Killing feminism one cupcake at a time
Posted at 12:00 PM Aug 25, 2008
By Bonnie Ruberg
Can you be a feminist and love baked goods, too? I sure hope so, because otherwise this game-cake-loving blogger has been giving props to the patriarchy.
An article last week in The Guardian raises an eyebrow at twenty-something British women who are reclaiming the domestic arts. One such happy chef "devotes her spare time to dressing up as her alter ego, Cherry Bakewell, a '50s goddess who whisks up batches of fairy cakes for the good of humanity." Cherry's project "The Great Cake Escape," is...
part-hobby, part-performance art - which involves the 25-year-olds "releasing" cakes on to the street, to be found by unsuspecting passersby. Targets so far include the pavements of Truro in Cornwall and club nights in London, including SheBop. The cakes carry messages for the befuddled recipients ("Eat Me", "Read This"), along with the address for a MySpace page, where they can register their reaction... (Although, unfortunately, few people actually eat the cakes, because they tend to assume that they are poisoned or laced with drugs.)
Apparently at the head of the reclaiming confectionary movement is the adorable and unsuspecting cupcake, "a real symbol of femininity and a camp symbol of a bygone era." The author of the article explains that much of this domesticity is ironic, "carried out with tongue encased firmly in cheek." She goes on to wonder though, if the domestic arts ever really be subversive.
Well, can it, Heartless Doll readers? Does a burlesque show or an act of performance art get less feminist-y because it at one stage involved an oven?
[Via Broadsheet]
Comments
"She goes on to wonder though, if the domestic arts ever really be subversive."
Hmm - in order to be subversive, you need to have something to subvert, right? I'd think traditional symbols of rigid Eisenhower-era gender norms would be a prime target. I was trying to figure out if this particular movement is undermining or promoting the patriarchy but then I got hungry for cupcakes and lost my train of thought.
I think it's odd that people consider cupcakes a symbol of femininity, though; I mostly associate them with "things you bring to school to try to buy friends when you're seven." And speaking of symbols of femininity, yes, I totally used a semicolon just now.
Posted 08/26/2008 at 07:41:56 AMThanks to the success of the suffragettes, women now have voices and choices!
If it's cupcaking you want, it's cupcaking you get!
But most people are totally in the dark about HOW the suffragettes won, and what life was REALLY like for women before they did.
Now readers can discover the shocking truth, and it's as easy as opening their e-mail.
"The Privilege of Voting" is a new free e-mail series that follows eight great women from 1912 - 1920 to reveal ALL that happened to set the stage for women to win the vote in England and America.
This is no boring history report.
Two beautiful and extremely powerful suffragettes -- Alice Paul and Emmeline Pankhurst are featured, along with Edith Wharton, Isadora Duncan, Alice Roosevelt and two gorgeous presidential mistresses.
There are tons of heartache for these heroines on the rocky road to the ballot box, but in the end, they WIN!
Exciting sequential series of 10-minute e-mails, perfect for coffeebreaks or anytime.
We're delivering women's history - and making it free, fast and FUN!
Subscribe free at
www.CoffeebreakReaders.com/subscribe.html
Posted 08/26/2008 at 10:05:36 AMPlease, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't one of the main ideas behind the whole feminism thing the right to do whatever the woman wants to do? I say, if baking and homemaking and such makes a woman happy, more power to her.
And for the record, I am in FULL support of burlesque.
Posted 08/26/2008 at 12:56:17 PM