A colleague told me about six months ago (back in January 2022) that a former dean of the library at GT once said:
“Southerners eat too much cake.”
Like a song that endlessly gets stuck in your head (typically Whitney Houston’s “I Want to Dance With Somebody” for me), this phrase stuck with me. I’d be driving, walking around campus, falling asleep at night, and I would think…
Southerners eat too much cake. What does that even mean? That Southerners don’t like healthy foods? That we’re fat? That we’re too jolly for our own good?
Truthfully, I have no conception of what “too much cake” is. But this statement doesn’t just bother me as a Southerner, it bothers me as a scholar.
At the start of this project, I’m working on a doctorate in public administration. My particular research focus in on the impact of the built environment on the culture of government workplaces. Put more simply, I’m interested in how the places where we work influence what we do and how we feel about it. And while culture can be understood in a larger context, I think that cake is a great place to start.
I’ve been a baker for years, and cakes are my favorite things to make. Cakes are my favorite thing to make because they imply togetherness. Hardly anyone eats a cake by themselves. They are, by their very nature, meant to be shared. They mark occasions. They are a centerpiece to gather around. And a cake at a gathering or in a workplace can literally and physically bring people together. So a rejection of cake, is on some level, a rejection of the group and the reasons why they might come together in the first place.
And that’s why, as Michael Jordan says, I took that personally. So, this project is a response to that phrase I can’t get out of my head. For the next year, I’m going to be making a cake. Usually a classic Southern cake.
Because Southerners eat too much cake. It’s tradition. It’s heritage. And it’s fucking tasty.