HOME MADE

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In many cultures, cakes have been a longstanding symbolic milestone of life events: birthdays, babies, weddings, retirements, religious traditions, anniversaries, holidays etc.

During the Great Depression, the need for easily prepared foods in an economic manner spurred an American company to develop the first boxed cake mix. In doing so, the cake became a mass-produced good rather than a home or bakery-made item. Later in the post-war boom, when women were forced to retire from the war-time labor efforts and pushed back into the role of homemakers, boxed cake sales significantly dropped despite their convenience and marketing towards housewives.

Marketing Psychologist Ernest Dichter concluded that baking cakes, once a task at which housewives could do to express skill and creativity, had become dispiriting - which led to the creation of pre-made frosting.

This was a period in American ideological history when women were confined to the domestic sphere focused around taking care of others. Historically, women have been responsible and played an imperative role in giving meaning to our life cycles. Though women’s domestic labor has been invisibilized by capitalist society, made hidden since it happens in the home.

I’m interested in exploring ways of bringing visibility to the labor and work women have done that often goes unseen and examine what we as women regard as significant moments in our own lives, our own accomplishments. What moments are deserving of celebration, significance, acknowledgment.