written back when i was on the farm...

Vegetables are like people….

They come in all shapes and sizes, and colors, and variations, and imperfections. Some are long and tall, some are short and stubby, some potatoes in fact have legs and arms and noses, some tomatoes are more oval than round, even when the species is supposed to be round…some vegetables have strange knobs and growths, some apples have many, many knots and holes and very few look like the ones in the grocery store. Just like people who also come in all shapes and sizes, with each different characteristic, of beautiful eyes and crooked teeth, or thin or thick hair, or perfect skin, or large ears. There is so much variation.

But the grocery stores try to tell you as well that vegetables come in one standard form of beauty. All tomatoes should be round and perfect, without blemish and firm. All lettuce leaves should be untouched by harmless holes that occur naturally by insects taking a small snack. All cucumbers should be roughly 8 inches long, have the same dark green shiny color and be straight or slightly curved. And all should be uniform size. And the grocery stores tell this to people, and industrial farms therefore produce this, at the cost of our environment and health and excessive waste, through pesticides, herbicides, and genetic engineering, as well as a streamlining of species marketable. Does this sound reminiscent to ideas of beauty on another plane?

We have also been told by the powers that be, that beauty in people is found in a small amount of standard forms: tall, thin bodies (or buff if male), flawless skin, full shiny hair, straight noses and full lips, large eyes. You see this in the magazines and on TV; they eliminate variation. This is beauty. This is what people are supposed to look like. And this is a very slim margin of diversity found in actual people! It is a recognized fact that there is a manipulation of sorts, and some people accept that this is true beauty, and others see it for what it is, and reject it as the standard of beauty for humanity.

While many people have taken the human beauty image hook line and sinker, others are more scrutinizing. Regarding human beauty, we see these images promoted by media, but we are brought back to reality every other second by seeing the diversity of people around us, on the bus, at restaurants, in classrooms, and experiencing the beauty of that diversity through our relationships. But most people are starting to believe ideas of vegetable beauty, because they have no contact with “vegetables in the wild.” Who works on a farm anymore and actually sees real produce? Who remembers that real fruit, just like real people, sometimes come with imperfections? We have one image of beauty in our, that put forth by grocery stores and agriculture companies. Vegetables of diversity, in their true state (and sweetness, good taste, and nutrition!) are blocked out of grocery stores because they don’t pass the image test. Important to remember that there are other types out there, just as beautiful, which taste just as sweet, and are just as (actually more) nutritious. And sometimes the vegetables with imperfections taste the sweetest.