Although food and media scholars have studied gendered performances on cooking shows, limited scholarship exists on shows that combine food preparation with business ownership. My study, a textual analysis of DC Cupcakes and Cupcake Girls, seeks to fill that gap, pointing to issues of gender representation that are complicated by taking on the dual roles of chef or baker and business owner. I argue that these two shows reinforce heteronormative stereotypes and gender polarization by reproducing negative relationships between women and food and by constructing women as incompetent business people. Additionally, I suggest that because these women are shown as business owners instead of just home cooks, such portrayals could potentially disrupt the dominant, often essentialist ideas about men and women on food television. Instead, however, these shows, as part of the wider cultural cupcake phenomenon, resort to stereotypical portrayals of women and help cultivate their at times oppressive relationships with food.
Great tweet response! “Hegemonic pastryarchy” lol!
Thank God someone is addressing the Wider Cultural Cupcake Phenomenon at last!
Is Naomi Klein engaged with the issue?
This is going to change everything!
So even the Sex and the City girls eat them…. Uh, isn’t the term “girls” used to refer to characters on that series who are adults an insult? Or is it a case that if a feminist uses it in that context, it’s acceptable?
“Get out in the kitchen and rattle those pots and pans”
Shake Rattle and Roll – Bill Haley
For further taxpayer funding, refer to “Cupcakes and Climate Change.”
When reading a lot of these types of articles, it soon becomes “blah, blah, blah, social justice word, blah, blah, blah, gender equalization word,blah, blah, blah,”, well, you get the picture. Lots of high sounding words and phrases, very little sense.
This is a joke…right?
following the ‘artspeak’ mode
“Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed”
Kinky Friedman
— Bad News
This is one of the 80% of papers from the Humanities that will never get cited. The mockery, however, is delicious.
Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys.
How about one of their selections for your Saturday nite listening pleasure?
Didn’t Kinky run for governor of Texas?
Cupcakes are still a thing?
Can probably get a better understanding of this topic by watching a few episodes of Two Broke Girls.
If my girlfriends didn’t have nice cupcakes … I wasn’t interested. And YES … THAT is heteronormative ! Sheesh … the author says that like it was a bad thing !?
Cupcakes are still a thing?
No. All the cupcake shops around here have gone out of business.
That just adds to the triviality of the whole thing.
“[The] dominant, often essentialist ideas about men and women on food television.”
The foremost and most influential personality in the creation of “food television” was a woman: Julia Child.
I doubt she would have bought into this malarkey.
“… women and … their at times oppressive relationships with food.”
Perhaps it would help if they would remember how lucky they are to not be oppressed by a lack of food.
OK I’ll bite.
How can one be a heteronormative stereotype. If you are heteronormative doesn’t that mean you are sterotypically normal sexually.
Gender polarization? Wot, like male and female?
Yes rather like fininst negroes.
It great to live in such a Utopia where all the mysteries of life have been answered and this is the most important question left!
They automatically assume we’ll just curl up in a ball and submit to their various communist demands if they use phrases like “argue that these two shows reinforce heteronormative stereotypes and gender polarization by reproducing negative relationships between women and food and by constructing women as incompetent business people”. Sorry. Ain’t happening.
Cupcakes are just a way to have cake and eat it too. One cupcake at a time. Cake stays fresher that way.
All that topping that they put on designer cupcakes, well, they’re just falsies.
It’s really about the cake, not the topping. JMO
No, it’s academia showing why much of higher education funding is worse than wasted.
Because of the sickly sweet icing I’ve always viewed cupcakes as a delivery method for a sugar overdose.
It can’t be scholarly without referencing Two Broke Girls. Sadly, it’s one of the stupidest shows ever aired but i am compelled to watch it due to pairing of skinny blonde with buxom brunette.
Maybe it’s my old age and sucrose-phobia … but I usually scrape off most of the cloyingly sweet and greasy frosting from my cake … it’s just such sugar-overkill.
Dipstick Receptacle has never heard of Julia Child. And no, don’t watch Meryl Streep butcher her legacy in the film.