I heard a story today, yet another one in a long like of such stories, where there was some attack somewhere, and it was stated that security was being “beefed up”, and that the National Guard was “beefing up” its forces. So why is it that when someone wants to get across the idea that something is being strengthened, they use the expression: “beef up”? That’s meatist! (My word processor insisted I must mean “meatiest”. In fact, it changed it to “meatiest” against my will! But no, this time I mean meatist!)
Where is the outrage from vegetarians about the discriminatory preferential treatment given to meat, and specifically beef, in such colloquialisms? They must stand up and condemn such tender, juicy, meaty expressions like “beefed up”, “beefcake”, etc., to express ideas of strength and virtue! Where’s the bully-pulpit pressure to use expressions like “tofued up”, or “veganed up”, if these healthier meatless diets are supposed to be so much better for us? If the food police isn’t pushing for the retirement of such terms as “beefed up” or “beefing up”, in favor of such enlightened new idiomatic expressions as “vegged up”, then how are we to be brainwashed by their propaganda? (Or is “vegged up” too much like “vegged out”? Maybe they need to redefine the term “vegetable” to mean a really healthy, athletic type, rather than a comatose, brain-dead individual. Perhaps they should pass a new law about it, fining anyone who denigrates terms involving healthy food like vegetables, as part of the new anti-obesity push!)
Maybe the vegetarian activists could do that thing like the anti-fur protesters did with the red paint on the fur coats, only vegetarian activists, or “veggies”, could throw spoiled meat products on anyone who says stuff like “beefed up” to mean “strengthen”, rather than “veganed up”, or whatever other term they decide to use. Oh, but what if the pro-meat activists start throwing rotten vegetables at the pro-veggie activists? I’m not sure which is worse, but I’ll bet it would smell bad. But perhaps what it would do is get rid of undesirable food-related idioms in the description of positive or negative characteristics of things. And then we’d live in an agenda-free society! (Just kidding! We’ll never be rid of that crap!)
