Sydney bar turns naked women into fruit platters, and they are not alone!

You want to throw a kick-ass party and you need to do something over the top to make it memorable, and maybe even grab a headline or two in the media. How do you take things up a notch?  You  get women to lie naked on a table, with fruits covering her privates. You’ve properly heard of objectification of the female body, here’s a whole new definition for it. [caption id=“attachment_2410372” align=“alignleft” width=“396”]  Twitter @Melanie_James[/caption] Cruise Bar, a popular Sydney bar had some half naked women in flesh coloured underwear lie topless on a feast table. Cut and whole fruits were placed  strategically over their body parts. Slices of watermelon arranged down the parting of her legs, grapes on her crotch, and bananas on her breast - they would make even PETA cringe. According to reports on social media the models were even made to hand feed guests. Women’s right groups have called for a boycott of the bar due to the ‘objectifying’ of women at the venue’s relaunch party on Wednesday night, according to the Daily Mail Australia. And rightly so. And oh, they were not just on ‘display’. Guests at the bar were supposed to pick fruits out of the ‘platter’. So yes, people picking grapes up from a woman’s pelvis, scooping fruits up from between her legs and fiddling with ‘food’ displayed on her breasts. All this while, the woman lies almost motionless on the bar top. It checks off all the boxes women today are outraged about. Sexist? ü Misogynistic? ü Demeaning? ü Objectifying women? ü Forget how hygienic the idea of picking food out of a stranger’s body seems, the fact that this exercise was being encouraged in full public view suggests that the bar owners came down to treating the woman as the sum of her body parts - not a person. This is a misogynistic idea that feminists all over are fighting for, the same idea that in other places and cultures promote and sustain violence against women. However, in its defence, the Australia bar can point fingers at several other instances of women being treated as serving tables.

Remember the Vice News article titled “I Work as a ‘Human Table’ at Indian Weddings Because I’m a White Girl?”

For a while now, there has been a new trend to have ’exotic’ women turn into serving tables. It’s a rage across the world, especially popular in United States, United Kingdom and Australia. It has made its way into some ostentatious Indian weddings too.  According to a Firstpost article , in fact, “most countries seem to have organised agencies, with websites like the corporate entertainment professionals in the United Kingdom, advertising the ’theme table girls’. One agency in the United States call these girls “magically surreal yet functional way to present hors d’oeuvres, desserts, place cards, or party favors”. And it’s not just tables. You can get tree girls and peacock girls as well as a run-of-the-mill Geisha Girl.”  Yeah, you read that right- you can hire girls as ’tables’. In Japan if you shell out enough dough your favorite sushi peddler would also serve sushi on the naked body of an ‘attractive’ woman. Believe it out not it’s an art, that even has it’s own name called Nyotaimori. And no, it’s not just a scene out of that “Sex and the City” movie.

Apparently, Nyotaimori Sushi is something that evolved during the reign of the last emperor of Japan. It involves removing sushi from a human form for consumption. But it’s definitely not discriminatory, it can feature both male (nantaimori) or women (nyotaimori). That’s at least a small mercy - the practice involves men as well as women. However, it’s still disturbing to think that men and women will be turned into platters for sushi!