Two concrete examples of prejudice about pigs

This is Eddy. He is currently the only pig staying at the Berlin animal shelter, where he came after his family abandoned him because of "changed living conditions".

This weekend the shelter participated in a local "family weekend" event, and invited the public to lots of fun activities and a market with good food and pet related goods. The weather was really bad, but quite a lot of people still came.

When I found Eddy, he made my heart sing. I talked to him in pigspeak and took several dozens of photos of him. While I was standing there, some other people came along, too.

Among the more neutral comments I heard was, "Yeah, you know, some people keep pigs in their apartment."

An older couple came along and stared at Eddy. Then the woman started to make faces, noises and gestures implying that there was a strong bad smell there.
But there was no bad smell at all! Only the smell of straw!

Then a family with two children, maybe 7-10 years old, came along. The girl kept muttering, "He's so fat."
Eddy isn't full grown yet, and he is quite slender for a pet pig. He doesn't even have a double chin. In accordance with his breed standard, he has a little tummy, but it would never cross my mind to consider him "fat" because of that. (Here is a full-figure photo of Eddy.)
I asked the girl why she said he was fat, but she just stared at me and left without a word. (The parents, as usual, were totally autistic towards their children and didn't exchange any thoughts with them at all.)

The only sensible explanation I have for these comments is that these people have learned that pigs are supposed to smell and that pigs are supposed to be fat, and they can't break free of those false images even when the actual reality is right in front of them.

Breastfeeding pigs

Tori Amos (left) has appeared breastfeeding a piglet on the album sleeve of her record Boys for Pele (about which she talks a bit in this interview), alienating hundreds of "fans" (not true fans, I guess) and apparently shocking the hell out of bigot America.

Breastfeeding pigs is in fact something fairly normal among certain tribes in New Guinea.

But there, it's not really anything more eyebrow-raising than "a low-tech version of U.S. sheep ranchers bottle-feeding orphaned lambs", as Answers.com's article on pigs puts it. Taking care of the pigs, the only domesticated animals they have, is one of the main tasks of traditional New Guinean women.

The traditional society in this area doesn't have that much equality between the sexes. In Women Speak Out! A Report of the Pacific Women's Conference (1976) - from where also the black and white photograph below right is taken, it is written in the section about common legal problems for women in Papua New Guinea:

"[Wives] were expected to work long hours in the gardens, then walk home carrying huge loads of firewood and food, then go to the river for water, then cook dinner - and through it all, tend the children. While they did all this work, the men occassionally hunted or fished - or mostly sat under the trees and 'protected' the women from enemy attacks."

As for pigs,

"Women did all the work of caring for pigs - even breast-feeding sick piglets - but their husbands owned them and decided when they would be traded, killed for a feast or given to someone else."

A normal day for traditional New Guinean women might look like Neil Nightingale describes it:

"Each day they take the animals to the gardens and tether them close by. If they are constructing new sweet potato mounds the women allow the pigs to root around in the ground they are about to prepare. In this way the pigs get to feed off any remaining sweet potato tubers while helping the women by churning the soil. In the evening the pigs accompany the women back to their homes. Some spend the night in specially built sties; others sleep in the same huts as the women and their children. While food is prepared for the evening meal the animals are thrown scraps and even whole sweet potato tubers."

Women and pigs have a fairly close relationship:

"The pigs often have names and are treated as part of the family, being stroked, fondled, and gently spoken to as the children prepare for bed. By tickling their udders and imitating the action of a suckling piglet females can be encouraged to lie down quietly on their side to be gently de-ticked."

In the last sentence it becomes obvious that Nightingale doesn't know very much about pigs, as he explains the pigs' lying down on their side when they get their tummies rubbed as some kind of mechanical reaction to the feeling you get from suckling piglets. Mind you, also a barrow or boar will lie down on his side when he gets his tummy rubbed, simply because it feels good.

The New Guinean pigs, though seemingly treated like pets in our culture, will eventually be killed, but, again, not like regular food animals in Western culture.

As Joyce Kilmer writes,

"Pigs are the only domesticated animals and their value in this culture is a difficult concept to grasp. Although nurtured by women, they are the most important measurement of a man's solvency."

Pigs have great economical, political and mystical importance. They are used to buy brides, sacrificed to appease ancestral spirits and to pay compensation for killing members of another tribe (Nightingale describes how he witnessed about twenty pigs and the equivalent of a thousand UK pounds in cash being handed over as part payment of a large debt for the killing of one man), and in many other important ceremonies. In some parts, "huge pig-giving festivals" are held once every few years, in order to "impress neighbours".

Festival of Lard Lovers - Lutsk, Ukraine

Every fall, the town Lutsk celebrates their pork production, in a "daring attempt at global branding" - "to once and for all convince everyone that lard is not food - it's the pride of the nation; to prove that lard is an excellent medical and prophylactic remedy; that Ukrainian traditions and customs are an excellent base for any modern cultural arrangement, and also a self-advertising for the nation as a valid member of the international community".
The slogan of the festival is "Lard-lovers of the world, unite!"

Last year, among the attractions of the festival was a beauty contest. Two dozens of pigs were dressed up like film stars: "The ladies were exceptionally beautiful - in little lace knickers, satin skirts, fishnet stockings, the little snouts lightly accentuated with lipstick. The cavaliers stern and elegant - in hats and vests."

The winner of the contest was the lovely sow Yulya (apparently named in honour of "the princess of the orange revolution" Yulya Timoshenko):



IotD has some more pictures.

Well, it's rather morbid, as even these most beautiful pigs will be slaughtered and eaten in the end ... It's like Two Thousand Maniacs, where some yankee tourists are lured into a small town in the deep South for a certain centennial celebration ... Aww, widdle piggy, you're so nice and cute and funny ... okay, let's kill you!