babies are best roasted with rosemary and garlic

[balmofgilead]

Yesterday I found myself trying to explain to people how the Yiddish word "pulka" means "thigh" and is most often applied to chicken thighs and...baby human thighs, when people are remarking how chubby and cute a baby human's thighs are. Pulka actually does mean thigh, but people seem to use food metaphors with kids' bodies, and it all sounded so utterly bizarre all of a sudden. I've never been one to use weird food metaphors for kids ("oh, that baby is so yummy I could eat him up") or even gush about babies being chubby, and when I tried to explain that to random 20somethings who didn't grow up immersed in Baby Culture it came off sounding disturbing. In the non-spawning 20something age bracket, eating humans is sexual, not...whatever it is when people make ridiculous comments about  babies.

Comments

[ginamariewade.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's a lot more commone for the Jewish women I know to talk about kids being yummy and delicious instead of cute or whatever. I just took it to be a cultural idiom, like saying staying by someone instead of staying with someone.

[balmofgilead.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting. I haven't been around that many baby-infatuated people who aren't Jewish, so I didn't realize it was unique. It's kind of disturbing when I think about it, though.

[ginamariewade.livejournal.com]

The people I grew up around will go on about a child being an angel straight from heaven, or a little doll, or something like that. Not yummy and delicious.

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

Manna comes from heaven. And manna is delicious.