That is just my personal two cents on what I think is a kindof ridiculous article in The Guardian whose subtitle asks: "Are men hard-wired to eat meat? Do women have an innate need for cupcakes? Eva Wiseman reports"
In general I'd rather focus on cupcakes and what so many of us, men and women, do like about them. But I wanted to share the link and the image, because it's something being discussed in this big broad cupcake world.
photo by Levon Biss
Another food trend that comes dipped in gender is the so-called "cupcake revolution". While the "fairy cake", as we used to call these palm-sized party snacks, summons images of angry four-year-olds pushing Smarties up their nose, the "cupcake" brings fragrant visions of a pre-feminist 1950s housewife, baking for pleasure. Alongside their appearance on Sex and the City, where they were fetishised to within an inch of their soon-stale little lives, cupcakes last year became fashionable in Britain too, with one fan (who, dressed as her alter ego Cherry Bakewell, hosts cupcake parties) describing them as a "real symbol of femininity, and a camp symbol of a bygone era". Here is the baked and ironic response, cupcake lovers say, to post-feminist culture. Similarly, Esquire magazine's Eat Like a Man blog celebrates "foods that men love and… ways that men eat", embracing the idea of gendered eating as a way of marking out their masculinity in grilled meat.
If the pastel-coloured cupcake is the modern symbol of feminine eating, then perhaps the Pot Noodle Doner Kebab is today's totem of manliness – its manufacturer Unilever describes it as "the ultimate man-food snack". It has everything – unfussy meat content and quick satisfaction, presented in a compact, yet masculine, shiny black bin.
In general I'd rather focus on cupcakes and what so many of us, men and women, do like about them. But I wanted to share the link and the image, because it's something being discussed in this big broad cupcake world.
photo by Levon Biss
Another food trend that comes dipped in gender is the so-called "cupcake revolution". While the "fairy cake", as we used to call these palm-sized party snacks, summons images of angry four-year-olds pushing Smarties up their nose, the "cupcake" brings fragrant visions of a pre-feminist 1950s housewife, baking for pleasure. Alongside their appearance on Sex and the City, where they were fetishised to within an inch of their soon-stale little lives, cupcakes last year became fashionable in Britain too, with one fan (who, dressed as her alter ego Cherry Bakewell, hosts cupcake parties) describing them as a "real symbol of femininity, and a camp symbol of a bygone era". Here is the baked and ironic response, cupcake lovers say, to post-feminist culture. Similarly, Esquire magazine's Eat Like a Man blog celebrates "foods that men love and… ways that men eat", embracing the idea of gendered eating as a way of marking out their masculinity in grilled meat.
If the pastel-coloured cupcake is the modern symbol of feminine eating, then perhaps the Pot Noodle Doner Kebab is today's totem of manliness – its manufacturer Unilever describes it as "the ultimate man-food snack". It has everything – unfussy meat content and quick satisfaction, presented in a compact, yet masculine, shiny black bin.
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