Consider the oyster
an erotic history of everyone's favorite bivalve
Let’s just get this out of the way: we all know what oysters resemble.
Is that it? Is that all there is to say this time?
No, of course not :)
Instead, I want to tell you that several years ago, I went on a Bumble date to Golden Boy, a pizza joint in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. My date was a very sweaty and nervous man, and after several minutes of uncomfortable chit chat in line, he ordered Golden Boy’s famous clam and garlic pizza. Out it came, piping hot, melted cheese languidly hanging off the plate, and smelling distinctly of, well, clams and garlic. The thought of kissing him, or even really continuing to converse with him, while the scent of the two lingered felt viscerally revolting to me -- it’s one of the only dates I have fled. “He ordered CLAMS and GARLIC,” I told my friends, feeling justified in my flight. Interestingly, both clams and garlic are considered aphrodisiacs. Reflecting, it wasn’t so much the clams but the thought of kissing him at all that sent waves of horror undulating up my spine. Now, if my girlfriend were to order clam pizza (an extremely likely scenario), I would still find her just as kissable -- and in fact, we made clam and garlic pizza in our first few months of dating, which I found to be delightful and not at all a deterring factor in our courtship.
The point here, and why I’m not just sticking to the obvious conclusion I laid out in my first sentence, is that context is everything. A touch on the butt may be quite continental, but from the wrong person, or in the wrong place, or at the wrong time, it’s anything but arousing. So it makes sense that when it comes to aphrodisiacs, the same concept would apply.
Aphrodisiacs are defined as substances that increase sexual desire, sexual attraction, sexual pleasure, or sexual behavior. And none is so famous as the oyster, of which people have said many things.
“Think of oysters, try not to think of sex” - Rebecca Stott (this is true and she should say it)
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“There are many reasons why an oyster is supposed to have this desirable [aphrodisiacal] quality, embarrassing if true… most of them are old wives’ tales. Most of them... have to do with an oyster’s odor, its consistency, and probably its strangeness. All of them, apparently, are fond but false hopes, and no more to be relied on than a horsehair dropped into a trough in the full of the moon will swim about and hiss, an honest-to-God snake.” - MFK Fisher (an honest-to-God counterpoint by the mother of food writing herself)
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“The shells of oysters, those seductive tears of the sea, which lend themselves to slipping from mouth to mouth like a prolonged kiss, are hell to open… moist and turgid in their shells they suggest delicate vulvae.” - Isabel Allende (go off!!!)
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“The world is your oyster, they say, so fill it with pearls of semen.” - Trebor Healey (I don’t like this one)
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“I don’t know how you can eat those things… they remind me of a guy cumming in your mouth.” Jenny, the L Word, season 6 (an obviously wrong opinion or maybe I’m just biased against Jenny)
Oysters are eaten all over the world, from Japan, to the coast of Central America, from the New York Blue Points to the West coast Kumamotos. But oysters’ aphrodisiacal genesis is said to come from Ancient Greece, when the goddess of looooove, Aphrodite, was born. Her origin story goes a little something like this: Cronus cut off his dad Uranus’ balls and threw them into the sea, and from their “foam,” out she popped, some say on the shell of an oyster. Hot! This association was carried into the orgies of ancient Rome, where they were a favorite treat. One Roman emperor, Clodius Albinus, was said to have consumed 400 oysters in one setting. Obscene, but has to be true because I read it in a JSTOR article.
While Clodius may have eaten 400, the runner up is the OG Certified Loverboy (srry Drake) Casanova, who was said to have eaten 50 raw oysters every morning to whet his sexual appetite. He also used oysters as a seduction technique, placing oysters in the mouth of perspective lovers and then retrieving them with his own:
We sucked them in, one by one, after placing them on the other’s tongue. Voluptuous reader, try it, and tell me whether it is not the nectar of the gods!’ - Giacamo Casanova
Voluptuous reader (this is what I’m calling you all from now on), need I remind you once again of the appearance of the oyster? Because of it, oysters, like the peach (discussed in last month’s newsletter) have also been dotting the erotic subtext of art and culture for centuries. In Dutch paintings ranging from the 16th and 17th centuries, the oyster acted as a way to address issues of morality, sexuality, and excess. And in the Victorian era, when people were famously prude and buttoned up, it is no coincidence that the two most famous pornographic magazines in circulation at the time were called The Pearl and The Oyster.
