There are so many foods I want to play with but the residency is only a few weeks. I have to keep it simple and stay focused by working with one food theme. The possibilities are endless. Vegetables. Fruits. Meat. Fish. Dessert. So I’ve been digging deep within myself, exploring my identity and my Luso-American cultural diet, and thinking about childhood and adult memories that involve food.
One of my first memories associated with food is being culturally-shamed in school for smelling like fish. My mom cooked so much fish growing up, my coat sometimes would faintly smell like fried cod fish balls (Portuguese dish). Sometimes I just didn’t have time to take a good wiff of my clothes before leaving the house. And sure enough my coat stank up the closet like a codfish. Surely, this marked me deeply as I’ll occasionally smell my coat before leaving the house. But in my own defense, I was not the only one, there were many other Portuguese-Americans in my class and their coats smelled like fish too. It became culturally unifying to say “You know you’re Portuguese if your coat smells like fish.”
Later in life, these terrible memories of smelling like fish resurfaced as jokes about women’s vagina’s smelling like fish became popular, and a fact of life. I can’t think of anything more shameful than wondering if one’s vagina smells fishy, especially as you’re about to get intimate. There is so much covering up of a woman’s natural scent of her body because of all the shame associated with smelling like a fish. So I was so relieved when I directed Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, and read one of the monologues titled, My Angry Vagina. Eve writes:
Women feel shame associated with possibility of smelling like a fish, and go to desperate measures to cover up there natural Goddess scents with sprays and douches.
It didn’t take me long to realize Fish is the work I had to explore in my art work. So I looked in some books to research the history of fish and women. My exploration of the theme of food was unfolding. I browsed these books for inspiration and answers.
Life (UN)LTD: Feminism, Bioscience, Race
The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype by Erich Neumann
The New Peoplemaking by Virgina Satir
The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects by Walker
To Be a Woman: The Birth of the Conscious Feminine by Various Contributors
I learned:
Fish has always been viewed as an aphrodisiac food because of their association with the Aphrodite type Goddess and her sexual implications. The Great Goddess of Ephesus appeared with a fish amulet over her genitals {|}. Even two crescent moon signs make a fish symbol. There was also connection to religion. The fish is the infinity symbol of Christianity.
As Roman Catholics, I remembered we ate fish every Friday during lent and Good Friday, until Easter Day. We also ate fish on Christmas.
My co-worker Maria, of Italian descent, shared with me in a conversation in talking about my project that Italians have a homage to fish called, The Feast of Seven Fishes. Why seven? No one really knows. Some say it is for the Seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church, others say it symbolizes the church’s Seven Virtues: faith, hope, charity, temperance, prudence, fortitude and justice.
Portugal was a global sea power, seafearing nation, and our people have been fishing and trading since the 15th century, and the cod trade accounts for its ubiquity in the cuisine. It’s no surprise we can proudly say we smell like fish! Popular fish served in our cuisine are fresh sardines (especially when grilled as sardinhas assadas), octopus, squid, eels, prawns, lobster, crabs, shrimp, clams, oysters, and a great variety of other fish.
Puzzle pieces began to come together in thinking about fish. I began to look deep within my identity, religion, cultural diet, traditions, sexuality, femininity to explore my cultural-shame and the shameful feelings of being a women all because of this connection to smelling like a fish. Personal memories, reflections, research, provided a safe containment so I could explore my feminist perspectives and Portuguese-American make-up.
It be became clear through the readings, historically there was a positive association with Goddesses/ women and fish. I wondered when, how, and why did all these positive fish/ female/ genital symbol/ Goddess connections turn negative.
To be continued.
