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!

And the smuggest looking of all - the maternity photo shoot where a couple stroke and gaze dreamily at her large pregnant tummy.

I've just googled sloshing chompy
Can't imagine wanting photos of that either

Oh no I couldn't resist and had to google it. Something else I didn't know was a thing! I do remember trying it once after watching Nine and a Half Weeks with my boyfriend in the '90s (showing my age) and really didn't get the appeal. Plus how can anything that involves putting a shower curtain on the sofa be sexy?

Ha ha imagine what the in laws would make of that photo shoot....

...just googled sloshing...

I've seen a few of these on Facebook and people asking where they can get them done.

I really really don't get it. I hate seeing grubby children covered in food!

This is a thing.
I hate mess, hate waste. Yep, I'm just anal like that.
But, Mrsbertmacklim ... what is sloshing? I want to know plz.

It's bizarre. I read about one on Facebook. The child had their birthday party, had a fairly normal cake, had a bit to eat etc. All run of the mill. Then a massive and multi-coloured cake was made for the next day so he could smash it and have photos taken at home with his mum and no one else. The photos were clearly the most important bit.

To avoid you the pain of googling, it's basically you and your partner getting rude with food.....
First cake smash, now sloshing. What's wrong with having food at the dinner table?

I had a cake smash shoot a couple of years ago for ds's first birthday. He had great fun and I loved the pictures. The cake wasn't expensive to make either so hardly excessive waste.

That's the weird thing LittleBearPad, it's not like its a celebration of having a cake at a party with their friends and family there, it seems to be about having a big cake on their own and photos of it, to presumably go on the wall. I'm not against baby photo shoots, people want nice memories especially if they are not that good at photography themselves. I just don't get this particular Thing.

I reckon most teenagers would be horrified if their parents brought out the cake smash baby photos when they took a boyfriend/girlfriend home....

PS for those that have done the cake smash, sorry I don't want to offend anyone, this is my personal view - I am just trying to work out what the deal is - which is why I have posted it on AIBU ...

Horrible, agree that waste of food is particularly annoying and fosters wrong attitude. Do also hate "messy face" photos though. Ugh. I'd have a wipe handy before anyone had a sec to even think of a pic.

Who knew that sex with food had a name now? Gotta love Urban Dictionary...

I hate cake smash photos... But not as much as the shoots where the new born babies are put into woollen costumes of different themes and then placed in different poses. So contrived. What's wrong with a natural picture of a sleeping baby in nice, soft baby clothes?

I agree with you OP that it is pretty weird. Apart from anything else, most babies don't just dive headfirst into a cake on being presented with it - most of the videos/photos I've seen have involved them looking at it with suspicion,/picking off the icing/going somewhere else etc. So it's not a natural expression of childhood exuberance - it's just yet another example of foisting adult actions onto children - you know, 'I would really love to dive into a cake because it would be all free and fun, so I'm going to film my kids doing it because that makes things free and fun' ... except that most of them don't really want to.

It's a waste of good cake imo

Hate it, v weird

I love pictures of naked babies sleeping in knit hats...I can't imagine why that would make anyone "shudder" - what an overreaction to parents trying to capture a moment in their child's life.

smash cakes, flower pots, staged photos...maybe not to your taste, but hardly "weird" or "tragic" for pity's sake.

My DSIs just had a cakes smash for my DNiece.
DNiece touched the cake twice and walked away not a smash to be seen.

I don't like staged photo's either.

far more cake than I'd let my 1yo eat in one sitting!

So Practical Thumb

It's tacky in the same burning £10 notes would be. Or the destroying wedding dress thing.

People are very unimaginative sometimes, in the way they just follow these trends.

Yes I agree. Weird, wasteful, strange message to send your children, messy, unappealing and ostentatious. I hate pictures of children with food on their faces, I don't like seeing dirty faces and hands my impulse is to wash them right away so a photo of my child covered in food would do nothing for me

It's obscene and ridiculous. And speaks volumes about the values and beliefs of the participants, imo.

I also don't get the American tradition of smashing cake into your new spouse's face. My dh is American and i warned him that if he tried to push cake into my face my initial reaction would probably be to punch him