In Praise of Pigs

Part of the collateral damage from the COVID-19 pandemic has been a shortage of meat. Many processing plants have been shut down because of outbreaks of the disease. The domino effect of this is that cattle and pig ranchers have no place to sell their animals. A recent news feature showed a pig farm where the mature stock was being “humanely euthanized” to make room for the baby piglets to grow up. You needed a heart of lead to not feel sad about all those pigs being shot. Of course, absent the pandemic, they were headed to a fate that was no happier.

My husband and I don’t eat a lot of meat, other than chicken. We prefer fish. I stopped eating veal altogether years ago. I had seen photos of young calves kept in tiny stalls so they wouldn’t develop muscles and would stay tender until they were slaughtered. Now I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to eat a pork chop again. My husband and I have often toyed with becoming vegetarians. The pig TV feature has me considering this more seriously. It also led me to think about the places that pigs appear in our cultural psyche.

It starts when we’re babies and everyone around us wants to count on our toes. “This little piggy went to market; this little piggy stayed home.” And so on. There’s also the nursery rhyme: “To market, to market, to buy a fat pig. Home again, home again, jiggety-jig. To market, to market, to buy a fat hog. Home again, home again, jiggety-jog.” I sing this to my cats on the way back from the vet, letting them know that we’re headed home. I have no idea if they understand this, but it makes me feel better.

Early on, we learned about The Three Little Pigs, with their varying home construction materials and how those fared against the huffing and puffing of the Big Bad Wolf. Not long after that, we became familiar with Looney Tunes and P-P-P-Porky Pig and his girlfriend Petunia. As our literature selections became somewhat more sophisticated, we were no doubt introduced to Winnie the Pooh and his dearest friend, Piglet. And who can forget Wilbur, the pig who was saved from slaughter in Charlotte’s Web?

The Muppet, Miss Piggy, deserves a paragraph all her own, even if it’s just two sentences. She has an entire media and promotional empire built around her. The literary creation, Olivia, could give Miss Piggy a run for her money. Olivia has her own books, translated into many languages. Her original book won a Caldecott Honor in 2000. Both of these ladies were featured on U.S. Postal Service stamps, Miss Piggy in 2005 and Olivia in 2006.

Many celebrities have (or had) pet pigs, including George Clooney, Ariana Grande (who appears to have won the custody battle with Pete Davidson), the Beckhams, Miley Cyrus and countless others.

Let’s not forget colloquial expressions that feature pigs: a pig in a poke, in a pig’s eye, when pigs fly, male chauvinist pig. OK, maybe let’s forget that last one, but the other three are permanently entrenched in our lexicon. How about going hog wild and its cousin, going whole hog? Did you have a piggy bank? Ever get carried piggyback? Wear pig tails? And one that I could never do without: As happy as a pig in ____. (You fill in the blank.) Let’s end this exercise with a phrase that’s been showing up in political discourse lately: Put lipstick on a pig. I know there are more pig/hog/sow expressions, but my list should give you a sense of porcine usefulness in language.

This essay is by no means a complete survey of pigs in our culture, but I hope it makes you think twice the next time you order roast pork in a restaurant. Maybe the shortage of chops during the pandemic will result in permanent changes to our culinary behavior. For the sake of all those little porkers, I certainly hope so.

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