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?

There are STILL pockets of misery in council estates around the country. Food is scarce for many people today. Right now. Yet you think it's alright to whine about how wasting food is morally OK. Wisdom? Yeah, right...

It's just so contrived.

Funny, if it happens spontaneously by accident.

Cory and contrived when set up ad a 'thing '.

I grew up on a council estate in the 60s. Food was not scarce. Life was rather jolly and abundant and enjoyed

Good for you.

I can assure you we didn't all enjoy the same "jolly" experience.

limitedperiodonly
It's similar but not comparable.
Firstly, the smash cake has been bought specificallu to be photographed qnd then wasted.
If people want ro see their kid 'enjoying' cake why cant they have a birthday cake with some friends/family, take a birthday photo abd then give the kid a slice? You know, how people have done for years. Its the entire 'production value' and professional photographers, setting jt all up that baffles me.
That said, when i was wedding planning i deliberately went for 3 tiers (small size though) in 3 different flavours that guests would like. We served cake as the dessert and snavks tbrough the evening. There wasnt much left and we ate ho the rest.
I dont get people getting massive showy wedding cakes that get wasted either. Because its placing the emphasis on showing off for nice photos over actually enjoying the food.

that kind of wedding cake is traditional and above all, terribly classy.

if you feel the need to use the word classy, I am afraid you are anything but.

I don't mind about the waste etc

It's just weird to create synthetic 'moments' in someone's childhood.

I have snaps of my children covered in purée and cake and spag Bol as babies and toddlers. I have a snap k one of them in the aftermath of finding An open jar of jam on the kitchen table - that was a sight! The difference is that there is a family story attached to these images.

The story if mummy paying £100+ to have you dressed in your best gear taken to a studio and then told to smash a birthday cake - it's an event contrived by adults for adults.

It's the artifice which is odd.

But then again - it's your money, it's just a cake so who cares

I agree it all just seems very contrived and not at all aesthetically pleasing.
As a photographer I seem to be missing out on opportunities and therefore income because I do not offer cake smash/trash the dress/ newborns in basket type shoots. It all feels very uncomfortable and staged and I think that reflects in the finished product.

I had this done. He cried and didn't eat the cake. We made the cake. Only got one photo as the price for all of the photos was £400. They made the pics look like he ate the cake.

I don't get it. We tell our kids not to play with their food yet this encourages them to do so. Most 1 year olds I know are so confused and aren't really fussed anyway

That's my point exactly. They 'made' the photos look like he ate the cake. It's all very engineered and awkward.
When you look back on that photo what memories does it bring back? 'Oh yes, remember that time we forked out a small fortune for a cake smash shoot that made our baby cry'
That's not the kind of thing I'd look back fondly on! I just don't get it [shrug]

Well, to be fair, if you worried about an activity making the baby cry then you'd never do anything. A friend of mine's one-year-old cried right through his birthday photoshoot (not a cake in sight) and my baby cried right through his very first Baby Sensory class. It's just the risk you run with babies. Never work with children or animals.

I don't really care for cake smash shoots myself, but comparing them to a fictitious future dystopia is utterly ludicrous. I'm giggling at all the silly Hyacinth Buckets, though.

Well you are overstating my point to ' win' an argument but you know whatever.

For me it's a bit like staging scenes from a 21st birthday party - in a photographers studio. It's a sort of weird cleaned up depiction of a real life event.

It's not a big deal. But it's an odd thing to want to do.

Well then, all photoshoots are 'odd', as is every single staged photo or anything that's not an utterly spontaneous candid shot.

Which means there's a massive industry and a lot of demand for something 'odd'.

Photography is an art, and art is not always utterly spontaneous and unplanned.

Funnily enough, a photographer friend of mine really enjoys cake smash shoots because she says no two shots are ever the same.

As an aside, I don't see how my post had anything to do with yours, much less overstating it, and I don't see why people can't disagree with you without being accused of trying to "win". You were discussing artifice, I was discussing how there's always a risk of babies crying whatever you do, and ludicrous comparisons.

Ugh, YANBU.

I saw a 'behind the scenes' video of a cake smash on a photographers blog, and the child was just sat there, looking totally confused, with the photographer trying to encourage the child to put its hands in the cake. The photog then resorted to smearing some of the icing onto the child's face when the child was unwilling to get involved. So so fake. I don't see the point. I've never even got any 'professional' photos of my DS done. All I've had so far are the ones by the Bounty rep in hospital () and preschool/school photos. Having studied photography myself I didn't want to pay someone for pictures I could take myself

YANBU it's a horrible thing

I don't get the strong reaction to this.

sure it is food waste, but then average consumers waste a third of the food they buy. There is very little outrage over this, or efforts to reduce this. Supermarkets and the farming industry also waste a huge amount of food.

