Return Of The Literalisms – Now With Pie

I know I only said a very short while ago that a (particular) cupcake was female, but while browsing the Cake Spy online store, I came across a t-shirt that got me thinking a bit more about this...

Picture: CakeSpy*

It looks like a cute and innocent t-shirt, with little pictures of pie. But this t-shirt carries a can-opener. For that can of worms** that gets opened by its description as “Unisex Pie T-Shirt”. So pie is unisex? All pies, or just these pies? I’d never previously thought about the gender diversity of pie, but it doesn’t strike me as a food consistently associated with men more than women, or vice versa. Probably because of the sheer range of shapes, size and flavours of pies available.

In search of answers, I went looking for how the French describe pies... une tarte, whether aux pommes, a la crème, a la viande or otherwise, is female. Which makes me think that a separate line of inquiry exists to find out what food the French consider to be male...

While looking for French pies, I discovered that a pie, in French, is also used to describe a magpie and, presumably deriving from that, a chatterbox. And that queue-de-pie, rather than the line found snaking out the entry to the boulangerie, is actually a tail coat. A description that I think is lovely and evocative...

* And if I had a cute little t-shirt with drawings of pie, I might make an exception to my "no ironing" rule before showing it off...
** There needs to be an alternative to “can of worms” found as soon as possible. It’s just not a nice thought. At all. The French appear, in this instance, to lack a answer as well...