Hi, I’d like to share with you my interpretation of katy perry bon appetit, both the song and video. Right in the first stanza, Katy Perry states, “Got me spread like a buffet // bon appetit baby.” (Bon Appetit, Katy Perry.) From this, we can draw the connection of eating at a buffet to planning your life with a significant other. You must pick and choose the correct proportions of each dish, because unproportional choices lead to wasted time when eating. This is the same with planning your life, as spending too much time on varying sectors of your life, such as starting a family and having children. Spending too much time on these sectors will inevitably lead to disappointment, and by following the comparison with, “Bon Appetit Baby, Katy is insinuating that time is not on your side throughout this process, as she encourages you to make your decisions and follow through with them.
Later on in the stanza, Katy states, “Fresh out of the Oven // Melt in your mouth kind of lovin’.” I believe this again connects to our central theme of starting a family, as fresh out of the oven is a clear reference to the well known saying, Bun in the Oven, which means one is expecting a child. By saying that the thing is “Fresh from the Oven,” Katy is insinuating that she or whomever the song may be about has just birthed a child, this fulfilling one of the sectors of life previously discussed. “Melt in your mouth kind of lovin’” undoubtedly refers to sweets, often given to children for desirable behavior. It would appear that Katy is describing how she or the subject of the song is raising their children, and how they are doing so in a loving and respectful manner, rewarding good behavior with pleasant sensations.
Several stanzas later, Katy sings,
*Wanna keep you satisfied*
*Customer’s always right*
*Hope you’ve got some room*
*For the world’s best cherry pie*
*Gonna hit that sweet tooth, boy*
Breaking this down, we can clearly see that the first two lines, “Wanna keep you satisfied // Customer’s always right” refers to how one must make sacrifices to remain compatible with their significant other. Since this comes after the verses about raising a child, we are able to infer that the sacrifices being made were detrimental to the child and/or their wellbeing. This is supported by the three following lines, “Hope you’ve got some room // For the world’s best cherry pie // Gonna hit that sweet tooth, boy.” From the word choice Katy selected, we can observe how her sacrifices are benefitting both her significant other and her child, comparing the effects of her sacrifices to the “World’s best cherry pie.” This also speaks of a harder truth in life, that sometimes abandoning certain things we have developed might help us progress in life, as we may not have ever known that these things were detrimental at all.
The final thing I would like to point out lies in the imagery of the video, rather than the lyrical content. In the video, several times we are shown images of clams, and clams being eaten. The clams do contain a shiny pearl inside them, which brings to an obvious connection. The clams symbolize the delicacy of family life, and how one must form a hard shell around their once soft life in order to protect their precious, delicate family relationship, symbolized by the pearl. The consumption of the pearl can symbolize the corruption of family life, possibly through the child from earlier. The people eating the clams draw out ideas of outside influences tainting the mind of the young child, who brings the negativity back home where it destroys the family from the inside. As the clam is pried open, it shows how the family is literally being torn apart to be consumed by the harsh, outside world, and how difficult it was for one person to protect.