I have a serious problem with cupcakes.
Now, before you go all “bitchily commenting” and “letter-to-the-editor-writing” about “how is this newsworthy?” and other uppity, judgmental stuff, remember:
1. I’m an opinion columnist — not a news gal.2. I write about pop culture — not actual important stuff.
Cupcakes are about as pop culture-y as it gets. “Sex and the City” helped take cupcakes from elementary school Easter party fare to national obsession after Carrie and Miranda indulged in them at the famous Magnolia Bakery a decade ago.
Cupcake-specific bakeries are everywhere now. New breeds of special-occasion cakes — think birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, showers — are composed wholly of cupcakes. Entire Web sites and blogs are devoted to cupcake worship.
The general consensus about cupcakes among esteemed pop culture columnists such as myself is they represent the American woman’s craving for sweet indulgence after so many crash diets, combined with the girly-girl culture “Sex and the City” helped revive and a nostalgia for childhood comfort food.
Fine. I like sweet stuff. I’m a girly-girl. I’m often nostalgic. But cupcakes are not the way, friends.
They are inefficiently designed. Cupcakes are too big to bite with the average size mouth, which results in an icing mustache or icing in one’s nose – neither of which I find pleasant.
There is the “lick the icing off first” option, but why would anyone want to eat a slobber-topped, icing-less ball of cake? Gross.
Cupcakes are forever crumbling, wasting precious hunks of cakey deliciousness on one’s shirt, or worse, the ground.
The actual cups are also useless. They only tear off hunks of cake when peeled back, further adding to crumb-tumbling issues and diminishing overall cupcake volume.
If it were acceptable to eat a cupcake with a knife and fork, perhaps I wouldn’t have such a problem with them. But for some ridiculous reason, requesting utensils with a cupcake is socially taboo and results in strange looks and occasional ridicule, a lesson I learned early in life.Cupcakes do not deserve such an esteemed place in the hearts of sentimental Americans. They are designed to be frustrating so you never feel satisfied.
Cupcakes are a perfect illustration of Freud’s death drive.
“Every drive is an attempt to go beyond the pleasure principle, to the realm of excess jouissance where enjoyment is experienced as suffering,” Freudian scholar Lacan said of the death drive.
That’s cupcakes! You want to experience excessive pleasure in the form of iced, cakey goodness, and a whimsically decorated cupcake is – on the outside – the perfect vehicle to indulge your ego’s desires.
But the cupcake is never fulfilling. You know the cupcake is going to crumble all over you and you’re going to get icing up your nose, but you eat it anyway, and it’s always disappointing.
The pleasure you get from the rich, buttery, sugary treat becomes suffering after it falls apart on your face and puts you in a diabetic coma.
You don’t need cupcakes. Regular cake – or even pie – is life affirming. Give me a piece of my mama’s passed-down-for-generations, blue-ribbon-at-the-state-fair-winning pound cake — warm — a plate and a fork, and my life is complete. There is nothing better. It will never end up inside my nose. It will never crumble all over my Easter dress, because it’s not in a damn crepe paper cup. It will always make me feel warm and full, never sugar-sick.
All I’m saying is if you support cupcakes, it’s because you hate being happy.
Embrace the will to power and real cake.
Sara Boyd is a 23-year-old general studies senior from Baton Rouge. Follow her on Twitter @tdr_sboyd.
Contact Sara Boyd at [email protected]