The uninitiated may be uncertain about how to combine dessert with the denial of reproductive choice. Luckily, Cupcakes4Life.com has some instructions:

Bring in a tray of cupcakes for any group of people and you will find that they will flock to get them. As soon as they take a bite they will probably ask, "Who's birthday is it?"

Then you answer. "It's no ones birthday. These cupcakes represent the 50,000,000 children who weren't allowed to be born, who never had a birthday." The cake in their mouth will become dry and the moment will hopefully become quite somber. Then you say, "If you and I were aborted we wouldn't have a birthday party either."

Apparently celebrating Pro-Life Cupcake Day doesn't require knowing how to spell "whose," which is little unfortunate since it appears to be conceived as a holiday for children (though according to the site, college students can participate too) to celebrate in school. Even if that means breaking the rules. Here's a tidbit from the site's FAQ:

Q.) What if my school won't allow me to bring in cup cakes?

A1.) Give them out before or after school!
A2.) Do it anyway and be quick about it! Also be very apologetic and kind if you get caught.
A3.) Ask for permission to bring in pre-packaged cupcakes from a bakery!
A4.) Just pass out flyers and make cupcakes after school and hand them out to your neighbors in the name of life. Whatever you do, don't give up when confronted by opposition!
A5.) Just hand them out somewhere besides school.
A6.) Ask to set up a table at your local grocery store.

As A2 makes clear, forcing your views on other schoolchildren is much more important than following school regulations — even if, as the FAQ says later on, "you don't know why you are pro-life." If that's the case, go to Abort73.com, so the kind folks over there can tell you what you think. Did you know abortion is worse than 9/11? Abort73.com also has a pretty great example of circular reasoning, for kids just learning about logic:

[S]hould humans be recognized as persons under the law? Yes, because humans are persons. Something is a person if it has a personal nature. In other words, something is a person if, by nature, it has the capacity to develop the ability to think rationally, express emotion, make decisions, etc. This capacity is something that a person has as soon as he begins to exist, since it is part of his nature (in other words, if he exists, he has it). Since humans have a personal nature, humans are persons. As for the fetus, since it is a human (and so, something with a personal nature), it is a person.

It's also important not to screw up your "life-cakes", thus ruining the pro-life message. According to the FAQ, "decorating cupcakes is harder than it looks, if you're not good at it find someone who is." Is it a little odd that Cupcakes For Life seems to be targeting kids for its campaign, kids who not only may not have cogent views on abortion but who can't be trusted to decorate a cupcake? Sure it is, but that's not important when "one in three children will never celebrate their first birthday due to abortion." Makes it sound like adorable babies are being killed just before they blow the candles out, right? That's the idea.

And, for the faint of heart, it's important to remember that National Pro-Life Cupcake Day is mandatory:

Q.) Do I have to give out Pro-Life Cup cakes on National Pro-Life Cupcake day?

A.) YES, but you can make pro-life cup cakes any other day of the year as well! This is just one special day for cupcakes! Also the week of October 9th is National Pro-Life Cupcake week so anytime that week would be extra special!

Well guys, looks like there won't be a Name Game today — seems I have to give out some pro-life cupcakes. Any ideas for what I should put on them?

Cupcakes For Life [Official Site]
Abort73.com [Official Site]

According to the Associated Press, the cupcake was a foot high and two feet wide, and had "15 pounds of fudge filling and 60 pounds of yellow icing." A clip of the giant cupcake, below:





Largest Cupcake Record Set By Cakes.Com [World Records Academy
150 Minn. Cupcake Sets Guinness Record [NYTimes]

(Remember, kids: Don't do drugs!) In this episode, Rich and I answer questions about eyebrows, kegels, and men's asses. Got a burning question? Send it to potpsych@jezebel.com. (Or send us your phone number! We wanna talk.)

What's the Best Way to Covertly Scratch Your Vadge from Pot Psychology on Vimeo.

