The other day I went to the Burgers and Cupcakes site to check up on their new Chelsea location and in the description of the Mitchell London-owned restaurant found this:
Burgers are chubby and juicy, ground from well-herded beef that arrives fresh every day—get them on a basket of crispy fries…
Cupcakes (which she’ll love, and which you’ll pretend to be reluctant to eat) are smallish, simple and moist, and come in more cake varieties than usual—vanilla, chocolate, blueberry, and carrot cake.
Now, my first interaction with them was taking my definitely girlie fellow bloggers and our mixed readers with the boys from A Hamburger Today to their restaurant. Almost everyone (male and female) ate burgers, and cupcakes. Yet, it cannot be denied that the vast majority of our readers are female, pink and black are the colors of choice for almost every cupcake bakery’s t-shirts (save for the pastels of Billy’s Bakery), and most of the other bloggers and cupcake enthusiasts we know are women, with the exception of the occasional male/female team, and CakeLove’s Warren Brown and James Grey of Pittsburgh’s Dozen Cupcakes.
This blog is mostly apolitical, though we have posted about Cupcakes Against Domestic Violence (which I hope nobody, anywhere, is “for”), however, the notion of whether cupcakes are gendered is a curious one. As a feminist, I find it off-putting that a restaurant would assume that burgers are for men, cupcakes are for women, right off the bat. Perhaps it’s the very nature of cupcakes⎯that they are generally small, and sweet, and often pretty⎯that makes them not so much the dessert of choice for straight men. But if you ask me, that’s all appearances. I’ve been at parties and seen plenty of straight guys (and I differentiate because gay men seem to adore cupcakes, if I may be so bold as to stereotype for a moment). I think that by stating it like that, B&C sets up a dynamic whereby it’s not “cool” for a guy to like cupcakes openly.
So what do you think? Are cupcakes “gendered?” Should they be? Is there an age at which it’s no longer cool for guys to like cupcakes? I’m not saying I know the answer one way or the other, because I will also admit there’s something feminine about the culture of cupcakes that we’re part of (after all, I am wearing a cupcake necklace from Fred Flare around my neck as I type).
I’ve posed this question to some of our interviewees and I think everyone can agree that men and women consume cupcakes, but do they think, talk about, bake, plan for, and lust after them in the same way? As much as part of me bristles to see burgers and cupcakes so easily segregated into male and female, I do think that most of the over-the-top cupcake enthusiasm we promote, celebrate and engage in on this blog is coming from women. So what say you? Are your cupcake preferences affected by your genitals? Or is a cupcake sometimes just a cupcake?
Burgers are chubby and juicy, ground from well-herded beef that arrives fresh every day—get them on a basket of crispy fries…
Cupcakes (which she’ll love, and which you’ll pretend to be reluctant to eat) are smallish, simple and moist, and come in more cake varieties than usual—vanilla, chocolate, blueberry, and carrot cake.
Now, my first interaction with them was taking my definitely girlie fellow bloggers and our mixed readers with the boys from A Hamburger Today to their restaurant. Almost everyone (male and female) ate burgers, and cupcakes. Yet, it cannot be denied that the vast majority of our readers are female, pink and black are the colors of choice for almost every cupcake bakery’s t-shirts (save for the pastels of Billy’s Bakery), and most of the other bloggers and cupcake enthusiasts we know are women, with the exception of the occasional male/female team, and CakeLove’s Warren Brown and James Grey of Pittsburgh’s Dozen Cupcakes.
This blog is mostly apolitical, though we have posted about Cupcakes Against Domestic Violence (which I hope nobody, anywhere, is “for”), however, the notion of whether cupcakes are gendered is a curious one. As a feminist, I find it off-putting that a restaurant would assume that burgers are for men, cupcakes are for women, right off the bat. Perhaps it’s the very nature of cupcakes⎯that they are generally small, and sweet, and often pretty⎯that makes them not so much the dessert of choice for straight men. But if you ask me, that’s all appearances. I’ve been at parties and seen plenty of straight guys (and I differentiate because gay men seem to adore cupcakes, if I may be so bold as to stereotype for a moment). I think that by stating it like that, B&C sets up a dynamic whereby it’s not “cool” for a guy to like cupcakes openly.
So what do you think? Are cupcakes “gendered?” Should they be? Is there an age at which it’s no longer cool for guys to like cupcakes? I’m not saying I know the answer one way or the other, because I will also admit there’s something feminine about the culture of cupcakes that we’re part of (after all, I am wearing a cupcake necklace from Fred Flare around my neck as I type).
I’ve posed this question to some of our interviewees and I think everyone can agree that men and women consume cupcakes, but do they think, talk about, bake, plan for, and lust after them in the same way? As much as part of me bristles to see burgers and cupcakes so easily segregated into male and female, I do think that most of the over-the-top cupcake enthusiasm we promote, celebrate and engage in on this blog is coming from women. So what say you? Are your cupcake preferences affected by your genitals? Or is a cupcake sometimes just a cupcake?
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And the ones my officemates got me for my birthday.