Mumsy Cupcake Feminism

Can you be a feminist and love baked goods, too? Asked this feminist blogger back in 2008.

http://www.heartlessdoll.com/2008/08/killing_feminism_one_cupcake_at_a_time.php#

Apparently The Guardian had run an article, saying the recent trend for (mainly white middle class youngish) women to embrace the domestic arts, was ‘camp’ and retro and not feminist at all.

But I think this new domesticity, and the focus by feminists on very ‘female’ issues such as rape, domestic violence, FGM and abortion, go hand in hand.

‘Mumsy cupcake feminism’ as I call it, seems to me to be a way that feminism is returning to its radfem ‘female’ roots, of the 1970s/80s, but in its Feminism 2.0 guise, it is ditching the dungarees and the wages for housework or divorce your husband if he doesn’t do the dishes ideas.

I think, like the ‘retrosexual’ masculine models of ‘real men’ mumsy cupcake feminism is telling us all how to be ‘real women’ in the 21st century. Like Caitlin Moran’s book, ‘How To Be A Woman’ (I am not linking to it I don’t think you should read it), mumsy cupcake feminism is suggesting a model for contemporaty femininity.

 

http://subversivecupcakes.co.uk/?page_id=28

 

Nigella Lawson seems to agree with me. Earlier this year she called her cookbook ‘How To Be A Domestic Goddess’ (another ‘How To…’ book) a ‘feminist tract’.

‘Baking is the less applauded of the cooking arts, whereas restaurants are a male province to be  celebrated. There’s something intrinsically misogynistic about decrying a tradition because it has always been female.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1392138/Nigella-Lawson-Baking-feminist-pastime.html

I have a lot more to say on this subject but I am coming down with a case of cupcake rage so I need to go now!