If you were lucky enough to go to a progressive enough school that taught contraceptives in your sexual education class, then you’ve probably rolled a condom onto a banana. If your parents were awkward and determined enough, then you were probably forced to demonstrate your condom-rolling expertise to them at one time or another. Bananas make a decent penile model, usually between six and eight inches in length and with a gentle curve, to prepare a hopeful condom-wielder for anything that might come his or her way. So what will happen when the common Cavendish banana goes extinct due to a fungal plague? What then will blushing high schoolers use to learn how to have sex safely? What fruit or vegetable out there does as good a job of being a phallic model as the Cavendish banana?
The first option would be to look to other banana species. What’s next after the Cavendish? Gert Kema of Wageningen University in the Netherlands is working on this exact problem. Tropical Race 4, the fungal plague wiping out our bananas, has spread nearly everywhere except Latin America. Kema believes this is only a matter of timing, and is beginning to test which banana species might survive the plague. So far, only 10 percent of these species have demonstrated resistance, and they are small and filled with seeds. In order to create a commercially successful banana out of these Tropical Race 4-resistant bananas, they would have to be crossbred with tastier bananas to create a favorable hybrid, which would take years of testing, and then further testing and breeding would be needed to create a seedless variety. So unfortunately, it looks like after the Cavendish, other bananas will probably be off the market for a while.
So what, then, should Nicki Minaj threaten to chop to pieces in her music videos? After the banana, what is the best penile substitute? Bringing genuine dildos to high schools would only result in madness and mayhem, so what fruit or vegetable is next? At an average of 14.5 inches long, the English cucumber seems intimidating in a conversation about sex. The thick and lumpy potato would be similarly unappealing. The carrot is near the right size, with an average length of 7 inches but, with the change in width from root to head, it makes for an unrealistic model for a human penis. I hope. We could take a tip from the world of emojis and begin using an eggplant. But anyone who has ever held an eggplant could probably attest to the fact that that comparison is ridiculous and frankly terrifying.
I suggest a switch to the humble zucchini. An average of 6 inches in length, the zucchini is as close to a human penis as you can buy in a grocery store, post-banana-apocalypse, without making a shady deal with your cashier. Some even demonstrate the same gentle curve many human penises display. Though they’re more than twice as expensive as bananas by weight at Walmart, and the tip might give even the bravest condom-wielder pause, zucchinis might be able to continue the long held tradition of scaring young people for the rest of their lives.