In New York, of course, it started with the Magnolia, which, while it's now scorned by aficionados, spawned the Buttercup, Billy's, and Sugar Sweet Sunshine. Then came Crumbs, Amy's, Baked, the hundred Valrhona-spiked variations on the Hostess cupcake, complete with ersatz squiggle. We got Burgers and Cupcakes, Pizza and Cupcakes, and Babycakes' vegan iteration. Debates raged over The Best; some liked Cupcake Cafe's rococo buttercream, others Downtown Atlantic's oversized behemoths, a few the slightly salty cake at One Girl. Suddenly, no bakery case was complete without its own regiment of pastel-frosted cakelets. Again and again, food writers have pronounced the fad dead, but the past year alone has brought New York Sweet Revenge, with its cupcake and wine pairings, Mini Cupcakes, and Butter Lane, complete with icing bar.

The trend is now national, from Atlanta's Cupcake Factory to Chicago's Cupcakes, to Boston's Sweet Cupcakes. Cupcake blogs abound. And cupcake cookbooks continue selling like gangbusters, from Magnolia's trifecta to Martha Stewart's Cupcakes. One editor quoted in PW calls cupcakes "recession-proof," citing the raft of upcoming cupcake manuals.

So...what gives? Yes, they were on Sex and the City. Yes, they're cute, nostalgic, portable, easy-to-make, and versatile. But so are a lot of things. What is striking about cupcakes is they're traditional domesticity repackaged as sophisticated femininity: once the purview of the stay-at-home mom, now they're an emblem of the SATC city girl, on-the-go, busy, restrained but invested in treating herself because she's "worth it." The primacy of the cupcake seems not incidentally to corollate with our notion of food as inherently moralistic: the cupcake is not "wicked," it's not "sinful," it's not death by anything. It's cute! One could doubtless argue that there's an element of arrested development to the craze; now, every day can be someone's birthday, with their moms bringing a batch of synthetically-frosted Duncan Hines to the classroom and briefly covering the birthday child with glory. So, if then the cupcake is a deliberate abdication from the moral choices inherent to adulthood, what does it say that their popularity is only increasing as the world further burdens us with inescapable and harsh realities?

Maybe just that some people really like a high ratio of icing to cake. And that it's nice to let people choose between chocolate and vanilla.

Let Them Eat Cupcakes: Books Keep Coming, But How Much is Too Much? [Publishers Weekly]

[Image via CuteOverload.]

Alas, our time together has once again come to an end. As there were a few downer stories on the site today, I thought I'd make it up to you by leaving you with nothing but goodness: a puppy and a cupcake. Have a nice night, and thank you for another lovely weekend!

[New York, October 7. Image via INFDaily.]

To these young women, the embrace of old-school femininity is ironic and, more to the point, fun. But, asks the author, "can domesticity ever really be subversive?" Plenty of more traditional feminists say no. Hold onto your aprons: It's the old argument, kids.

To those who wish to defend the 'movement' on philosophical grounds (as opposed to, you know, just liking cupcakes), something like baking "has unwittingly become a provocative act." Says blogger Jane Brocket: "Anything which is very personal and behind closed doors and pleasurable for women is subversive these days." And, of course, as is often the case with women of this generation, it comes down to choice. Says one, "It's a choice and an aesthetic: it links into environmental concerns and is a sort of a rebellion against consumerism. I see it as a very empowering thing to do as a woman." These sorts of traditionally feminine arts can act as a means of feminine bonding — for women/by women, as opposed to centering around men — and act as an antidote to the fast food/clothes ethos of the culture. And in the case of this particular sphere, it's also a question of rebellion: Says Holly, '"My parents were punks" — her father was Joe Strummer of the Clash — "so I had a chaotic childhood. You try to be subversive by not doing what your parents did. It was not rebellious for me to go out drinking and taking drugs because that was what my parents did. I've always been fascinated by knowing how to knit but I had to learn it from my great-grandmother because my mother did not do anything like that and my grandmother was part of the whole 1960s women's lib thing."'

The counter-arguments are just as predictable: fetishizing stereotypes makes it easy to forget "the reality of this period: that many women felt forced to stay at home, and performed these chores, not with delight, but in a fit of frustration that would later be skewered by Betty Friedan in her classic book, The Feminine Mystique." And as such, there's a childish perversity to rejecting the gains other generations fought for, especially when so many pervasive inequalities still exist. Says feminist author Natasha Walter, "I never want to judge another woman for the choices she makes and what gives her pleasure. But there is something more serious going on here. There are problems associated with domesticity because, in the past, there was the assumption that it was just 'what women did'...Young women don't understand how hard it can be doing this real work if you don't have equality at home. A lot of the freedoms and equalities women have won are quite fragile and at the moment we are in danger of moving backwards. We have to continue to encourage men to join us, and not exclude them."

