What If This Were Enough?: Essays

by Heather Havrilesky

A few minutes in a pricey cheese shop, speaking to a smart person who spends all her time thinking and talking about cheese, has a way of convincing you that high-quality fromage is one of the primary pleasures of life, worthy of its price, particularly if those dollars go into the hands of smart enthusiasts and the gorgeous, enlightened, loving dairy farmers of your vivid imaginations. (This seduction is a big piece of foodie culture’s appeal: We aren’t just shoving tasty stuff into our faces, we’re embracing and supporting some down-to-earth farmer who might count as a kind of a neighbor.) It’s all so sexy and sensual and honorable-seeming: We care about our bodies and we care about the Earth and its products, we tell ourselves. Not like those corn-syrup-swilling slobs sitting next to us on the train, gorging themselves on the products of unsustainable industrial monoculture. This is the ugly class subtext of our earnest adoration of that Humboldt Fog chevre wheel with a layer of “edible vegetable ash.” Our hard-won locavore connoisseurship satisfies our senses and bestows upon us, via its $25-a-pound price tag, the feeling that we’ve paid tithes to the church of gourmet eating. But more than that, it separates us from the less sainted, the less antioxidized, and, meaningfully, the less wealthy among us.