It is widely recognized that women have often been “forced to take a secondary place in the world to men” (Beauvoir 84). Woman is generally considered “the other” or the “second sex” and is used as a commodity for the carnal gratification of male desire. This essay aims to examine this truth, primarily asking the question: "are women's bodies consumable?" in particular in reference to the play 'The Art of Dining' by the American playwright Tina Howe, and the film 'Like Water for Chocolate' directed by Alfonso Arau and based on the novel of the same name written by Laura Esquivel. The essay will study the metaphorical trope of women as objects that have the capacity to produce and also as objects that can be consumed, used, and ultimately used up, focusing specifically on these two pieces of literature. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay To effectively respond to the question of female consumption, the use of the word "consumable" must be clearly defined. In this case, "consumable" can mean a good intended to be eaten, drunk or consumed. With this in mind, the consumption of femininity can be taken literally or metaphorically. The literal interpretation of women as consumable or even edible is clear when we consider physical acts such as breastfeeding, but this essay will take a metaphorical approach, instead examining examples of figurative consumption of female characters found in the works. The concept of metaphorical consumption by women has been widely studied by feminist theorists, writers, artists, and more. For example, in her study “Mutilating the Body: Identity in Blood and Ink,” Kim Hewitt writes about the American performance artist and poet Karen Finley, who “casually undresses on stage and covers her body in raw eggs and glitter, parodying the process of making the female body delicious, consumable, and desirable.” (p.97) Finley uses her art form to make the same point that Esquivel and Arau make in theirs; that there is a mentality that keeps “women more close to the body and men closer to the rational” (Tiengo, 79), which creates a duality and a separation of women from men, in which the masculine ultimately and figuratively becomes the eater and the feminine becomes the eaten “The Art of Dining” is a two-act play that chronicles the events that occur one evening at a newly opened restaurant on the New Jersey coast. Throughout the play, Tina Howe uses food as a character-specific barometer; each character's identity is defined by their appetite and attitude towards food. One of these characters, Elizabeth Barrow Colt, has a particular aversion to food and eating, which is rooted in her upbringing and in particular her mother's bizarre eating habits. In Act II, Scene II, Howe presents the reader with the first representation of the female form as consumable. David Osslow, a confident, well-dressed middle-aged man, sits with Elizabeth Barrow Colt, a short-sighted writer of an extremely nervous disposition, "in her thirties and afraid of food" (Howe 6). As the director of his highly successful publishing company, David meets with Elizabeth to discuss a series of short stories she has written that he wants to publish. During the meal, Elizabeth shows a sort of manic outburst, in which she describes in detail the meal ritual she experienced daily as a child, describing her mother's compulsive behavior at the table; “my mother played with [her food]:shaping [her food] into mounds and then mashing it again with the fork” (Howe 52-53) and then continuing to say that “…before [they] sat down at the table she always put a new stain of lipstick on the table… a dark, pulsating red” (Howe 52-53). Culturally and historically, lipstick and red lipstick in particular has been an important symbol of feminine mystique and femininity in general, and in light of this, Howe's depiction of Elizabeth's mother's behavior becomes considerably more profound for the reader when considering the female form as consumable. Elizabeth delves into her mother's lipstick, describing how it "wiped off her fork in waxy clumps that stained her food pink, so that by the end of the first course she would turn everything into a kind of... rosy puree." (Howe 52-53) The reader is left with a clear perception of the woman as consumable here; the lipstick of Elizabeth's mother's mouth seeps into the very meal the family is consuming, which is highly indicative of her very femininity becoming intrinsically linked to her nourishment and operates as a metaphor for this very femininity becoming edible. curious to note the use of lipstick as a means to ensure that femininity becomes a consumer good in another case. At the beginning of the same scene, as Elizabeth tries to apply a layer of lipstick to her lips, she drops the tube into the bowl of soup. She fishes the tube out of the bowl and, after finally retrieving it, passes the bowl to David, who eats the rest of the lipstick-stained soup, strangely using Elizabeth's spoon instead of his own. In this way, David becomes the consumer and Elizabeth becomes the consumed, as she devours her symbolic femininity and femininity that have been tied to the soup by her lipstick. This is not an isolated incident of representation of the female form as consumable in the work. At one point during the sixth scene of the second