Look, we've heard it all before. If people want to dress up and make cupcakes, this is their prerogative, and one could certainly argue that I have a batch of cinnamon rolls in the oven right now. I seriously doubt that anyone reasonable of any generation seriously wants to prevent young women from baking, or wants to deny that the real existence of a 50's housewife was all cupcakes and glamor. As ever, what's more striking and depressing than any particulars of the individual skirmish is the stark perceptive divide of "frivolous ungrateful 20-something"/"Debbie Downer old-school feminist." And perhaps what begs this conflict is the aggressive insistence on "irony" — which, paradoxically, serves to heighten the insult for a more earnest generation of strivers and, also paradoxically, undermine these activities as yet another unloaded choice for the rest of us. It's this literal coopting — an almost willful reinvention of historical realities to suit ourselves — that can lead to the perception of young women as bratty. But the truth is, brattiness is also a choice — and one we're very lucky to have. And however loaded their reemergence, I think we can all agree that the frosting/cake ratio that is a cupcake is objectively delicious. Why can't we all just accept that, sit down together, and eat them (unironically.)

Do Good Feminists Bake Cupcakes? [The Guardian]

Earlier: Time-Warp Wives Opt To Re-Enact Depression, War

Unicorns, Easy-Bake Ovens, And Vibrators, Or: I Believe In The Radical Possibilities Of Pleasure

DailyCandy Everywhere reminds us of that time we totally assured our best friend that the flower on her dinner plate was edible. Even though we weren't so sure. And then she got a stomach ache.

DailyCandy Atlanta is on crack if they think we want to vacation in Perry, GA. Some of us here are from Georgia. We can't be fooled. Lunch at the local Mrs. Winner's chicken and avoiding the Klan do not a vacation make.

DailyCandy Chicagoeditors are so weirdly plagued with I-Want-A-Baby Fever that they've turned a plug for greeting cards into an admission of their own baby-lust.

DailyCandy Los Angeles announces the death of the cupcake.

DailyCandy Miami wants us to eat candy instead. Is candy the new cupcakes? Or rather, was candy the new cupcakes 5 years ago?

DailyCandy New York suggests we replace cupcakes with yogurt.

• From the-why-didn't-they-think-of-it-sooner department: Ann Coulter toilet paper. [GiggleSugar]
• Nissan Motors is trying to appeal to young female car-buyers by creating ads with a major cuteness factor: plushy animals, hearts and cupcakes. Speaking of cupcakes: They're a great way to sell sneakers, too! [MediaPost, PhiladelphiaInquirer]
• Ann Lewis, adviser to Hillary Clinton, says she is frustrated with the focus on irrelevant issues like Clinton's wardrobe. [WWD]
• Fashion designer Elie Saab says he loves to design for models with curves. Unfortuately, he also speaks about himself in the third person. [Reuters]

• The blonde half of the pair of Georgia teenage bank robbers — whose bond has been lowered from $26K to $10K — used her loot to shop, eat, and donate money to the homeless. Love. [CNN]
• Office of Population Affairs head Eric Keroack (a reproductive health "advocate" who doesn't believe in contraception), is rumored to be resigning from his post with the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. [Feministing]
• One woman in today's Times' obituaries section: Charlotte Winters, 109 [!] one of the first women to enlist in the Navy and the last remaining living female who had served in the Armed Forces during WWI [!!]. She'll receive full military honors at her funeral. [NYTimes]

The deal? You invite the guests and bake the cupcakes, and the "mysterious" and the rather cute Johnny Cupcakes will come round and lick frosting off your nipples. Well, he won't actually do that, but he'll bring round his clothing line and you and your friends can get your paws on a whole bunch of goodies, from undies ($14.99)

to bunnies ($35.99 if you like that kind of thing)

and limited edition individually numbered teeshirts ($33.99) so you can hug yourself with the joy of being cooler than all your friends

Fuck the diet.