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?

But I want to thank you lynney88 because if you hadn't talked about your daughter's cake smash, I'd have been denied so many frothing gems. There were a lot to choose from but in reverse order of nuttiness:

The Hunger Game reference is spot on.

It is chavvy and common.

Feeding poison to dogs makes you feel better about not 'wasting' your daughter's birthday cake?

limited

Are you completely missing the actual reference, which is not about the arena, and do you think people are comparing the cake fights to the kids (tributes) killing each other? Is that why you are talking about paranoia?

lynney88 posted pix of her daughter smothered in chocolate cake and the OP immediately said it was scatological. Then, perhaps worrying that the rest of us were too thick to get it, said it looked like shit.

Yes, chocolate does look like shit in certain circumstances, but do you really need to say it? It's clearly a chocolate cake and the polite thing to do would be to not draw a parallel.

But do go ahead.

Worse, was the sneering at her daughter's head band. Ha ha. What ghastly chav she is. I especially loved the person who said that her daughter was a pretty little girl under all that tawdry muck. How nice of you to point that out. Not at all patronising. But I think you should all take a bow there.

I'm not sure whether it was even worse to accuse Lynney88 of humiliating her child, as some posters did. I guess that was bad, but sorry, it was so bloody ridiculous at that point that it made me laugh until the tears ran down my legs.

As were the accusations of poisoning dogs and general insinuations of the breakdown of society leading to eventual world destruction.

This thread. I've read some high horse shit on here in my time, but fuck me.

A thread about cake has descended into chav bashing madness, culminating in a witch hunt. This is the kind of thread that deserves to be in the Daily Mail just to broadcast its ridiculousness.

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 gets the medal for being the most ridiculously pretentious pile of wank ever written on mumsnet. And in the grand scheme of Mumsnet, that's saying a lot.

Why is it chav bashing ?

Most people I know who fork out fir these photo shoots can afford them. They are not poor.

Op asked fir opinions - people gave them. I'm sure lots of working class think cake smashing is utter nonsense too.

abcBears my studies go back a bit further than The Hunger Games.

The scenes to which you and others refer draw on Juvenal's phrase about 'bread and circuses' and also evidence of Roman vomitoriums which some people think were places that patricians could go during parties to relieve themselves so they could partake of more food and drink. Some scholars are not sure of that.

Obviously we've all seen Spartacus and Gladiator.

Then we can talk about ritual sacrifice in the Aztec era, which was very gory.

I think what I'm trying to say to you is that we can all talk about things that we don't really like. That's fine.

But using a crappy film franchise, based on a shitty series of books aimed at teenagers, to trash someone else in order to assert your own moral, cultural and intellectual superiority is a bit, well, you know, um embarrassing.

Modern films and literature based on ancient history and classical myths are fantastic. But you should know from where the base material comes.

I'm not a bit sorry for being a little bit fucking intellectual there because you condemned lynney88 without looking it up.

Ignorance is unforgiveable

Why has this thread turned into some kind of class warfare?

I wouldnt have said cake smashing or daft photoshoots were limited to a particular 'class' anyway. Just people who want to spend their money in ways I think is odd (but i equally find massive shoe collevctions and spending £40 on makeup odd).
Surely we can say we dont get/dont like something without needing to turn into this bizarre kind of thread?

Don't worry about it, there's absolutely no need to apologise for sounding intellectual. Because you don't.

Sorry, I was on such a roll there I forgot to include this from abcBears

Are you completely missing the actual reference, which is not about the arena, and do you think people are comparing the cake fights to the kids (tributes) killing each other? Is that why you are talking about paranoia?

No I didn't. Because it's from a fucking crappy book and film franchise referencing the Roman and other societies.

It's entertainment aimed at teenagers.

I don't understand why anyone older than that would take it as their moral code

Furrywall - am overwhelmed at this great and unexpected honour. I am humbled that in the face the formidable literary brilliance on this thread that you should single out one of my humble little contributions for this prestigious prize. But, this medal is not just for me, I would like to thank... ...blah, blah de bl**dy blah.

To be clear the reference to Lynney seeking professional help was meant to reflect back her fatuous suggestion that people who describe a child that looks as if she is covered in poo might look like a child who is covered in poo.

Spiteful -

I find it very difficult to believe that genuinely tasteful and elegant people say such dreadful things about a small baby to her mother.

That should read:

...that people who describe a child that looks as if she is covered in poo might look like a child as looking like a child that looks like she is covered in poo - '..should get professional help.'

Mrs Dusty - I know it is a long thread, but I suggest you read it again. I don't think anyone has said dreadful things about a small baby. The negative comments have been aimed at the mother's (in most posters' opinions) poor taste in birthday treats.

I find it very difficult to believe that "genuinely tasteful and elegant people" purposefully waste food, treat their children as dress-up dolls for their own gratification and post six images of their child looking like they are smeared with semi-solid metabolic waste from the digestive tract without their consent but there you go...

This thread is mean shit. Let's strip it down.

Let's pretend Skerrywind was invited to my wedding in 1992. At that wedding, my wedding, that was a joyous celebration at which all my guests were treasured and at which everyone ate and drank free, I served a traditional rich fruit cake with royal icing.

Many people don't like rich fruit cake. They like chocolate or vanilla or ice cream or whatever. I knew that. However, it was my wedding and I like rich fruit cake and that kind of wedding cake is traditional and above all, terribly classy.

So at the end of the day of celebrations and joy, we cut it and gave it to people. I guess some of them ate it but many of them threw it away and great cost and waste .

I wonder what the reaction would be if one of my guests, not least a relation, had come on Mumsnet and posted something like this:

A close member of our family has just spent £100 on a traditional rich fruitcake smashcake for her wedding 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?

Killjoy wouldn't be the first word springing to mind

Limited - For the comparison to be complete you would have to cover someone (who had no choice in the matter) with the pieces of your wedding cake and take 'cute' photographs of them.

By the sounds of things I am not in the minority limited.

No comparison. The wedding cake was intended to be eaten. The smashcake wasn't. Those who didn't like fruitcake had the option of either refusing a slice or passing it on to someone who will eat it. Those who took the cake knowing it wouldn't be eaten are the ones guilty of waste.

I grew up in a large council estate is deep poverty in the 1960s. Food was scarce. We could afford to waste nothing.
Rejoicing in seeing food being wantonly destroyed is distasteful to me.

It's not the spending that shocks me, it's the saving for

Indeed. I don't care what people spend their cash on, but if one's financial position is precarious to the point that 800 quid takes a year to save up, it seems mad to spend it on a cake for a toddler to smash up.

I grew up in a large council estate is deep poverty in the 1960s.

I grew up on a council estate in the 60s. Food was not scarce. Life was rather jolly and abundant and enjoyed by my 20s-born parents who couldn't believe living in an era of the welfare state, the NHS, fair rents, free education for their children and the freedom to spend their spare income on luxuries like holidays and decent food.

There may have been pockets of misery in council estates around the country, and if you lived in one then I am sorry for you. That doesn't make it all right for you to whine all these years later - surely you must be pushing 60 - about someone who wants to do a smash cake party. With age, comes wisdom and acceptance. Let it go.

Is this your grandchild btw? Great grand child?

I remember when East Clintwood's (?) daughter burnt a $100,000 Hermes handbag for art - her boyfriend was taking pictures and it was a real bag.

East Clintwood

Pity it wasn't a West Viviennewood bag.