I guess it could’ve happened any day, but for some reason, it happened last weekend. Maybe it was because it was Halloween, or maybe I just finally took the plunge and upped my status to completely psychotic, but last Friday, walking down State Street, I realized that many things our society values look a lot like penises.
First I looked at the fake gun in the kid in the cowboy costume kept in his belt. I noticed its long, erect barrel with the two- looped trigger dangling beneath it. Then I looked over to the guy walking beside me, eating a warm, burrito oozing with salsa. A little bit startled and sort of turned on, I looked up into the sky to clear my mind, where I noticed an airplane flying overhead. I traced the plane with my eyes, starting with the two wings emerging from either side and ending at the rounded-off tip.
Defense, sustenance and mobility, three essential aspects of society, all shaped like the male genitalia.
Suddenly it hit me. All of it. Why I was embarrassed to lick ice cream cones around my parents when I was a kid. Or why stroking the rubber grip on my pens in class always seemed to generate a lot of attention once I hit middle school.
Great, I thought, it’s not like so many guys aren’t eager to drop their pants and show you anyway, they had to rig the rest of the world to mimic their pride and joy.
But maybe the penises and their inanimate followers are shaped the way they are because it’s just more of a convenient way to shape things.
I mean, us women can complain about the man’s bond with his anatomy all we want, but when it comes down to it, that “thing” between his legs is very useful to us in more than one way.
So, maybe all the penises of the world are just catering to women. A burrito, if you really think about it, is sort of empowering because we get to eat it. We keep it around as long as we like, and then after some biting and chewing, it’s gone.
Besides, a burrito shaped like a vagina would just make a mess anyway.
And distracting boys with pens in class keeps their minds off the blackboard so that we are guaranteed to set the curve.
When I was in preschool I took the lump of play-dough we were playing with, twisted it into a long, narrow tube (for some reason I thought penises looked like rigatoni noodles), and shouted, “Look! I made a penis!”
My teacher quickly dropped what she was doing and dragged me out of my chair.
“Kiera!” she yelled. “We don’t say that word in here!”
I was humiliated. I hadn’t meant to act up or offend anyone. No one had ever told me I was supposed to be ashamed of penises.
Merely three years later, when I was in the first grade and had my first crush, I distinctly remember thinking there was something severely wrong with me for having those feelings for someone who possessed that diabolic appendage on his groin.
So somewhere between being a toddler and a young child, the switch inside me flicked from penis pride to penis guilt.
I don’t think that’s fair. Just because women aren’t born with them on their bodies doesn’t mean we don’t use them just as much, and there’s no reason to be ashamed of something so prevalent in our society.
So until vaginas and lactating nipples take over the world, we should embrace the penis. A world without them would be very, very hard to come by.
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