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Community Corner

Time For Cupcakes!

Don't even try to pretend you're not going to read an article with that title.

It seems that every generation has an image or design that becomes a part of pop culture and makes its way onto clothing, home furnishings, everyday objects, and all manner of tchotchke.

In the 70s, it was peace signs, smiley faces, and the Love Story “LOVE” design. In the 80s, I can remember that everything my high school BFF owned had to have either strawberries or rainbows on it. After that, I sort of lost track. Hearts? Butterflies?  

It seems to my cynical soul that everything became more media-influenced and dominated by Disney and other cartoon characters. I can remember my oldest niece having to have all things Pocahontas in the 90s, and then her younger sister being Elvis-crazy after seeing the movie Lilo & Stitch, which prominently featured his music.

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By definition, pop culture reflects the times we live in. So it's probably appropriate that in what decades from now may be remembered as the "Era Of The Food-Obsessed And Morbidly Obese," one of the most popular motifs is the cupcake.

You can find cupcakes on everything from pajamas to wrapping paper, Band-Aids to kitchenware, and jewelry to nail files. For the last two seasons, Pottery Barn Kids has been selling a cupcake Halloween costume for something like $70 and they’ve sold out of it each year.

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PBK also featured many other junk-food-oriented costumes, including an ice cream cone, sprinkle donut, sandwich cookie, hamburger, French fries, bucket of popcorn, and a bottle of root beer. Awww...food with absolutely no nutritional value is so freaking adorable! 

I commissioned my crafty beaver of a sister to bust out her felt and glue gun and make a homemade version of the cupcake costume for my daughter at a fraction of that price (read: zero because I didn’t pay her). 

I thought passersby would pop an aneurysm from pure glee every time they saw her. Total strangers were hanging out of their car windows cooing, fawning, and snapping pictures.

Something tells me she wouldn’t have gotten the same reaction had she been dressed up as a pile of kale. Her only hope would have been to bump into a kid dressed as a bottle of soy sauce to make her even the least bit tolerable.

The cupcake theme also has pervaded my daughter’s reading material. One of her favorite books is Pinkalicious, which tells the story of cupcake-obsessed Pinkalicious Pinkerton who eats so many cupcakes that she actually turns pink. The book has a nice message advocating moderation and healthy eating. In the end, Pinkalicious is cured by eating an abundance of the green-colored antidote, e.g.: vegetables.

The popularity of Pinkalicious (there is even a stage version of the book currently playing downtown) has spawned many copycats. It seems every beloved character has a cupcake-themed book out now. Fancy Nancy has put hers right out there in the title in Fancy Nancy and the Delectable Cupcakes. In this book, Fancy Nancy makes cupcakes for her school’s bake sale.

My daughter loves to act out these books, and insisted that we hold a bake sale last weekend. Fancy Nancy was raising money for her school’s library, so I thought I could turn this into a nice lesson about charity and altruism. We went to a friend’s barbeque to sell them, and when asked what she was raising money for, my daughter said, “my pocket.”

Not sure if this was her classic autism literalness at work—the money was in fact in her pocket—or if she has a future in Illinois politics. Either way, I think this life lesson needs a little more work. We’ll have to hold more cupcake sales and, when we accumulate a decent amount of money, agree on a worthy cause to donate it to. 

In the meantime, it sure would be nice if we had a special place to stash the money that would somehow be indicative of its purpose. I know! Something cupcake-themed! Let’s see, we’ve got a cupcake-shaped bank, a purse, a jewelry box, a wallet, a tin, a cookie jar…

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