Althouse: Hipster cannibalism.

January 8, 2015

Hipster cannibalism.

"I made smoothies out of it for three weeks. I had a home birth, so my midwife and my doula took it and cut it up into 20 pieces and froze it, and every day, I put it in a blender with strawberries and blueberries and guava juice and a banana, and I drank that s**t up."

The actress Gaby Hoffman told People Magazine.

59 comments:

Gahrie said...: eh...call me when she eats it raw and bloody just after birth like the other animals do....; 1/8/15, 12:53 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: It's human tissue. Freakin' disgusting. But...transgressive!; 1/8/15, 12:56 PM
traditionalguy said...: Of course as a man I have no right to judge a woman's body parts. So eat it up with a good Chianti. Just don't name it first.; 1/8/15, 12:59 PM
CatherineM said...: Ugh. Gross. Call me when she eats pieces of her own liver with a nice chianti.

Her eyebrows drive me crazy. I know that's shallow, but they look like 2 caterpillars. Totally distracting.

I saw her in Transparent on Amazon. Could not get into that show. Prefer her work in "Field of Dreams."; 1/8/15, 12:59 PM
Rob said...: This should be the story in the A block of the evening news. After all, if it bleeds, it leads.; 1/8/15, 1:06 PM
tim maguire said...: I'm not up on my biological genetics. Is she eating herself or her child?; 1/8/15, 1:07 PM
Amexpat said...: Years ago, I was offered a dish of porridge made from cow placenta as a welcome meal on a Norwegian farm. It was supposed to be a delicacy. I took a pass.; 1/8/15, 1:10 PM
Ken Prescott said...: Um. I'll take "How to get Kuru" for $1,000, Alek.; 1/8/15, 1:13 PM
Ficta said...: Pikers!; 1/8/15, 1:17 PM
Curious George said...: "Ken Prescott said...
Um. I'll take "How to get Kuru" for $1,000, Alek."

Funny. But it's AleX.; 1/8/15, 1:17 PM
Heartless Aztec said...: Really? Really?; 1/8/15, 1:20 PM
Anonymous said...: What else could she do? She already had all the lampshades she needed.; 1/8/15, 1:21 PM
CStanley said...: @tim maguire- both.; 1/8/15, 1:24 PM
Revenant said...: I was going to ask "why the hell would anyone want to eat a placenta", but then I remembered that I don't give a shit.; 1/8/15, 1:25 PM
Marty said...: After the home birth of my first son, I looked at the placenta and thought, "looks like really fresh liver. I wonder how it would taste; I'm sure it's really good for you..." Now, I regret not cooking it up. Maybe next time...; 1/8/15, 1:32 PM
Mark said...: At least she came up with a novel way to get attention, I guess.

Never heard of her, nor anything she is in beyond the Dunham show that screams for attention like an air raid siren and is hard to not have heard of.

Hope she enjoys her 15 minutes of fame.; 1/8/15, 1:33 PM
Patrick said...: It is amazing what whacky shit people will do because they "heard something."; 1/8/15, 1:33 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Would she have eaten the placenta if the pregnancy was the result of rape by a campus republican?; 1/8/15, 1:35 PM
Donald said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/8/15, 1:55 PM
Anonymous said...: This would have seemed much more grotesque before I learned that nurses everywhere used to put 'healthy' shit in milkshakes and give it to the patients to repopulate the colon and help with intestinal issues or somesuch.

That was pre-naturopathy, just the regular way of doing things in the fairly recent past.; 1/8/15, 2:02 PM
Skyler said...: When my wife went to birthing classes (which are generally worthless, by the way, birth will happen regardless of the number of classes you take) the instructor mentioned at each class that there are lots of good recipes for the placenta. I tried, in vain, to find the anti-cannibalism laws in Texas. Alas, eating people seems to be legal.; 1/8/15, 2:04 PM
Amichel said...: "Most authors indulge in little eccentricities when working, and, if the time should ever come that your name is brought before the public notice it would be advisable to develop some whimsical habit so as to be prepared for the interviewer, who is sure to ask whether you have one." How fitting.; 1/8/15, 2:08 PM
Meade said...: With [Gaby], I learned how to eat small green chili peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to [placenta] (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy).; 1/8/15, 2:10 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Hipster cannibalism was part of the Walking Dead storyline end-of-last / start-of-this season.; 1/8/15, 2:10 PM
richard mcenroe said...: Maybe this country needs to be invaded. We could give up both coasts and call it a win...; 1/8/15, 2:20 PM
Meade said...: In some cultures, eating placenta would be tantamount to eating the dead twin sibling of the live newborn baby.; 1/8/15, 2:21 PM
richard mcenroe said...: Cows eat their placenta because they desperately need the protein back.

