The fragile masculinity of hot pepper fans – 06/30/2023 – Cozinha Bruta

I read that Pedro Guimarães, former president of Caixa Econômica Federal, is being sued for forcing employees to eat pepper.

Well, what a surprise. Who knew that the guy, tangled up in accusations of harassment and destruction of public property, would be capable of such a clever joke?

Pedroca has expertise in bullying. In addition to putting pepper on the plate of those who didn’t ask for pepper, he would have called “bambi” a subordinate who squeezed lemon in the food to try to disguise the burning. Disney’s stag is a homophobic slur directed at fans of São Paulo Futebol Clube.

It follows from this that Pedro Guimarães attributes a certain lack of manliness to those who prefer not to face a meal full of pepper, pain and suffering.

The worst part is that he is not alone in this nonsense. There is an ingrained feeling among straight men that tolerating very spicy foods is related to courage, bravery and perseverance. Ultimately, to the firmness of character that every male should display to honor the bag.

Angry peppers are in the same category as mastodontic cars, noisy motorcycles, very bitter beers, swearing, spitting on the ground and the ox on the roller. A public sign of virility.

Or someone with unhealthy insecurity, fear of being unmasked in their delicacies. The so-called fragile masculinity.

All marketing of hot sauces exploits the offensive potential of the product. Positive attributes are adjectives such as flaming, fiery, volcanic, nuclear, apocalyptic and hellish.

There is a brand from São Paulo that sells a pepper called Ardência no Regaço. As if the sensation of expelling lava through the fiofo was cool.

A numerical scale was created to measure the damage that a pepper can cause to our mucous membranes. Attentive to the success of incendiary propaganda, pepper growers develop explosive varieties of the plant. Every year a new hottest pepper in the world comes out.

Every time there’s someone showing off on Youtube in some pepper challenge. Not even women escape the outbreak of stupidity.

It’s hard to ignore the primal temptation to beat the pepper. You overcome pain, break social ties and mock the transience of human existence. Just defeat a sarapatel or an acarajé. It only gets boring when the acarajé wins.

I needed to be beaten by pepper for half a century before I understood that it is stronger. I faced a lot of suffering on entry and exit, without gaining any tolerance.

Sensitivity to capsaicin, the compound that makes hot peppers hot, varies greatly on an individual basis. Mine is tall, and that’s fine.

Pepper is a fantastic seasoning. Each variety brings its own aromas, burns more or burns less. A little heat is good; self-inflicted pain is the masochism I’ve learned to avoid.

Then I travel to Salvador with my 10-year-old son, and the kid wants to know if the Bahian woman puts Trinidad Scorpion or Carolina Reaper in her acarajé.

There we go again.

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