Why cupcakes and vegetables?
Like most things that are decidedly Modern, there is no reference for a cupcake in nature. Cupcakes are a vinyl and plush amalgam of natural (and unnatural) ingredients whipped into shape and beaten into confectionery submission according to the creator’s idea of Cute. They are tiny sculptures whose proportions are classical, their lines calligraphic, their colors reminiscent of sun-kissed cousins in Izod.
And guess what: we get to eat them! We get to behold their Stay-Puff form, their pastel pinks and aqua blues, their perfect little size 6 bodies, and then, in one big rush of dream realized, of gratification NOT delayed, we get to bite into them. We get to consummate our desire, to take into our bodies all that Cuteness, perhaps in the hopes of becoming it: pink pleated and crisp, curvy where we’re supposed to be curvy, straight everywhere else, sweet. We hope to be so sweet. We hope to be lush and velvety, rich and tender too. We want to be over the top marvelous. We want to be decadent. We want to be perfect.
For a few brief minutes we are the prize we are swallowing, frosting and all. During that short-lived ecstasy, we and the cupcake are all that is: no Gulf War, no energy crisis, no aging parents, no unpaid bills, no melting polar ice caps, no arthritis. We are golden, tender, rich, lovely, delicate, and sweet. And so is the world.
Thank goodness there exists an antidote to the sugar delusion. Radishes. Bok Choy. Strawberries. Real food, straight out of the ground, full of sunshine and minerals, loved up from the dirt by people whose calling is to love vegetables. When we eat these things, we are queens and kings brought here to 2007 by way of Mesopotamia , carried in a reedy boat along the River Euphrates. We are cotton, we are wood, we are wind, we are fire. The Big Bang’s great, great grand children bought their bounty to the table and all of a sudden, as we dig in, we are stardust again.