Forget today’s omnipresent repurposed mason jars and charmingly rugged slabs of oak, seemingly pried straight from the walls of your uncle’s ski cabin. There’s a new sovereign in the world of ill-conceived restaurant tableware, and it’s facing a torrential storm of backlash long before it ever had the chance to become de rigueur.
We’re talking about the subversive use of the human body as both plate and unmoving server, all wrapped up in one boundary-crossing sweat-sack. After all, who doesn’t salivate at the thought of the ensuing existential crisis that comes with dining off of another of your own species, especially if your platter happens to be a naked woman?
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The people behind Cruise Bar, an Australian cocktail bar and lounge located right on the water at the Overseas Passenger Terminal in Sydney’s Circular Quay, are probably wishing they had stuck with the old standby that is the plate or platter.
At the relaunch party of the upscale bar, food was arrayed on the bodies of naked women, who were also hand-feeding the guests. The restaurant proudly posted an Instagram shot of a reclining woman—for all appearances, naked—with fruit strategically placed on her private parts. “Amazing night to officially launch to the public. More pics to come tomorrow! #cruisebarsydney #launch #sydney,” they naively wrote.
Then the Internet went totally apeshit.
Melinda Tankard-Reist, a woman’s advocate, told the Daily Mail Australia that she feels the use of women as serving trays objectifies women: “I hope people decide to boycott Cruise Bar en masse for treating women like trays.”
“Someone has to tell this company it’s the 21st century and this is not appropriate. I hope they’re punished,” she said.
Academic Melanie James of the University of Newcastle said, “I just feel sick, sad and angry. Confirms why we need feminism.”
Others, of course, were not quite so upset.
“No one was forced to do anything. There were near equal male/ female models. A good night,” tweeted @mattdegroot_. According to the Daily Mail, however, male models simply walked around the room in bathings suits or pants.
Others pointed out the similarity to the Sex and the City episode when Samantha arrayed herself out in her birthday suit for the pleasure of her latest conquest—covered in food, of course. The practice of eating sushi off naked women, or nyotaimori, has been a thing in Japanese culture for decades.
But the gender-equality crowd was having none of it.
“Using a naked woman’s body as a business promotion in this context is inappropriate and outdated. Men used prostitutes bodies’ as dining tables in this manner in brothels,” activist Felicity Wright said. “I don’t know one single female, colleague, family, or friend, who would not feel demeaned by attending a function at which a woman was acting in the same manner as a prostitute.” In short, she found this to be a “distasteful publicity stunt.”
Cruise Bar has so far refused to comment. Who can say for sure whether the would-be tastemakers were left with the bitter tang of remorse or if the unsavory press is exactly what they hoped the relaunch would, in fact, achieve. One thing is for sure: we’d still prefer an out-of-place and unwieldy slab of reclaimed wood as our go-to plate over this.
