To hate this smashcake craze?

[skerrywind]

A close member of our family has just spent £100 on a smashcake for her 1st baby's birthday.
I find it quite disgusting to waste food like this. It surprises me that I have quite a gutteral reaction to this. I also find it disgusting to see people in baths of beans etc.

Anyone else feel like this or am I just a killjoy?

how are we suppose to travel if we don't fly? By donkey?
Most of the time, people don't need to travel. It's a choice. I do fly to go on holiday, but I know that it's environmentally wasteful - which is why I can't get het up about people doing something which probably isn't as wasteful.

Laughing at all the wasteful comments. Would imagine many of these same moaners advocate BLW. Yes it's awful that we waste food but show me a parent with a baby / toddler where food isn't wasted? Or is it just my toddler who ends up covered in whatever she eats and inevitably wastes done in the process ?

I feel strangely left out. I didn't know photo shoots were a thing for one year olds (surely this is what you do once. On your wedding day), let alone ones that involve them having an enormous cake that noone really likes or eats (again isn't that what weddings are for).

How are we suppose to travel if we don't fly? By donkey?

Jesus did

Decadent, crass, wasteful.

By the way, when something is wasteful, something else being MORE wasteful doesn't cancel it out. All the things mentioned re. wastefulness are indeed shit. Destroying food for a photo is still shit too. It's a sort of Marie Antoinette-ish exhibition of comparitive (to some countries) wealth. And it's agonisingly American in the staged aspect.

I don't think anyone is saying it cancels it out. They're objecting to the moral high ground hand-wringing of people who do infinitely more wasteful things on a day to day basis, yet feel the need to denounce this as 'crass', 'decadent', 'immoral' and so on.

We had one, the "waste of cake" was trivial to the normal cost of a photo shoot, and was totally engaging for our small children.
Our 7yr old hates having her photo taken, really dreaded her keeping her eyes shut or hiding, but the fun involved brought her out.
myfamilyhomeblog.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/cake-smash-family-photo-shoot/

Chavvy, LaurieMarlow, don't forget chavvy

Find anything like that, food fights etc, gross.

Can't stand freak shakes either. Bleurgh.

It reminds me of the overindulgent Capitol in the Hunger Games!

Yes of course a lot of food gets wasted by children but waste is the relevant word.

Deliberate, contrived shows of profligacy for the sake of 'oh look how cute my expensively cake-smeared kid is' - really?

I love watching small children enjoying food. I have no issues with foody faces, chocolatey fingers, mud everywhere, general grime etc. unlikemymotherinlaw It's all good.

What I can't understand is setting out to engineer a scenario like this, contriving it to be as messy as possible and paying through the nose for some overpriced photographer to shoot it. I honestly don't get it. Talk about a false milestone ...

What's wrong with a normal birthday cake, giving the birthday child a slice and letting them get on with it? Why teach them it's ok to smash food about, waste it, or that an entire cake is theirs to do what they like with? Why not teach them that at a family celebration, it's about sharing food, not fetishising it and that it's normal - and nice - for everyone to eat the same food? Apart from anything else, I'm really uncomfortable with the idea that the whole thing is predicated on the baby getting very messy and that this becomes the whole point of the gathering. It feels exploitationary, like setting up a practical joke or something.

And it's tacky in the extreme...

Glad to say have never heard of it. Sounds utterly pathetic. Hopefully those kids will one day pie their ageing parents in the face. And broadcast the results.

I don't know anyone stupid enough or vulgar enough to partake is such a tacky charade.

Vulgar awful
Up there with baby showers

YANBU. Enough said!

We did a cake smash for my LGs first birthday and it was ACE!

And I am not one for food waste trust me we eat all leftovers the next day or day after. The cake just like any birthday cake was a treat and after her being allowed to eat Lactose contains foods again a big chocolate cake smash was welcomed!

She loved it and we loved it. We also helped the photographer clean up too. We now have fantastic photos, videos and fun memories of her first birthday.

The cake was inexpensive too. And we got some lovely photos of her in her little inexpensive outfit too which has been cleaned and stored on her memory box.

We are not chavs either and if you think my baby looks tacky then I'm sorry but I'm not the one being vulgar. 😂

Try it you might actually have some fun and like it!

Heaven forbid people try something new and different. I don't see the problem with parents making memories with their kids.

My son at age 1 could cover himself completely head to toe with 1 scoop of chocolate ice cream and my dd age 5 still has the knack of this...

Catrina, I have lived in the US for nearly 30 years. I have many nieces, nephews, friends with babies and my own children. Not once have I ever seen a smash cake at a birthday party. When was the last time you were in the US and saw a smash cake event?

I'm a photographer and I despise cake smash photo shoots. I've been asked so many times and point blank refuse. No. Just no.
I also refuse to put newborns in baskets, old suitcases or perched behind newspapers with reading glasses on. These are all photo shoots a local competitor does vast amounts of on a daily basis. The mind boggles...

I hate them too but only because I can sometimes be very highly strung and loathe unnecessary mess.

ifinishedthebiscuits
its creating something purely to destroy

Yes...I completely agree. It's wasteful, crass, vulgar, obnoxious and, quite frankly, common as hell. Our ancestors who had rations during war time would be turning in their graves.

A few weeks ago I got embroiled in an online chat about this very topic.
I am an expat (for now), and someone piped up on a local forum looking for cake suppliers, venues and photographers who would help to organise her " day of making memories ".

There's a lot of cash thrown around here, and generally, the more you spend (on crap like this) the better you are (apparently).

So I told the OP what I thought. No one could understand my point of view. I was well and truly slapped down. The fun police. I was Mrs misery. Wouldn't know fun if it bit me, and you can feed the left over cake to your domestic helper so there really is no waste involved,etc etc...

Ugh.

lynney88- sorry but I find these pictures verging on the scatological, and not endearing.

Did you really serve the cake afterwards? Once it had been mashed to a pulp and covered in drool?

Did you get all the chocolate stains out of the outfit?