What's hipster Hoffman's excuse? Her significant other can't drive all the way to Trader Joe's?; 1/8/15, 2:22 PM
Gahrie said...: This would have seemed much more grotesque before I learned that nurses everywhere used to put 'healthy' shit in milkshakes and give it to the patients to repopulate the colon and help with intestinal issues or somesuch.

Oh it is even better now!

Now you can get a transplant of someone else's shit to repopulate your colon.; 1/8/15, 2:24 PM
Gahrie said...: http://jezebel.com/5946543/poop-transplant-saves-womans-life; 1/8/15, 2:26 PM
Captain Curt said...: Do any of the older commenters here remember the early Saturday Night Live fake commercial for "Placenta Helper"?; 1/8/15, 2:33 PM
Michael McNeil said...: Um. I'll take “How to get Kuru” for $1,000, Alek.

You can't give it to yourself! (Kuru is a human prion disease, similar in that regard to mad cow disease, that was passed on within a particular tribe, the Fore people of New Guinea, by ritual cannibalism of the deceased.); 1/8/15, 2:35 PM
Unknown said...: I ill not be able to watch a Gabby Hoffman performance without thinking about this, and therefore will not.; 1/8/15, 2:39 PM
CStanley said...: @Captain Curt- yes, I remember Placenta Helper. For some reason the most memorable SNL commercials revolved around the eating of disgusting things- like that one as well as Bass-o-Matic and Shimmer Floor Wax (the floor was that was also a dessert topping.); 1/8/15, 2:59 PM
TCR James said...: It's not authentic cooked placenta unless your lumbersexual boyfriend chops it up atop a recycled Brazilian teak chopping block, using a Gransfors Bruks artisanal axe, and cooks it on your Viking Range in a vintage cast iron pot. Best served with a light chablis.; 1/8/15, 3:07 PM
Richard Dolan said...: Althouse must like the weirdness of these stories. I recall, from the early days of this blog (2005?), a post about a Chinese artist who grafted the head of an aborted human fetus onto a dead bird, and called it art. Still haven't forgotten such an ugly image after all these years.; 1/8/15, 3:24 PM
lemondog said...: .....with a menses shake?

Wild animals eat their own placenta in order to not draw predators.

Placentophagy apparently is not for everybody; 1/8/15, 3:57 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "It's not authentic cooked placenta unless your lumbersexual boyfriend chops it up atop a recycled Brazilian teak chopping block, using a Gransfors Bruks artisanal axe, and cooks it on your Viking Range in a vintage cast iron pot. Best served with a light chablis."

I note that Hoffman's placenta is not cooked at all!; 1/8/15, 4:15 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I'm guessing placenta.; 1/8/15, 4:26 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: and I was right...; 1/8/15, 4:27 PM
James Pawlak said...: Should abortionists be required to do the same with the dead meat they produce?; 1/8/15, 4:31 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Roasted grasshopper is bad. Grasshoppers are too big. Crickets are better but still not good.

There is a local woman who converts raw placenta into capsule form for consumption. I don't know of anyone I know eating placenta though.

There are lots of butcher shops around. I guess if you really want to skip a stop on the way home from the hospital, this placenta eating is an option. Alternatively, you could have someone else do the shopping.; 1/8/15, 4:32 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: "I note that Hoffman's placenta is not cooked at all!"