act, Elizabeth tells David about her mother's suicide attempt, "turned on the gas, opened that big oven door mouth, and stuck her head in" (Howe 84). Elizabeth's mother functions solely as a means through which Howe can comment on the consumption of femininity, despite being in the play only as a memory of another character. Considering he's a nameless and inconsistent character, this image of committing suicide by cooking himself is quite interesting to provide. While not technically a representation of the woman as consumable, it certainly implies that she can become edible if treated in the same way we would treat food. This idea is even clearer as a metaphor, because Howe implicitly compares the mother to food when Elizabeth exclaims: “…her head [was] actually…cooking! …almost after having grilled herself as an extraordinary delicacy…some exotic…roast!” (Howe 85) and once again, with a statement from the mother herself, “'I bet I would have tasted damn good!' she used to say, smacking her lips” (Howe 85). In what seems to be the perfect sequel, Herrick Simmons declares that “…breasts give life” (Howe 88), a belief echoed throughout Like Water for Chocolate , particularly in the scene where Tita breastfeeds her nephew, the son of her lover Pedro and her sister Rosaura. This is one of the few examples of literally expendable women in one of these pieces. Her ability to breastfeed her grandson is miraculous and is just one of the many examples of magical realism present in the film and book, as it can only be explained in a phantasmal sense. Esquivel justifies its ability to be literally consumed in two different approaches. First, illustrating that Tita feels an innate needto feed herself: “If there was one thing that Tita could not resist, it was a hungry person asking for food” (Esquivel 70) and suggesting that this maternal instinct to feed herself is of such an intense nature that it manifests itself in her body and allows "her virgin breast to suckle her grandchild" (Like water for chocolate), and thus allows her body to become consumable. Second, conceptualizing the consummation of Pedro and Tita's love for each other through the shared experience of eating. This concept begins with a scene where Pedro gives Tita a bouquet of roses. She holds roses to her chest and they prick her skin, and her blood falls on the petals, with which she cooks a dish of quail in rose petal sauce. Her passion, her intense and lustful desire for Pedro and her whole being are infused in the meal and “this is how it invades Pedro's body; voluptuously, ardently scented and absolutely sensual. "(Like water for chocolate) It is through the experience of consuming Tita's being during this meal that the lovers can metaphorically consummate their love, leaving Tita no longer chaste or sterile, but fruitful and consumable;" in in an instant, Pedro had transformed Tita's breasts from chaste to voluptuous without even touching them." (Like Water for Chocolate) During this same meal, Gertrudis is so overcome with burning lust as she consumes the manifestation edible of Tita's passion that sets the shower stall on fire. It even begins to emit the same smell as the rose-scented meal, to which a villista boss responds with a fiery fervor reminiscent of rushing to the table after smelling a delicious meal that is served there. In this way it could be suggested that Tita is certainly not the only female character represented as consumable. In addition to cooking quail in rose petal sauce, Tita cooks part of herself in many other dishes in the course of history. At the beginning of the film, the viewer watches Tita cry with anguish into the dough of a wedding cake she makes for her sister's sister. marriage to Pedro. As in the case of the rose petals, her tears inject into the food the deep emotion from which they are produced, and after eating the cake, the guests at the wedding immediately become unhappy, begin to sob, and eventually “[take] part in a collective vomiting." (Like water for chocolate) Likewise, Tita's chili peppers in walnut sauce make Esperenza and Alex's wedding guests overcome with sexual desire, as they eat this materialization of the sensuality of Tita. In the opening chapter of the novel, the narrator explains that when mother Elena cut onions during her pregnancy, the sting of the onions hit Tita's sensitive eyes so hard that she cried in the womb. This violent crying would lead to labor early, drawing Tita into the world “with a great flood of tears that spilled over the edge of the table and spilled onto the kitchen floor (Esquivel 10) Besides being another example of magical realism, this image makes yet one.” once the feminine is literally consumable; “when... the water had dried from the sun, Nacha swept away the residue that the tears had left on the... floor. There was enough salt to fill a ten-pound bag – it was used for cooking.” Curiously, in this case it is not the female body that is consumable, but a product of that body that is consumed: a mixture of amniotic fluid and tears, a poignant but almost disturbing combination that evokes an overwhelming discomfort in the reader, who is forced to confronting the distressing reality that is the representation of the feminine as consumable. As reviewed, both The Art of Dining and Like Water for Chocolate address the.