A terrible, terrible metaphor I ran across in a story on tomatoes at the NPR site:
I could never stand to see tomatoes treated that way. Just thinking about it makes me hungry. And it’s almost lunchtime. Out in the vegetable patch, the Brandywines are as red as raw steak. The Juliets are as ripe as their Shakespearean namesake, and the Arkansas Travelers are blushing pink.
The Juliet of the famous play, age 13, was not even ripe by the standards of the day, much less now. I have by now seen a couple of excellent Juliets, which was enough to bring me around on the romantic power of the play and the character, but calling the tween Juliet ripe has ickily Lolita-esque implications. Bad metaphor! Bad!
Agreement. Though comparing a ripe tomato, which is appetizing, to raw steak, which is not, doesn't strike me as the best choice either.
yeh, who thinks the main takeaway from romeo & juliet is "i'd hit that"?
someone i would not like to meet.