Why My Desire to Eat Ice Cream During Sex Actually Makes Perfect Sense
Food isn’t only for sustenance just like sex isn’t only for procreation.
He surprised me with a question. My pussy was wet almost instantly. As I grabbed a pint of Ben and Jerry’s from the freezer he growled mischievously: “Do you want me to eat your pussy while you eat your ice cream?” Little did he know he was about to fulfill a sexual fantasy I’d had for at least 15 years.
Thankfully, the present version of me jumped at the chance. My past self would have been too insecure to do anything but freeze. When I first started having sex, I couldn’t focus on much in the moment besides my stretch marks and lopsided breasts — and that was without the ice cream. The experience made me curious about where my fantasy came from in the first place. I also wondered — is there a connection between eating for pleasure and fucking for pleasure?
Fulfilling my fantasy was everything I’d hoped for.
The sweet, cold, creamy richness melting in my mouth while his hot, wet tongue massaged my clit was the perfect erotic blend of sensations. Desire coursed through me like a buttery caramel ribbon through a scoop of ice cream. Seeing his eyes meet mine was almost too intense, so I closed them instead.
I briefly lost myself savoring the texture and temperature of my ice cream as sexual pleasure melted over me. As he looked up at my face from between my legs, he probably saw my belly rolls, my stretch marks, and a double chin as I opened my mouth to eat another bite with a loud moan.
Here’s why eating ice cream during orgasm was one of my top sexual fantasies for years.
My fantasy originated from a movie dream sequence in one of my favorite raunchy comedies — “The Sweetest Thing.” If you’ve seen it, you know that it’s kinda bad — like 26% on Rotten Tomatoes bad. Still, I love it without shame.
In one scene in the movie, Cameron Diaz’s character falls asleep on her couch. She just got home after declining an invite to a hotel party from a hot dude she met at the club. She dreams blissfully of what might have happened had she accepted his invitation. The dream starts with the camera zoomed in on her “O-face” while her partner is hidden from the audience’s view under the covers of a massive bed in a fancy hotel suite.
After she cums, he pops his head out from under the blanket to tell her he wants to give her head “every hour on the hour for the rest of our lives.” Room service arrives with a massive tray of assorted ice creams in crystal bowls — including one the size of a punch bowl. He informs her that he’s had all the calories removed “just for her.”
As she starts to eat, he tells her that he just can’t wait another hour to go down on her. He climbs back under the covers and starts licking again while she spoons her ice cream into her mouth, smiles, and moans.
Watching that scene stuck with me. Why?
Depictions of authentic female pleasure are rare in popular movies.
As discussed in the 2006 documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, depicting a woman’s orgasm face is more likely to earn a film an NC-17 rating than a man’s. Major studios won’t even release movies in theaters that are rated above R. Therefore, they’re less likely to be seen by mainstream audiences unless the filmmaker cuts any shots of what the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) calls “aberrational behavior.”
To get their films released, filmmakers are forced to censor their original vision and artistic meaning which ultimately means erasing depictions of female pleasure that need to be seen in our society. Sometimes women enjoy sex — a lot. Women enjoy sex in positions other than missionary and for reasons other than making babies.
It’s probably not surprising that there’s an “Unrated” version of The Sweetest Thing. Thanks for nothing, MPAA! Since censorship kept me from seeing very many authentic depictions of female pleasure, it makes sense that The Sweetest Thing’s dream sequence transfixed me. People should see authentic depictions of women’s pleasure as they’re becoming sexually aware. Otherwise, they’ll either learn to accept womens’ fake orgasms as the truth or they’ll know women are faking and not care.
Depictions of sex in mainstream media and porn focus on men’s pleasure.
Many films include the supposedly hilarious trope of women who feel so bored by sex with their partners that they feel compelled to fake loud, theatrical screaming orgasms to end the mundanity. God forbid we bruise any fragile male egos by simply being honest about what feels good (and what doesn’t). Meg Ryan in the diner scene in When Harry Met Sally comes to mind.
Sex is much hotter as a collaborative act between participants meant for intense pleasure or deep connection. Unfortunately, for women, both sex and femininity can feel performative for the sake of men. Porn seems to have only made things worse here.
