Lesbian cupcakes

Really, lesbians and cupcakes, but I just like saying that.


photo of Linsey Pecikonis for The Washington Blade by Henry Linser

(Sorry, not a porn movie…yet.) But this Washington Blade article came out at the perfect time, good synergy with an idea I’ve had bubbling around in my brain. Oh and there is no hyphen in my name, but it’s okay, I’m used to it being spelled wrong. Also, fun RKB trivia: Shar(lene) Rednour published my very first erotica story, “Monica and Me,” in her anthology Starf*cker way back in 2000, launching this smut writing career of mine (though at the time I had no idea I had so many more dirty stories in me!).

Rachel Kramer-Bussel started her popular blog, Cupcakes Take the Cake, in December of 2004, and two friends joined her blogging efforts the following February. Kramer-Bussel, who is bisexual, says that although there’s “nothing specifically queer about cupcakes,” she has seen some parallels between lesbians and the little desserts.

“I’ve been seeing them in the queer community at gay marriages, and there are also Gay Pride cupcakes. You can very easily decorate them to match any color or theme, and do things with them that you can’t do with cookies.”

But there’s more to the queer cupcake relationship than decorating them.

“There’s a segment of my blog readership that comes from the indie-craft world, and I see an overlap between people who go to craft fairs, and who are lesbian or bisexual,” she says. “I think that’s coming from the ‘do it yourself’ mentality. We can make our own, and we’re taking back some of those traditionally feminine skills by doing them in a feminist kind of way … It’s kitschy cool. Even though cupcakes are very mainstream, if we make Pride cupcakes and bring them to the parade, then there’s a reclaiming of that as something valid for women without it capitulating that idea that women have to cook.”

Sharlene Rednour, a California-based writer and filmmaker, became a stay-at-home mom after adopting two children through a foster-to-adopt program, and she also started her own cupcake company, Sharlene’s Babycakes.

“I have always been a foodie and when I became a mom, I couldn’t do creative things by myself,” she says, “Baking cupcakes was something I could do with the kids and I always got a lot of compliments on them.”