to find cake smashes a bit weird

[chompybot]

Ok so there seems to be this thing recently where you can have a 'cake smash' photography session, I've seen quite a few mums posting on Facebook about it, and baby photographers offer it as a photo shoot. Basically the baby is sat with a big cake and encouraged to grab it with their hands and smear it over their face whilst being photographed. Anyone else think this is a weird photo to have on your wall?

Maybe I am over-thinking it or it had caught me at a bad time, with all these children in developing countries who are malnourished, and then there are these cake smash photos and it seemed to me it is celebrating the fact we have so much food in this country that we can waste it for a photo shoot.

I probably just need to lighten up!

yanbu, they're wasteful.

it's one thing for a baby to get a messy face eating a slice of cake another to encourage it to trash a whole cake in one go.

Kids' foody faces photos make me feel a bit queasy.

God what a weird thing.

It sounds stupidly staged.

I don't really like staged photographs. I hate those newborn ones where they arrange a naked sleeping baby in various uncomfortable looking poses often with a knitted hat on. BIL has a giant one of DN on his living room wall it makes me shudder every time I see it.
I also hate the 'natural' ones of the family lying down and laughing, so cringey. We were given a voucher for one at Christmas.

A few months ago I would have completely agreed with you but after someone I work with lost a child I think any way a parent wants to remember a child is completely up to them and never to be judged.

Goodness really?

A child dying is an unimaginable tragedy but 'never to be judged'?

It's just a thread about photography styles and whether you think it's a bit crap.

the death of a child is utterly tragic but not relevant to the thread, which is about silly posed photos and the ethics of blatantly wasting food.

I am with PHANTOM but I expect I am hopelessly out of date and judgemental to boot.

Ugh: photos of children with food smeared all over their faces make me feel sick.

I think the way a parent chooses to remember shouldn't be judged.
It changed my opinion on the subject of the thread so I would say it is relevant.
I'm not saying that if you don't like cake smashes you are a bad person I just think memories are important and after a personal experience I won't judge parents for wanting a picture of a baby sitting in cake.

I'm a pro cake maker so for us, a cake smash is a pretty relevant subject for a photo shoot. My youngest had a cake smash shoot for her 3rd birthday (her big sister joined in too). I'm expecting our 3rd baby and will likely do another shoot for his 1st birthday. The shoot we did involved a tiered cake and had I not been a cake maker, there's no way I would have paid for something elaborate to be destroyed!

I prefer it to the 'dressing your baby as a ladybird or a cabbage etc, Anne Geddes style' photo shoot. Never did see the point of those.

It's a fake memory though to my mind. It's not remember when we gave DD a piece of her first ever cake and she was covered in it. It's remember when we took to a photographer who encouraged her to smash up a cake.

I like them, also I don't think they are unnatural in the sense that although the baby is being given the opportunity, what they are doing isn't staged, they do what they want to the cake.

We did one with DS. I made the cake, and once he had smushed most of the icing, I took the cake away, cut the top off and re-iced it, and we ate it for his birthday. So not much waste either. It was special, the first time he ever had cake :)

And not a tutu in sight!

Oh and we didn't use a photographer. Does that make a difference?

So instead of giving him a slice of his first birthday cake and taking pics, we gave him the whole cake and took pics.

Any pictures on children covered in food make me feel ill. Yoghurt in the face and hair? Urghhhh

Weird and tragic like a lot of these things.

Weird and tragic

Get a grip ffs. Obviously not that weird seeing as they are so popular. And tragic? Really?

I am glad I've a few people in agreement! I don't mind kids enjoying their food and getting messy - strawberries/bananas etc - but a giant cake they couldn't possibly eat? Seems a weird thing to celebrate.

My other thought which probably will get me slated but seeing the number of overweight kids around I don't think it's really a great thing from that point of view. I don't mean that in a judgy-pants way but as a serious issue, there are quite a lot of overweight kids and some obese in DDs school, I am all for enjoying food but this just seems over the top. But I did wonder if I was just being a miserable old bag....

Yeah chompy I can see what you mean.
I was an overweight teenager and I was embarrassed enough by my childhood photos, I can imagine how much worse i would have felt if my baby photos all showed me shoving handfulls of cake in my mouth too!

And I had never heard of trash the wedding dress until now! That's terible. Gah another thing for me to grumble about! I should probably change my mumsnet name to Victor Meldrew.

(Sorry for iPhone spelling errors)

I fucking hate all posed professional photo session photos where people look like smuggos they are ghastly so YANBU

I hadn't heard of sloshing either - dare I google it?