Many women feel pressured to be pretty, hairless, thin, and fuckable. And we have to try hard to be this version of “sexy” constantly while looking like we didn’t try at all. Then we have to cum on command with no foreplay. Compared to that bullshit, receiving cunnilingus while eating a bowl of ice cream does seem like a dream come true.
As refreshing and hot as it is to see a woman uninhibited by insecurities during sex — why would Cameron Diaz be insecure?
If perfection is the only acceptable standard for a woman’s appearance based on portrayals seen in our media, this sets damaging, unfair, and unrealistic expectations for half of society to live up to. Failure to measure up against these impossible metrics leads to low self-esteem. And as you probably know, low self-esteem in women and a sense of entitlement in men can certainly lead to some godawful sex and a massive orgasm gap between the sexes.
Maybe if our society didn’t expect every woman to look like Cameron Diaz in 2002 and fuck like a porn star, then the average woman could easily make dreams like the one in the movie come true. The whole scene speaks to the calorie counting nonsense pushed toward women by an unhealthy culture, while ironically having a thin, pretty, popular white actress as the main character. Her body type is unattainable for most no matter how strictly they count their calories.
Anyone can enjoy receiving oral sex, but usually, it’s cis women who are taught early in life from a variety of sources around them, that they exist to be pretty, palatable, and sweet for the benefit of others — kinda like ice cream itself, in a way.
Diet culture, misogyny, and fatphobia create insecurities that run so deep in most women that this often isn’t something many feel they could let their guard down enough to enjoy. Let’s face it — even doctors seem to categorize people as moral failures based on their diet and exercise habits. Then it spreads into the culture at large.
Michelle May, M.D. summed it up well when interviewed about the concept of food shaming in Women’s Health:
“It’s normal in our culture to obsess about food this way and to judge our choices and to label foods as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ — Here’s the problem: When we judge food as being ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ we also judge ourselves and other people as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ depending on what we ate.”
- Why We’ve Become So Obsessed with Judging Others’ Food Choices — and Our Own
It’s no wonder that disordered eating runs rampant and women would be afraid to eat in front of men — let alone during sex. Women in our culture are shamed for enjoying both food and sex. It’s something that seems forbidden, shameful, and taboo even though it shouldn’t be. This taboo is rooted in anti-fat bias and misogyny.
Try to jump to any conclusions you like and make any suggestions you want about how you think fat people should live — but they still deserve to enjoy sex and dessert as much as someone who aggressively hits the gym and follows a restrictive diet in the name of health.
Examples of men prioritizing their female partners’ arousal and orgasms are rare in media — that’s why it’s a dream sequence.
Our culture and the men portrayed within its media aren’t always willing enough to take the time to prioritize women’s arousal and orgasms. The popularity of mainstream porn often leaves me feeling like sex has morphed into performance women must undertake rather than a collaborative activity meant for pleasure or deep connection between participants — or both.
It makes perfect sense that this seems like such a good dream or fantasy for a woman.
Much like in my fantasy with my partner, the man in The Sweetest Thing dream sequence orchestrated the whole thing without having to be asked. That is, in a way, almost sexier than the sex or the ice cream they combined with it.
And this wasn’t just a one-time thing to get him brownie points or sex — he said he wanted to focus on her pleasure for the rest of their lives!
Having a moment with my partner that was focused entirely on my pleasure made me feel treasured and desired. Getting my pussy licked while tasting chocolate, vanilla, and cookie dough felt like a little rebellion and a middle finger to all the insecurities I’d faced in my early 20s. For once, my body image issues didn’t prevent me from having the sex I craved.
Some foods have a reputation for making us horny.
Chocolate is often thought of as an aphrodisiac. It’s probably no surprise that I became so aroused by the idea of eating chocolatey ice cream while receiving cunnilingus. Once I saw the movie, my brain cooked up some amazing fantasies. So once I got over my insecurities, I finally ran with it. Yet, eating almost any food I enjoy can make me vaguely horny. Sometimes I unintentionally moan aloud after the first bite of a delicious meal. What’s with that?
Am I just a weirdo?
Apparently, it’s not that weird.
A 2015 study published in the scientific journal Neuron on our brains’ pleasure systems describes the overlapping areas that explode with activity in response to pleasurable stimuli like eating or having sex. The study refers to this idea of our overlapping reward centers as the “Common Currency Hypothesis.”