Placenta sushi. Too hip by half maybe.; 1/8/15, 4:34 PM
Sam L. said...: Self-cannabalism. Couldn't be more full of herself it she'd swallowed her arm!; 1/8/15, 4:43 PM
The Godfather said...: Gaby is well-named (though misspelled).

"Eating People Is Wrong" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGW-qnlrMjs

I am a robot; 1/8/15, 5:12 PM
The Godfather said...: Hah! Fooled you!

I am NOT a robot.; 1/8/15, 5:13 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: It's not authentic cooked placenta unless your lumbersexual boyfriend chops it up atop a recycled Brazilian teak chopping block, using a Gransfors Bruks artisanal axe, and cooks it on your Viking Range in a vintage cast iron pot. Best served with a light chablis.
Q:What kind of light chablis?
A:Oh, it doesn't matter. Whatever is cheap.; 1/8/15, 5:53 PM
Bob R said...: In my experience it's not an authentic placenta meal unless it's directly eaten from the straw, steaming in the glow of a heat lamp, and your body is covered with wool. (You're giving me breach birth flashbacks. I can still smell the lanolin. I need to go wash my arm to the elbow.)

I believe in keeping my carbs low, but this paleo crap is just dumb.; 1/8/15, 6:08 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: '"Like judgment" could be a thing. I know some persons on faceblook, and I like the idea of creating anxiety for them by asking themselves to consider how they might be considered judgmental, or Judged mental as it were, and why that might be reason enough to sit out the culture wars lest one becomes conservative, where all the fun resides." - previous thread comment applying more and more to this thread by the byte.; 1/8/15, 7:26 PM
D. B. Light said...: So Lena Dunham is not the craziest person on that set.; 1/8/15, 7:43 PM
Quaestor said...: I'm not up on my biological genetics. Is she eating herself or her child?

Paternal genes dominate the formation of the placenta, so it's neither. It's a case of toxic female devours the substance of her mate -- i.e. the black widow syndrome.; 1/8/15, 8:13 PM
Big Mike said...: I know the placenta thing is hotly contested and debated, and also grosses many, many people out.

And for the rest of her career any time I see her acting I'm going to thinking about "the placenta thing" and I'll be totally grossed out.; 1/8/15, 8:16 PM
cubanbob said...: It's borderline criminal stupidity. She should have had the cord blood extracted and stored instead. That is a real potential life insurance policy in the event the child and possibly the parents need stem cell treatments.; 1/8/15, 8:24 PM
PB said...: Did she saute it with fava beans and pair it with a nice chianti?; 1/8/15, 8:44 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: The question becomes, more and more, what type of person that could afford to travel to Madison, Wisconsin would choose to do so via Chicago?

Natives know about Chicago and the politicians.

I know many great Illinios residents that frequented Devils Head Resort and Convention Center.

Shitting and fucking won the Cold War and they will, the fucking shit, defeat all digital enemies, on a scale disregarding man if Jesus isn't ever present.

!; 1/8/15, 8:50 PM
Quaestor said...: Actually this whole umzist megillah can be put to bed by giving some thought to the questions who and what?

Who? Gaby Hoffmann, a very minor celebrity. In a universe of celebrities being a minor celebrity is being not very much at all.

What? People Magazine.

QED; 1/8/15, 9:36 PM
CBCD said...: Trivia: Gaby Hoffman is the daughter of Viva, known as an actress in several of Andy Warhol's movies.; 1/9/15, 5:46 AM
lgv said...: Freeman Hunt:

"There is a local woman who converts raw placenta into capsule form for consumption. I don't know of anyone I know eating placenta though."

That's scary. I'm sure she is following FDA protocols for sanitaion and microbiological testing.; 1/9/15, 6:55 AM
TCR James said...: >>>I note that Hoffman's placenta is not cooked at all!

Three week old raw placenta is a lot healthier for you than the cooked or preserved kind, apparently. I'm looking forward to Whole Foods coming out with a new line of Celebrity Placenta. I'm sure it'll be a big hit but it could be hard finding locavore-approved celebrity placenta in some places.; 1/9/15, 9:05 AM
jr565 said...: What is up with women eating the placenta? Why?; 1/9/15, 9:38 AM