Sex at the bake-off

Fri, 17 May 2002 19:00:00 +0000

When I find out that my best friend is one of the finalists in the 40th Annual "Quick and Easy" Pillsbury Bake-Off, I scream with joy. But it isn't long before I start to have odd, troubling feelings of foreboding about the whole event. I become seized with the notion that, like so many things I used to think of as gentle and innocent, there must be a dark and corrupt underbelly to this event.

I begin to think that the bake-off is just the sort of allegedly wholesome slice of Americana where money and influence, and perhaps even the trading of sexual favors, matters much more than the deliciousness of one's Easy One Pot Cheeseburger Pie. I imagine that the prize money inspires the kind of competitiveness that is vicious and ugly and usually springs from unfulfilled sexual desire. Why should the bake-off be free from the kind of judge badgering, influence peddling and knee-whacking that has tarnished the reputation of figure skating?

Instantly, this notion colors my view of the contest. I look at the Pillsbury doughboy on a commercial and I start thinking unsavory sexual thoughts. Whenever that human hand, for example, comes into frame and pushes his doughy center -- exactly where his yeasty genitalia would be if he had any -- I think about sex, and how unscrupulous people use it to get what they want.

Salon.com > Cathryn Michon

Sex at the bake-off