But these are all erotic ASSOCIATIONS. What about the intrinsic aphrodisiacal properties of the oyster? What about the SCIENCE? This is something people say to me a lot. A 2005 scientific study from Italy found that mollusks contain certain amino acids that increase sex hormones in rats -- causing media outlets to claim that YES oysters ARE aphrodisiacs! But really, not only was the study done on rats not humans, but it didn’t even actually involve the use of oysters themselves.
So if the science about improving your junk’s spunk is bunk (hehe), is there anything more to the oyster being an aphrodisiac?
In my research, the history of the oyster as an erotic substance seems to be entirely Euro-centric, despite oysters being eaten all over the world. And it’s not that Japan, and Latin America, where oysters are both harvested and consumed, don’t have their own long lists of libido-inducing substances -- they do. But it was hard to find evidence (beyond the famous oyster scene from Tampopo), that oysters rank particularly high — that said, if you have insider knowledge of the oyster’s status outside of the U.S. and Europe I’d love to hear about it. But for the meantime, if the sexiness of the oyster is in the eye of the beholder -- what this really brings us back to is...CONTEXT.
To me, oysters have obviously sapphic connotations, but again, there is surprisingly little evidence of this being a “thing.” I found a book where queer sexuality and gender is explored through the eyes of an oyster girl, and an article where oysters are claimed to be the signature food of power lesbians. Even MFK Fisher who, as we know, was not convinced by the aphrodisiacal quality of the oysters perhaps doth protest too much, as the gay agenda almost won her over by way of the oyster. According to sex and food historian Rachel Hope Cleaves, a school event during which Fisher’s consumption of oysters spurred flirtation by one of her female classmates was only a hint of Fisher’s future relationships with women. There must be more somewhere… and yet… and yet. Perhaps this scene from Ratched (a show I have admittedly not watched) is all the proof we need.
Beyond their vulvar qualities, I’d argue that the true lasting aphrodisiacal power of the oyster is because of its marker of status. People are undeniably horny for money and power, and for many centuries, oysters were a rarity. Once upon a time, oysters could only be eaten locally, lest they spoil, or were specially flown in for those who could afford them. But as oyster harvesting technology improved in the 19th century to the point of near overfishing, oysters began to become available to the masses, eventually becoming the food of the working class. In Black communities on the East coast in particular, oyster shucking was a common profession, a legacy which started during slavery, but eventually became higher paying than most professions and offered the ability to be your own boss. One of the oldest free Black settlements in the U.S. on Staten Island is a community named Sandy Ground, which largely maintained its independence through the oyster industry. Given this history, it’s hard to imagine that the oyster’s aphrodisiacal qualities were front of mind while eating and working for survival.
Now oysters have yet again become a food of the wealthy, signifying luxury and access. They are to be popped in one’s mouth after the popping of a champagne bottle. Americans today eat only 3 oysters a year, while New Yorkers in the 1800s ate nearly 600.
But, much like Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn’t help but wonder: if oysters had stayed relegated to a “peasant food” category, would their aphrodisiac reputation have been extinguished? What does it mean about how we define a food’s “sexiness” when something’s allure depends entirely upon the status of those who eat it? And can we really imagine a sexy food devoid of the context of the identities of who’s eating it?
Until next time, I leave you with a recipe of my very own aphrodisiac oyster concoction -- with ingredients such as garlic, ginger, radish, and chili peppers, that are also considered by some to be aphrodisiacs.
If this ends up making you hot to trot, well, I warned you.
Aphrodisiac Oysters Two Ways
Ingredients
At least a dozen raw oysters
Ginger Radish Mignonette
¼ finely diced radish
¼ finely diced shallot
1 tsp grated ginger
¼ cup rice wine vinegar
1 tsp sugar
Pinch of kosher salt
Heat vinegar, salt, and sugar over stove until steaming, and sugar dissolves into vinegar.
Add radish, shallot, and ginger and whisk together
Chill for several hours before serving over fresh raw oysters
Harissa Butter
¼ cup butter, unsalted (softend)
2 tbsp harissa
Kosher salt to taste
Using either a fork or a food processor, mix together ingredients until they are thoroughly combined.
Put almond sized amount of compound butter on shucked oyster on the half-shell
BBQ for 2-3 minutes until oyster is cooked and butter is melted
Enjoy :o)