People love to take photos of swans. What is it about swans that gives people photographic orgasms? The phrase “photographic orgasms” may not be that wide of the mark. Maybe the curved lines of the swan’s neck suggest something vaguely sexual. Or maybe it’s the (male) lens projecting (female) sexual traits onto a bird that bears those traits regardless of its actual gender.
Nevertheless, think of the moral outrage if I went swan-hunting and served up braised breast of swan next Thanksgiving. While I expect the taste of swan is indistinguishable from the taste of turkey, turkeys are ugly. Swans are graceful. Feminine. They don’t have an old-woman wattle that shakes back and forth. We insist that matters of sex, gender, and age, don’t play into our aesthetics. Nor into our general moral sensibilities. Don’t believe it.
Personally, I don’t get off on swan. My taste is more for the curvy industrial pipe.