Pleasures of food, sex, addictive drugs, friends and loved ones, music, art, and even sustained states of happiness can produce strikingly similar patterns of brain activity. — An implication of the common currency hypothesis is that insights into brain hedonic substrates gained by experiments using one kind of pleasure, such as food “liking”, may apply to many other pleasures too.”
— Pleasure Systems in the Brain by Kent C. Berridge and Morten L. Kringelbach
Our brain’s “common currency” likely explains why combining taste with touch is inherently sexy.
Pleasure combinations are an orgy for the senses. Food isn’t just for sustenance much like sex isn’t only for procreation. Otherwise, why would fine cuisine taste so good? Why would every human culture have centuries worth of traditions involving the enjoyment of food with a group?
Eating fosters human connections and relationships. Many of the most important moments of our lives and many of our dearest traditions as humans involve eating with people we love and trust. Enjoying delicious treats with someone we love (or at least love to look at) during a sexual encounter can be intensely intimate — and yes, healthy.
Pleasurable experiences like cumming and eating ice cream aren’t just mindless acts of hedonism.
Orgasms also boost our immune systems and our moods. Sex and pleasure are good for us because mental health is health. Neuroscientists analyzed the brain’s reward centers to cure depression — anhedonia. It’s the opposite of hedonism — which is seeking out pleasure for pleasure’s sake.
It’s no coincidence that the word “hedonic” comes from the same ancient Greek root as the word “pleasure.” And the word “pleasure?” Well, according to the study I mentioned earlier, the word pleasure comes from the same ancient Greek root as the word “sweet.” They’re linguistic neighbors.
Pleasurable tastes and pleasurable sexual experiences are neurochemical neighbors.
Neuroscientists attempted to map the cycle of reward recognition in the brain at stages of “liking,” “wanting,” and “learning.” They discovered through neuroimaging scans of our brain’s pleasure centers that there is a ton of overlapping activity in a specific region of the brain during each stage of the reward cycle.
“Human neuroimaging studies indicate that surprisingly similar circuitry is activated by quite diverse pleasures, suggesting a common neural currency shared by all. Wanting for rewards is generated by a large and distributed brain system. Liking, or pleasure itself, is generated by a smaller set of hedonic hotspots within limbic circuitry.”
— Pleasure Systems in the Brain by Kent C. Berridge and Morten L. Kringelbach
The same circuits that fire in our brains to make us like sex also fire to make us like ice cream.
Taking a bite of ice cream and getting horny from it while I’m fully clothed may not be so bonkers after all. It’s basically “sitophilia” — a fetish based on “sexual arousal involving food.”
Craving enjoyment of sex and food simultaneously is probably due to similar activity in the brain’s “orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), particularly in a mid-anterior subregion” in response to pleasurable stimuli like sweets and sex.
This finding is different from past studies on pleasure systems concluding the mesolimbic dopamine system was responsible for creating psychological reward chemicals. This is known as the “dopamine pleasure hypothesis.”
Pleasure’s subjectivity warranted further study. It’s undeniable that everything feels different to everyone because of how varied human anatomy can be. Yet pleasure is also objective in that it’s physically evident, as seen in animals and humans who exhibit the same facial expressions when tasting something sweet or bitter. Hopefully, future studies will provide more insights into how our brains process pleasure and rewards.
Sex isn’t about laying there and looking good while someone else gets off and then falls asleep. Women are so often portrayed as a commodity to be used for the sexual pleasure of men. As for me, I’m not here to be consumed — unless you’re referring to cunnilingus, of course. I’m here to create a neurological fireworks display inside my brain’s pleasure centers by consuming ice cream while I have multiple orgasms.
I’ve felt enough displeasure and disappointment. I’ve spent enough of my time prioritizing the needs of others without considering my own. I’m glad my sex life is different now. Pleasure is good for me and my health. It’s a relief knowing that I can trust the person I’m with to care about those things too. From now on I will prioritize my pleasure and health — and seek out people to fuck who will do the same. Everyone should. It’s good for you.
Sure, it may not be the “healthiest” thing in the world to eat an entire pint of ice cream every time someone eats your pussy. Still, it’s worth acknowledging that the misogyny and anti-fat bias keeping so many people from enjoying pleasure in our society is decidedly unhealthy.
But it’s delicious when men attempt to fix these issues while making women’s pleasure a priority. That’s my favorite flavor. Two scoops of that, please.
