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Going all the way

(article, Caroline Cummins)

The January 5, 2009, edition of the New Yorker features a review of the latest edition of the sex-advice classic The Joy of Sex. First the reviewer, Ariel Levy, compares Sex to the cooking standby Joy of Cooking. Then Levy brings up another sex-advice classic, Our Bodies, Ourselves, and compares it to the hippie standard the Moosewood Cookbook. By now inspired — perhaps under the influence of bacon, that well-known gateway meat — Levy cuts loose in the sex kitchen:

bq. Here’s a trick you might try at home sometime: pick almost any recipe in the “Moosewood.” Now add bacon. You will find that the addition of this decidedly unwholesome ingredient makes the food taste much better. “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” likewise, lacked a certain trayf allure. The revised edition of the book — even the original — is a fantastic resource for educating young women (and very sophisticated girls) about their physicality. But as an erotic reference for adults in 2008 it’s a little vegan.

Poor vegans. They get no respect. And will bacon ever get over its rep for being "decidedly unwholesome?"