Pomegranates

 My younger self was quite ambivalent about pomegranates. My dad (ever industrious) would break into the pomegranate and methodically rip out the seeds, as quickly as possible, depositing them into a bowl for my family to consume, which I did half heartedly. The little seeds were unpleasant and stuck in my teeth, and the juicy flesh was pretty to look at and tasty enough, but nothing special really.

It turns out the problem wasn’t the pomegranate. The problem was me. I had been doing it wrong. 

As an adult, I had the opportunity to buy and consume my own pomegranates. Dear reader, I will tell you what I learned about the perfect (and as far as I am concerned the only) way to eat pomegranate.

Rather than sawing it in half, as my dad had done for us, use a paring knife to make a shallow cut into the fruit, just through the pith but no further, all the way around, and then into sections.

Then, using your fingers, penetrate through the loamy white flesh with your fingers, extracting a segment of pomegranate studded with scarlet arils dripping juice, and exposing the cavernous inside, with fruit glistening like so many garnets in a pithy cave. Take a moment to appreciate the beauty. Glorious. 

Reader, when you attempt this yourself be sure to do it over a large plate or a cutting board. The mess is important here. Give yourself permission to make one.

Continue to use your fingers to extract sections of the fruit, roughly if necessary. Delicately tease the pith away from the arils with the tips of your fingers, lick the scarlet juice that accumulates on your fingertips and suck the fruit away from the pith in large luscious gulps. 

Juice and pith and peel and arils are everywhere, but it is the pure unadulterated pleasure that is key now, the rhythmic prying and sucking and hits of sugar, and penetrating still deeper into fruit yet unclaimed, the rapture, oh the rapture…

Phew. It’s intense. 

While I was staying with my parents I mentioned this newfound love of pomegranate and my mother bought me a package of pre-peeled pomegranate, to my disappointment. As you may have guessed, the pleasure in eating pomegranate comes from the chase, the challenge, the conquest of penetrating to the interior and extracting the fruit myself. Take that away, and all you have are seedy arils and the lackluster pomegranate experience of my childhood. 

At some point in my pomegranate guzzling, it occurred to me (who could’ve seen it coming) that this must be what men feel like when they — ahem — “take” — a woman’s virginity.

I am referring here to, of course, The Myth of Female Virginity, this idea that women have interior treasures that can be penetrated and taken by men, the myth of the youthful and blushing bride, dressed in white, endless comparisons to fruit and flowers and whatnot expounded in length in Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. 

Here, with only a pomegranate, I am able to at least partially recreate the myth. Of course, with none of the institutional power or historical relevance that The Myth of the Virgin has enjoyed, but as I am sating myself with my pom conquest, I get it. I can feel it too.

And for perhaps the first time in my (albeit extremely privileged life) I feel myself to be the Beauvoirian Subject in a sensual encounter, acting upon an Other (my pom) to transcend my emptiness and find at least for the moment a fickle reason for existing. 

Fighting words for the existentialist. Beauvoir’s entire argument in The Second Sex hinges upon the idea that existents in general are empty— without an inherent being or meaning, and defined only by their choices. Men, like all humans, must define themselves by making authentic choices for themselves, but have instead historically opted for the easier route of striving towards meaning by subjugating, controlling, conquering, an Other— a passive person who, like a child, allows all her decisions to be made for her. As she meticulously argues, women are historically and socially primed for that role. In other words, our cultural and social institutions have led us to internalize that it’s a man’s world, and we’re just existing in it for their benefit. 

She argues that the Myth of Virginity (and other myths) are essential to keeping women in the place of Other, as existential fodder for the male gaze. By ingraining in us that women have something that can be taken, or corrupted, some idea of innocence or purity, society prevents women from being adventurous enough, bold enough to assert her own independence and live authentically as a human, not an idea or an Other. “The myth of Woman substitutes for an authentic relationship with an autonomous existent the immobile contemplation of a mirage.” She says.

The whole first half of her book is devoted to understanding such myths, picking them apart and where they may have come from. Because it’s only by understanding them that we can reject them and claim our place as existents with just as much a right to meaning as men.

I have been lucky to live a few years beyond Beauvoir, in a world where a woman not being able to vote is scandalous and where sex happens between two consenting adults who should have equal amounts of agency, not a dude deflowering some fruit or flower metaphor. 

In existential terms, I have very rarely felt being the Other as viscerally or as ardently as Beauvoir must have felt, or countless women during and before her time. But I have also never felt the privilege of being a Subject dominating an Other. 

Until I ate pomegranate.

Maybe that’s why Persephone did it and doomed us to winter (or maybe that’s why the men who invented the myth made such a big deal out of a woman eating three measly pomegranate seeds). If we’re feeling generous, eating a pomegranate in its own small way is an expression of sexual and feminine freedom. 

As a final caveat, you don't have to be a woman to enjoy the sensation of objectifying something. Anyone who has also never experienced the dominant end of the Myth of Virginity who would also find a pomegranate experience enlightening. For that matter, it doesn't even have to be a pomegranate. Grapefruit, peaches (though overdone), even concord grapes might do the trick for you. The trick is to feel entitled to take the literal fruits of your labor with whatever you do eat.

So, in conclusion: buy a pomegranate. Eat it the right way. Learn about and engage in a myth that has subjugated women for eons, without repercussions (because this is an actual object). And have fun :)