PASTA POWER

Like many of us, I have been reading the reviews of Naomi Wolf's new book Vagina with increasing hilarity and disbelief.  There’s a bit about pasta that really has me (and many others) on the floor.  If I may quote.  Wolf writes,

“A friend of a friend … said he wanted to throw a party celebrating my book deal…

Alan told me that he was going to do a pasta party at which guests could make vagina-shaped pasta. I thought that was a funny and sort of charming idea …

     When I arrived at the party, though, there was a slightly ominous, mischievous stir at the far end of the loft where the kitchen was located. Alan was in the kitchen, surrounded by a crowd of guests. I made my way there, with some trepidation. As I walked toward Alan, I passed the table where the pasta maker had been assembled. A group of people stood around it – fashioning, indeed, little handmade vulvas. The objects were rather sweet looking: like the real thing, the little pasta sculptures varied – each person's experience (or body, perhaps) informing his or her interpretation. There was an energy of respect and even would-be celebration from that table, from both the men and the women.

     Alan appeared at my side. "I call those 'cuntini'," he said, laughing, and my heart contracted. A flash of tension crossed the faces of many of the women present. The men's faces, which had been so open, and some so tender, became impassive. Something sweet and new, that had barely begun, was already closing down.

     What is really interesting to me is that after the ‘cuntini’ party, I could not type a word of the book – not even research notes – for six months, and I had never before suffered from writer's block. I felt – on both a creative and a physical level – that I had been punished for "going somewhere" that women are not supposed to go.”

Oh come on.  At this point in history is there anywhere that anybody isn’t supposed to go?  I can understand that she might be offended by the word cuntini – it’s not a very lovely word - but how many writers can allow themselves the luxury of a six month writer’s block?  Anyway, as we see, she got over it eventually.

I wonder how she feels about penis pasta?  Toad in the hole?  Spotted dick?