Needless to say, I am not at all impressed with James Windolf's war on cuteness in the new Vanity Fair in his article "Addicted to Cute" where everything from baby videos to animal videos to the Obamas to cupcakes to anime come under attack. (Though we do appreciate the link love in the online version!) I will be writing a formal letter to them, but here's the key cupcake passage (the print version has a photo of the Trophy Cupcakes Obama cupcake too):
Cuteness has also insinuated its way into our lives by way of our taste buds and stomachs. The nationwide hunger for what may be the cutest food item in culinary history, the cupcake, seems to have kicked in around 2005. A studied childishness is a big part of the cute movement, and the cupcake’s surge in popularity is a reversion to the gustatory pleasures of that time in our lives when sweet plus soft plus damp equaled yummy.
Gourmet-cupcake boutiques have recently opened in Dallas, Detroit, Birmingham, Cambridge, Indianapolis, Georgetown, Brooklyn, and Tacoma. And Martha Stewart held a “cutest cupcake” photo contest.
The miniature cakes are also becoming a staple of that old rite of passage to adulthood, the wedding. Writing for examiner.com, a D.C. event planner reported that, in 2008, “it seemed that every other wedding we did, the couple chose to have a cupcake tower in lieu of the traditional wedding cake.”
And then there’s birthday-cake-flavored ice cream. Adults are swooning over a flavor meant to put you in mind of a birthday party you attended at age 11. In the last few years, Baskin-Robbins, Ben & Jerry’s, Schoep’s, Mayfield, and Edy’s have all come out with their take on the flavor.
For generations, kids couldn’t wait until they reached adulthood so they could smoke, drink, eat four-course meals, make money, drive cars, have sex, and, if they were the type to join the military, legally kill other human beings. Now we would rather log on and tune out, preferably in the womb-like comfort of a Snuggie, which is the perfect thing to wear as we gaze at photos of kittens while gnawing on delicious cupcakes.
And this:
Closer to home, at Trophy Cupcakes in Seattle, the cute-ification of the commander in chief turned up in the shop’s popular Obama cupcakes, which have the president’s face rendered in frosting.
