Sweet Sisterhood

This chapter accounts for the “cupcake craze” by analyzing the distinctly feminized pleasures the confections signify in the postfeminist cultural context. Feminist media scholars have critiqued postfeminist popular culture for producing hegemonic representations that depoliticize feminist ideals. While cupcakes may indeed reify postfeminist ideologies, the chapter argues that they also point toward resistant pleasures; cupcakes invite cultural consumers to take pleasure in depictions of sisterhood that challenge neoliberal individuality by celebrating bonds between women and the liberating potential of difference. By tracing popular representations of cupcakes as items of consumption and production, this chapter finds moments in which viewers are invited to take pleasure in sweet indulgences and feminine friendships that reproduce but also expose the cracks in contemporary gender politics.