Rhapsody in White wants her nickname back!

As you know, I've given up Perez Hilton for Lent. It's hard. I'm undoing five years of Pavlovian office conditioning: I'd hit refresh on the Perez tab in my browser every time a new email from a boss or superior popped up in my Outlook. I am trying to fill my free time cubicle coma with smarter, better-for-me places like newyorker.com, wonkette.com, businessinsider.com, and feministing.com. You know, brain food.

And how! I was shocked to read today over at Feministing (if you're afraid to check it out, just get over yourself and go) about a disturbing controversy, and more shocked that I actually had unknowingly dipped my toe into this seething cauldron of debate. The controversy: cupcakes.

Specifically, a bakery's marketing campaign, a bakery right here in the heart of my fair city of Blergistan: Butch Bakery. Their slogans include "Butch it up," "Cupcakes for Manly Men," and "The Man-ifesto." (Don Draper just splashed some cold scotch on his face.)

But after checking out the Butch website, I thought of only one thing:


We're men, we're men who bake.

First a bit of history on our miniature Schnauser of a friend the cupcake: it has been around for literally many years. Cupcakes were invented on a television studio set in Long Island City, Queens, where a curiously-dressed young sprite named Carrie Bradshaw introduced this quaint delicacy to the sad, uneducated paupers who lived outside her magical Shangri-La called Bergdorfs. Soon, almost everyone was eating these delicious morsels. But not enough. Eventually, American ingenuity creaked into motion—finally these bakers and AFL-CIO rejects pulled themselves up by their Caterpillar boostraps!—and innovation sprouted. There were cupcakes with toppings. All kinds of toppings! Sprinkes, gumdrops, candles! Outre! And then they thought to put cookies on top! Oreos and Nutter Butters and Thin Mints oh my! Then everyone had cupcakes all over the land and we were happy and we were good. But like our nanny, we took our cupcakes for granted. Too many choices, too much risk-taking. We over-hedged our love of cupcakes. There was turmoil. The industry needed a bail-out.

This is where we are now: cupcakes are fighting for relevancy in a bloated, corrupt capitalist eco-system. Everyone seems to have an opinion about them. I view the cupcake as purely a vehicle for frosting, much as I view a gentleman caller. But really, all of capitalism's problems can be traced back to one thing: bad marketing. It's not what you sell, it's how you sell it.

Now, I ate two of Butch's creations recently at a friendly gathering. (Sha'mon there were extras.) One of them was supposed to have bacon inside—prompting the "Why hasn't someone thought of this before?" question—but I was let down to find it did not. Rude. The other one I consumed might have had the camo-chocolate top that you see below, but quite frankly, it did not see the light of day long enough for me to notice such a detail.


They were served to me by a gay man in a lesbian's home. And rightly or wrongly, I assumed Butch was operated by Christy Cummings and owned by Sheri Ann Cabot because American Bitch had folded. I had no idea Butch was named without irony or a nod to queer culture. What straight man refers to himself or other straight men as butch? What straight woman refers to a straight man as butch? It's puzzling, right?

I don't need to point out how utterly silly and un-modern the Butch branding is. Which I do, because I've actually worked in marketing for many weeks and marketing is a very precise science guessing game. If I were a dude, I'd probably be insulted and head to Crumbs like everyone else. There are more of them and the lines are shorter. Also: if their cupcakes are really aimed at straight men like they claim, then they are doing their target audience a disservice. How are guys going to pick up chicks at the corner bakery if there are only other dudes there? Sick, bro.

Take it from a someone besides me who always has their pulse on the capitalist zeitgeist, Jack Donaghey: "New Yorkers are off cupcakes and we're back to donuts." (Season 4, the episode with Jennifer Aniston.)

So Butch here's your next product:












And free of charge, I threw in a few new mottos I know Butch Bakery will like:

"Peen-worthy"
"Poke it, mon"
"Just rape it"
"Tastes better than your girlfriend"

Welx!