Darling Cornelia: No Birth Cakes, Please!

Darling Cornelia,

I am throwing a baby shower for my friend. I’ll call her Helen. Helen has a sister, Jenny, who bakes cakes. Jenny has offered to bring the cake for Helen’s shower, but her cakes are absolutely hideous. She drapes the cake in flesh-toned fondant and forms it into the shape of a birth canal with a baby’s head emerging from it. She uses some sort of red gelatin to approximate blood and even paints tiny hairs on the baby’s scalp! It is revolting and I do not want to spend all day cooking, folding napkins and arranging my table just so, only to have a gory scene plopped down in the middle of it. But Jenny is so excited about her nightmarish pastry art. I want to tell her not to bring the cake, but I feel terrible about it. What should I do? 

Eww, No Ugly Pastries Here

Darling Enuph,

I do sympathize with your predicament. I cannot -- and do not wish to -- think of any tablecloth that would match a fondant birth scene. Why, in my day, we didn’t even warn our daughters before their menstrual cycles started. I still remember my oldest girl’s sobbing when she ran from the bathroom clutching her white skirt, stained with sticky warm blood. I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying! Poor girl. I think she was more horrified to find out that it was normal. I would have told her before that happened, you see, had social mores of the time not forbidden such conversations. (You see why I share your position on this most unseemly idea.). 

Oh, how I do digress sometimes. Back to your question, Enuph. It is your house, and if someone wanted to bring a jug of 150-proof moonshine, the like of which I drank plenty of during Prohibition, you would be well within your rights to tell your guest to leave it at the door. The same applies here.

However, I appreciate your desire not to hurt the young lady’s feelings. Because it sounds like Jenny has an artistic bent, perhaps she can re-shape her idea into something less…amniotic? Call her and let her know you are delighted that she wants to supply the cake and suggest that she try a more traditional design, like a rubber ducky, or a buttercream bassinet. Hell, a diaper pin would be less offensive than what you describe.

If she digs in her heels and insists on bringing this gateau de grotesquerie, then you may consider your dilemma at an end, and put the hammer down. People will be posting photos of your carefully laid table all over the Instagram, and you deserve to have it free of anything that’s crowning. 

P.S. Enuph, I feel I would be remiss if I did not share the opinions of my two colleagues who are currently arguing about what you should do. Annette says you should stop being so uptight because birth is beautiful, and Cheyenne says that a birth cake is ‘literal violence’ -- whatever that means. I disagree with them, of course. Annette knows the value of 1960s toys, and Cheyenne knows when to dump a boyfriend, but etiquette is my domain. And I would not be working -- and still alive -- at 117 if I didn’t know my…feces. (Young people toss the s-word around like they’re unfurling a bedsheet, but for a woman of my generation, it’s still something that women of class don’t let pass their lips.) So choose wisely, Enuph! 

Author’s note: I ran through my backlog of completed stories a little too quickly. Now I have to write new ones from scratch or dig up old ones that are on USB drives that I can’t currently find. To maintain a consistent publishing schedule, I decided to create a series of fictional advice columns. That way, I can publish these shorter — and, I hope, fun — pieces while I work on new stuff, or dig up and re-work old stuff.

Cornelia Fulton answers etiquette questions à la Miss Manners. You’ll also meet Annette Parker, an aging hippie and antique expert who tells people what their attic junk is worth, and Cheyenne James, a vapid 20-something who writes a relationship column and uses the word ‘literal’ far too often. Subscribe if you don’t already so you won’t miss any advice!