"The cupcake is a selfish food"

Trader Joe's vanilla cupcake photo by Flickr user jek in the box

Today's cupcake hater award goes to Independent Report, who wrote the following. There really isn't any need to retort, since I think any reader of this blog knows the opposite to be true (unless you read this blog to fuel your cupcake hating, in which case, fuel away). What did the band Bikini Kill say? "I eat your hate like love." Yeah, that.

The cupcake assumes much of what’s wrong with urban America. At its heart it’s a selfish food, a sad food. The cupcake is lonely.

When we’re kids, the cupcake is wonderful. For Timmy’s second-grade birthday party, cupcakes are the perfect solution. Each child has something uniquely his own. Little Suzy can grab one, rush off to some dirty corner and return, eyes glazed and wild, lips stained blue-violet from the plume of sugar icing. And the teacher doesn’t have to spend 20 minutes fighting the tide of seven-year-olds as they ebb and flow impatiently, waiting for him to parse pieces of a larger cake. But at some point we must grow up and begin engaging with the world around us.

The cupcake is a lonely food, its single-serving size jut the thing for someone on her way home for work. His way home from the gym. It’s designed to reward, to comfort the singular human. But doesn’t it then serve as the very reminder of loneliness to the person it’s comforting? The individually sized dome of icing and cake, whether it is simple chocolate or some stawberry-banana-walnut-kiwi monstrosity, stands by itself, separated from the rest of its batter, sheltered in that little paper container. Each cupcake consumed on a park bench a hat-tip to the isolation we experience even when surrounded by eight million other people.

The cupcake is also a selfish food. It eliminates the need for compromise and communication. You get your chocolate, I get my vanilla, and the woman behind us gets her cherry-mango-coconut swirl-top kittycake with an extra helping of “You go, girl!” Each of us is happy, but for what reason? Because we get what we want? Getting what you want isn’t always the best thing, and it doesn’t serve as a way to think about the world around you. First it’s the cupcake, then it’s the Escalade. At some point we have to ask whether or not orange-raspberry-mocha right now is the best thing we can do for ourselves and each other.

I’m not saying cupcakes should be eliminated. I’m not saying they’re inherently bad (though I’m kind of saying they’re inherently bad). I am saying they tell us a lot about ourselves, as all food does—imagine a bakery creating amazing cakes portioned for three people—and that we should be begin to pay attention to that kind of thing. And next time you’re with a group of people, see if you can make a cake. Together. And if you’re alone and headed home from work, make a friend. Then split something. Breaking bread together is a wonderful thing, even when that bread is sweet and topped with icing.