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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To hate this smashcake craze?

588 replies

skerrywind · 09/04/2017 10:35

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?

OP posts:

Thread gallery

MaisyPops · 11/04/2017 15:34

lynney88 My thing with cake smashes is I just don't get it. It seems daft and contrived. A piece from a birthday cake that the kid gets messy with, fair dos.
I can't get my head around all this Pinterest worthy staged kids photos.

Each to their own. I just find it odd.

Ginlinessisnexttogodliness · 11/04/2017 15:37

Why does your baby need a photo shoot?

LaurieMarlow · 11/04/2017 15:37

The poor poppet is utterly degraded and if - despite the response of so many other mothers - you still think think this treatment of your daughter was appropriate, it is you who should consider professional help. Your daughter looks (under that disgusting muck) like a pretty child. Surely you could have found a more appropriate and dignified way to remember her special day.

This has to be one of the most over wrought and pompous posts I've ever read on Mumsnet (and trust me, there's plenty of competition).

Hyacinth Bouquet lives and breathes and walks among us. Go call social services if you truly think that the child is 'degraded', the action 'inappropriate', 'disgusting' and 'undignified'.

It's only a bit of chocolate cake ffs.

HoneyBeeMum1 · 11/04/2017 15:38

Your child ordinarily has good manners. In other words, this humiliation and degradation of your child was to satisfy your weird desire to see her covered in (poo) food.

It is definitely you that needs professional help.

lynney88 · 11/04/2017 15:38

We obviously had photos done before the cake was introduced too. We made a decision have a party that would have cost roughly the same but be pointless or have a photo shoot with some lovely photos for all time.

Yes you can get photos at a party but who even throws a birthday party for a 1 year old?

Original poster

skerrywind · 11/04/2017 15:40

lynney- you say you don't waste food- but you celebrate in its destruction.

That's quite a cognitive leap.

OP posts:

BearHunting · 11/04/2017 15:40

I'm sorry but it's perfectly normal to look at a child with brown goo smeared over its face and think the worst has happened

I'm not a fan of cake smashes, but when the child covered in brown goo is pictured with a big chocolate cake - a cake that's got bits missing - the natural assumption is surely that the brown goo is from the cake, not a nappy?

Ginlinessisnexttogodliness · 11/04/2017 15:41

Lynney88 it doesn't matter to me whether you are channelling Barbara from the Good Life or not, however buying a cake just to smash it in your child's face for a photo doesn't quite tally with the principles of sustainability and resourcefulness that you live your life by.

On a serious note it might just be a bit of frivolity to you but to many people these contrived photo shoots are disenfranchising and manipulative to children.

lynney88 · 11/04/2017 15:41

Lol Honeybeemum you need to back off I didn't humiliate her or degrade her in anyway.

Ginless we booked a phot shoot to get some lovely keepsakes and some gifts for the paternal grandparents who live quite far away.

It's not as if she was spray tanned and made up she ate a flipping chocolate cake!

Megatherium · 11/04/2017 15:41

But why is a photo of a child with food smeared all over him a "lovely photo"?

Megatherium · 11/04/2017 15:43

I love seeing kids covered in food it shows they've enjoyed it

How? If I see a child has thrown food around, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that they enjoyed eating it - the reverse, if anything.

lynney88 · 11/04/2017 15:44

Ginless who picks up a cake and actually smashe it in a child's face? I certainly don't.

Skerrywind the destruction of one rare birthday cake does not equate to my whole life's view on waste.

HoneyBeeMum1 · 11/04/2017 15:44

Thank you Laurie, I aim to please.

I have nothing against mermaids and I am sure your sweet daughter looked perfectly charming lynney88. Those are the photos I would be proud to show off.

It is just such a shame about the cake.

lynney88 · 11/04/2017 15:45

She didn't throw it anywhere she put it to her mouth and missed them painted a lovely picture with it one the floor. Encouraging creativeness 👌🤗

HoneyBeeMum1 · 11/04/2017 15:48

No lynney88. Hobbycraft for creativity, bakery for food.

lynney88 · 11/04/2017 15:49

IT'S JUST A £3 CAKE! Jeez you lot go on as if there is a bloody flour shortage!

I am lucky to be able to afford a cake 🎂, pretty outfit and photo shoot.

You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Ginlinessisnexttogodliness · 11/04/2017 15:50

Lynney again you're being literal. You bought the cake to have it smashed/ squashed/ smeared into /across the child's face at some point in the shoot.
Delete as appropriate, all roughly the same.......

Original poster

skerrywind · 11/04/2017 15:51

Skerrywind the destruction of one rare birthday cake does not equate to my whole life's view on waste.

But it doesn't square.

You claim to be green, recycle, compost etc, yet when you choose a celebration it's an act of wanton destruction- can't you see how that seems quite shallow.

It's like me ( who hates cigarette smoke) going to sit in a smoky room as a birthday treat.

OP posts:

lynney88 · 11/04/2017 15:56

That's why it's called a treat because it's something you don't normally do 😂

lynney88 · 11/04/2017 15:59

The cake was fed to dogs (not mine) and some crumbs for the birds. The box was then decorated by my son then reycylced.

What's not green about that?

LaurieMarlow · 11/04/2017 16:00

All I really see here is middle class virtue signalling. It makes people feel better to pile on something like this while glossing over much more problematic behaviour they indulge in day to day.

From the untouched food that gets thrown out week to week, to the mounds of BLW waste that goes straight into the bin, to the groaning tables of plenty we produce at Christmas/Easter/Celebrations that are far more than anyone needs, to the pudding you invariably have in the restaurant even though you're full to bursting, to the food used for children's crafts and baking that's then not fit for consumption. We are profligate wasters of food even though we know that people are starving, even in our own country.

And that's even before we get into other ways in which we squander the earth's resources. From long haul flights whenever we feel like them, to running an SUV, to keeping big dogs (huge carbon footprints), to the money we spend on costly consumer goods.

Look to your own behaviour before calling other people decadent, crass chavs.

Disclaimer. I've never actually done a cake smash and I don't have any particular desire to. I just think the double standards on this thread are breathtaking.

Original poster

skerrywind · 11/04/2017 16:00

lynney- you are not getting it.

I wouldn't normally sit is a roomful of smokers.
I wouldn't do that as a birthday treat.

You say you don't like waste- yet you view it as a "treat" to do so.

OP posts:

lynney88 · 11/04/2017 16:02

👌😊👏

lynney88 · 11/04/2017 16:03

There was no waste though. It went to the photographer's dogs and the birdies. The box was decorated and recycled.

ChardonnayKnickertonSmythe · 11/04/2017 16:06

The cake was fed to dogs

You said it was chocolate cake in a post above, chocolate is toxic for dogs.

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