A cupcake for weegoddess

[shewhomust]

It's an LJ thing: I ran into rosefox in sartorias's comments, and mentioned that I live in Durham, and the consequence was that weegoddess and I met this morning for coffee. Which was great. And we talked about - well, what didn't we talk about? We talked about LJ, and web sites, and Productions of Shakespeare I Have Seen, and where to buy vegetables. weegoddess remarked that her f-list had come out in a flurry of posts about cupcakes, which amused me, because the topic hasn't appeared at all on my f-list, but I had put aside the copy of the Guardian which I suspect sparked the whole thing, and had just about concluded that I wasn't going to get round to posting on the subject.

So here's the original article, by Viv Groskop, which looks with some unease at "the resurgence of interest in the domestic arts among young women." "Do good feminists bake cupcakes?", it asks. I knew a woman once, back in the late 60s, who would say of her more domestic acquaintances: "She's a good woman - she bakes fairy cakes," Now, of course, it's not enough to be good women, we have to be domestic goddesses. It's enough to make a feminist despair: women's average earnings are not catching up with men's, women still do more housework than men, and now we have to wear pretty frocks and bake cupcakes as well?

Why am I so exercised about an article which is, despite its misgivings, fairly lighthearted, on a topic whose whole essence is its frivolity? Partly, no doubt, because I enjoy the outcome of all this activity. If women want to reclaim home baking (as they have already reclaimed knitting), I am more than happy to be baked (and knitted) for.

But I think too that the debate misses the sheer gratuitousness of the cooking involved. This isn't the kind of cooking which you have to do because it has to be done: if you are, in whatever sense, obliged to cook for a household, what you have to deliver to your waiting family is a square meal of some description, whether that is meat and two veg or fish fingers and baked beans. You don't meet that obligation by producing a plate of iced fancies with a flourish and "let them eat cake!". In the nineteenth century the lady of the house would leave the main work of cookery to the servants, but would make the dessert. Now she cooks, or buys her meals ready made from M & S, as she chooses, but she bakes a cake. Baking is extra, and in that sense it's the equivalent of the kind of cooking traditionally done by men, the special dish for dinner parties.

Yes, this is full of generalisations about that men do, what women do and what gender roles are, because that's the level at which this discussion is possible. Once you stop to look at what individual people are actually doing, and why, the debate falls apart. Assuming a pseudonym like Cherry Bakewell or Fondant Fancy, dressing up in 50s frocks and baking cupcakes - as Viv Groskop's article acknowledges - contains an element of irony, and may even be an art form. If it also really annoys your mother, so much the better (bearing in mind that we're talking about a generation whose mothers probably annoyed their mothers by adopting the piercings and Nazi regalia of punk). It is, after all, a woman's right to choose. If we can handle the aspirations of those women who want to join the military, then we ought to be able to take a little light baking in our stride.

ETA: PS

Comments

[artistatlarge.livejournal.com]

Gosh, this is awfully good.

And perhaps not coincidentally, I now have a strong craving for cupcakes, but not so much do as to actually bake them.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

It is, after all, a woman's right to choose. If we can handle the aspirations of those women who want to join the military, then we ought to be able to take a little light baking in our stride.

This is the stuff that siglines are made of. Fabulous.


If it also really annoys your mother, so much the better

::breaks into applause::

I had a great time today too; my, I think I must have talked a lot. You're a very good listener. ;-) I'll give you a shout after the weekend.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Thank you, ma'am!