I think it frequently is just that, even if on a subconscious level. It is frequently female characters of color who are described as food, but also female characters in general - milk white skin, cherry nipples, etc. I think this can sometimes be on purpose; I mean, I've definitely wanted to write characters (frequently male characters, for some reason) as delicious and so using food terms to describe a character another character basically wants to devour (sometimes quite literally when writing vampires and werewolves) might make sense, but there are so many problematic uses of it that I shy away from it.
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I think it frequently is just that, even if on a subconscious level. It is frequently female characters of color who are described as food, but also female characters in general - milk white skin, cherry nipples, etc. I think this can sometimes be on purpose; I mean, I've definitely wanted to write characters (frequently male characters, for some reason) as delicious and so using food terms to describe a character another character basically wants to devour (sometimes quite literally when writing vampires and werewolves) might make sense, but there are so many problematic uses of it that I shy away from it.