Totally agree. Crass, tacky, looks horrible. Pointless imo.

PoorYorick
Well then, all photoshoots are 'odd', as is every single staged photo or anything that's not an utterly spontaneous candid shot.
Which means there's a massive industry and a lot of demand for something 'odd'.
Theres a lot of demand.
I get the family portrait shots. I get sports photography. I nearly went for a dance shoot capturing moments mid dance. I get wedding photos etc.
I dont get friends who go and have couples photoshoots for an afternoon or single friends who just go for a few hours of 'take photos of me just posing'. It feels very much like people just want to focus ob image and being the centre of attention. I do find it odd. Its just let me stand aroubd and pretend to be important.
Photography is an art, and art is not always utterly spontaneous and unplanned.
True. It is an art. Wedding photos etc being an example.
I enjoy photography and i enjoy photography for being art e.g. photographer has a concept and shoots it etc.

I think average people being obsessed with getting their kids dolled up or themselves just to prance around as a random afternoon is just a weird image thing.

I dont get friends who go and have couples photoshoots for an afternoon or single friends who just go for a few hours of 'take photos of me just posing'.

Well, you don't have to. You can just let them and the photographer they're commissioning privately get on with it and tell yourself it's a moral failing if it bothers you this much. It's not the subject of this thread anyway, so who cares.

I swear, when this thread started I thought there would be a bit of "I like cake smashes, fun and cute" vs "I don't like cake smashes, ugly and wasteful". But apparently privately commissioned photography, or photography that isn't completely candid, is a class issue, a harbinger of future dystopia, a terrible moral failing....Christ alive. Some of you lot must be right fun at parties.

I would think they are no more or less fun at parties than people who like staged photo shoots.

I think we can safely say that whoever takes the photographs for the party will definitely be in for a shit time.

But apparently privately commissioned photography, or photography that isn't completely candid, is a class issue, a harbinger of future dystopia, a terrible moral failing....Christ alive. Some of you lot must be right fun at parties.
Ive not said its a class issue. In fact ive specifically said i dont think it is a class issue.
Ive also said quite clearly I perfectly get private photography for some things.
Nobody's said its immoral or thay its some dystopian future.
People have said they dont like something and given reasons. No need for doom and gloom suggesting people who dont like posey things are no fun.

People can spend their money how they like. People can have an opinion on those who are obsessed with endless posing.

(My 'nongetting' of endless posing extends to duck face selfies, women taking makeup selfies to flog their MLM crap, endless girls lined up for nights out with captions "these girls", people uploading zillions of photos of their baby every day to facebook etc. Sure take some snaps and share them, we all do, but some people are bloody obsessed with getting a perfect image that I find bizarre)

Sorry Maisy, I'm not referring just to you. I'm talking about the entire spectrum of lunacy that has been displayed on this thread. Which is, let's remember, about the highly contentious and divisive issue of....photographs of babies with cake.

People have compared it to The Hunger Games. They've gone on class warfare about it, calling it the worst thing they can think of (common). They've made scatological remarks about a baby. And now, somehow, we've got people moralising about those who commission private photography even if it's not a cake smash. Apparently, if you contact a photographer and ask them to take some shoots of you with a loved one, of your pregnancy, or perhaps just of you looking nice because what the fuck you're a long time old and an even longer time dead, it's a moral issue. Because you're being contrived, you're "wanting to focus on image and being the centre of attention....pretend(ing) to be important." Fuck, why do you even care? How has this consumed your thoughts long enough even to come to this ridiculous conclusion?

I just can't with the level of utter inanity on this thread. It's gone past being funny.

Ah right. I thought you meant Id said that so was a bit "wooaahh!".

I see what you mean across the wider thread.

I personally just dislike an obsession with lots of posing. Hell, we did limited formal photos at our own wedding because i find them so awkward.
I have relatived who are big into their photoshoots. I find it totally bizarre.
Plus, babies get covered in cake ghe second you give a slice to them... i cant see why youd want a special cake to document that babies make a mess. Haha.

Yep, what PoorYorick said. The entire thread belongs in classics as an example of mumsnet lunacy...