Wednesday 17 November 2010

On Chocolate Cake

In Germany, chocolate cake is for MEN. Like Yorkie bars.

Male Germans frequently order chocolate cake if it's offered. It confuses English women, who think chocolate is something only women are supposed to like; some of us even feel a vague obligation to order it as some sort of gender performance. British men hardly ever order chocolate cake, quite possibly for the same reason.

Just goes to show how made-up and arbitrary these things are.

Question: is the British marketing schtick for Yorkie bars ("No Girls" written in big letters on a perfectly routine piece of commodity chocolate) unnecessary in Germany? Or is there some equivalent?

12 comments:

maya said...

This always amuse me as in Spain chocolate eating doesn't have a gender label attached.

msHedgehog said...

I know. It's completely ridiculous.

Andreas said...

How can one *not* eat chocolate cake when it is available? Madness!

Claudita said...

Ah, well, the Brits are just strange...my dad and brother are wild for chocolate, my mum and I not so much. But then my sister eats Nutella out of the jar...They have a strange relationship with cake as well - I remember the appalled faces of two of my boyfriends when the first 'meal' after my sister's and brother's wedding receptions was .... Kaffee und Kuchen - what else??? And I'm sure all the German men ate chocolate cake (and apple, plum, Blackforest gateau etc...)

msHedgehog said...

@Claudita: I strongly suspect Andreas of eating Nutella out of the jar.

Andreas said...

@MsH: Why wouldn't I?

Gorilla Bananas said...

I suspect British men think that getting their faces sticky would be gay. As would carrying face wipes.

Melina Sedo said...

Yup. All german men I know better, LOVE Chocolate, eat lots of it, and even Nutella out of the jar. Detlef just got a huge glass (750 gr) from Verena and ate half of it, during our video session last night... I usally eat only a little bit, if at all...
But I am confused: Why don't english men eat chocolate? Is there a stigma attached?
Hugs to you,
Melina

msHedgehog said...

@Melina: arguably. Chocolate is considered a woman thing, like we are supposed to be fascinated by shoes. Newspapers regularly publish fake-scientific articles distorting some marginally relevant piece of nutritional or neurological research to fit in with the prejudice - or just making stuff up when there aren't any sufficiently unwise or sufficiently attention-seeking academics to be found. The downhearted woman comforting herself with chocolate cake is one of the laziest clichés of badly written fiction.

It takes a real man - or, in my experience, a German man - to ignore all that on a first date ;)

Melina Sedo said...

Well... I can just say: most of the 750 gr Nutella glas is gone by now. It took Detlef 1 day. I did not eat 1 spoon of it. :-)
(But why is he not fat???? That is the real question...)

Detlef said...

OK, girls!

Enough.


The wrongs:
@ M: And yes, you ate a spoon full! And that one spoon is not on me ...

The goodies:
German men = real men !!
@msH: Thanks so much for pointing that out finally.

The disturbingers:
@ C: You were with *more than two boyfriends* to a 'family wedding', where your sister and your brother got married to each other? And they married even twice? OMG !!


And by the way, after all I AM fat ... :-/
Good afternoon then ::

Anonymous said...

I remember quite distinctly in my Physics practicals at University, that it was always the boys in my group who announced with great excitement at 3.30 that it was "chocolate time!!!!" and dashed off to the vending machines while I went to fetch their coffee....
from a female physicist.