Little Red Riding Hood revisited

I remember that when I was younger, I would have dreams that something was trying to eat me. Aside from the fact that, especially as a child, I'm not sure there was too much good meat on me, this is a big thing in children's tales. What is the bad guy trying to do? Eat the protagonist. Obviously. Someone always wants to eat you.

At first I thought it was funny that kids are so made aware of persons and other beings wanting to eat them. But-

After I became aware of the sexual nature of everything around me, my dreams and realities have contained less and less people seeing me as a culinary target but far more seeing me as a sexual target (and if I'm experiencing this than I'll assume most women my age are. I'm pretty averagely sexy.) The same anxious feeling connected to a dream where someone is hunting me down to eat me is the feeling I get when I feel like the sexual prey of someone, either staring at my breasts or saying suggestive things to me or undressing me with their eyes. And it has nothing to do with who I am and everything to do with just being there.

Being seen as a meal is a metaphor for being seen as a sexual object, and now I know that I've understood that feeling since I was a child.

(This can apply to guys too. Except for the breasts thing. Mostly.)