Bad culinary metaphor watch

LAT coins a phrase, "sausage casing girls," and isn't afraid of extending the metaphor:

THE Sausage Casing Girls are everywhere this summer, their muffin tops hanging over their hip-skimming jeans, clothes shrink-wrapped around fleshy bodies that look as if they've been stuffed — like forcemeat — into teensy tops and skintight pants.

[...]

One is tempted to applaud the Sausage Casing Girls; after all, Southern California is an epicenter of body consciousness, and here they are thumbing their noses at the idea that they must be whippets or Lindsay Lohans to wear the current styles, which for the last several seasons have been exaggeratedly body-hugging and skin-revealing. Perhaps all that self-esteem building has finally paid off.

But this phenomenon does not appear entirely to be about self-acceptance and the conscious abandonment of repressive physical ideals. It is far more complicated than that. Yes, there are plenty of young women who can confidently say that they are happy with their less-than-svelte shapes — and that is to be applauded. But there are many others who in the rush to be fashionable are unable to admit that they are larger than they wish to be, or that their bodies just don't look good in the clothes they are choosing. Instead of reveling in their big, beautiful bodies, many girls instead are deep in denial, pouring themselves into clothes that are putting them in a python squeeze.

Nice to know that since they can't think for themselves, California girls who are big as well as beautiful have the Times to tell them not only how their clothes should fit, but also how to feel about their bodies.

some more:

Here's a passage on Knackwurst in Ruhlman & Polcyn's Charcuterie:

Our friend Marlies Bailey, a native of Germany now living in our heartland, smack in the middle of Oklahoma, and a great fan of sausages, wrote this in response to our question about the name of the sausage: "'Knacken' means to crack, in the literal sense. Knackwurst thus means that when you bite into it, it gives you a good crunchy sound, an explosion of flavor and juices. If you see a woman with a nice firm butt, we say she has a knackiger Asch. Ha-ha! Does that give you the feel of the word? It's a specific kind of sausage that is always boiled or steamed, never fried, and it's often larger in diameter than your basic sausage."

All this reminds me a bit too much of that old chestnut of the the food-politics literature, The Sexual Politics of Meat. Remember this?