Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2013. It is a news item on complaints against a planned event at El Bodegón de Carlos in Castellón and a Groupon body sushi deal; the outcome of the complaints is not covered.
Body sushi is a tasting of traditional Japanese food served on the naked body of a man or a woman. It isn’t new (it has been around for decades), but in Spain it’s a fairly original and innovative format, with the added twist that it’s proving very successful. Call it effective marketing that manages to fill restaurants for these food-tasting events.
Of course, some people forget that this is Spain, where there are those who neither eat sushi nor let anyone else eat it. The owner of the restaurant El Bodegón de Carlos in Castellón (in the Valencia region) has been the target of an inexplicable attack by the Observatorio de la Mujer (a women’s rights watchdog) and the Observatorio de la Publicidad Sexista (a watchdog on sexist advertising), which have called for the event this businessman had planned to be cancelled. More than 130 complaints have piled up claiming that events of this kind undermine women’s dignity.
The restaurant owner says the complaints are absurd. “We can’t be undermining women’s dignity, because both male and female models take part in the event,” he says, adding that he hasn’t invented anything at all: this practice is shown on television programmes and nothing happens. On top of that, the event would be held behind closed doors for a group of 40 people.
Just today I saw a Groupon discount voucher for a body sushi experience. Will they ban that too?
According to the newspaper El Mundo, one of the complaints came from Marina Albiol, a United Left (EU) member of the Valencian regional parliament, who considers the practice degrading to women and says that in the 21st century we cannot allow women to be treated as mere objects of consumption.
Our personal opinion
I have nothing against associations that defend women’s rights, and here in the 21st century I’m not scandalised by this kind of practice either. In this case I don’t think defending those rights is relevant, especially since it involves a man and a woman who will be doing this voluntarily and freely, without any kind of coercion.
By that logic, we’d have to close the nightclubs that hire go-go dancers (objects of desire), the bachelor and bachelorette parties where men and women alike are demeaned, and the magazines that sell racy covers (make no mistake, they don’t sell because of their business section), plus 80% of Spanish cinema, where fully naked bodies are a regular sight. We’d even have to ban Formula 1 races, because those models aren’t hired for their knowledge of mechanics.
I’d remind these associations that they may be crossing the line that separates a fight for rights from fanaticism or unfounded feminism.
That’s my personal opinion, at least.
Featured image: Alpha, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
