.
(Graph Created Using Google Trend)
