Healthy Chicken Skin

It's a common proposition in Suicidefoodland—that hated, reeking realm—but one that drips with repugnance everywhere else:

Chickens take perverse pride in the healthy state of their skin, going so far as to hike up their feathers to show it off.

We are meant to think, "How like a woman she is, to raise her skirts, to tempt the onlooker with a glimpse of smooth and tender skin!"

Of course, of course, we can hardly claim surprise at the thought of a chicken pleased at an absence of cellulitis, but this is a virulent vanity. One can only surmise that the healthy skin, no less than the eye shadow and mascara, is valuable only insofar as it signals the chicken's desirability as an edible thing. It gives new and horrifying meaning to the term "sex object."

(Thanks to Dr. Bea for the referral.)