Cupcake Bias

or underestimating sweet people

Hi Friends,

Have you noticed that sweet people often get the stick end of the lollipop? Despite being the lollipop end in their social spheres? They earn less (between $3,000-10,000 less annually) and are more likely to be disrespected interpersonally than their salty and spicy counterparts. This squares with the experiential data I’ve collected over 40 years on the belonging frontier. Let’s call this, “Cupcake Bias” and add it to this list of 50 other cognitive biases that can mess with our understanding of each other.

Beyond the personal costs of sweetness, it’s grossly hypocritical for organizations to espouse values of warmth and kindness while actively punishing the very people who embody those values and in fact are keeping the organization from imploding. Nice people finish last. Should they become difficult and mean or double-down and ferociously protect their sweetness as their superpower???????

~a sweet person poised for underestimation by both her boss + bumble date~

Here is a Cotton Candy word cloud of associations for “sweet” to help us wonder about why it’s often a liability.

what would you add?

This is my friend Candy who is wearing cotton. She is sweet. And rides a bicycle named Earl. She is an extraordinary children’s book author and school teacher, and isn’t paid enough for either. Should she throw a few middle fingers to get that salary bump?

Whatever shall we do? Beyond discussing this as a family, community, group, E-board and giving everyone space to examine their relationship to sweetness, we can counter Cupcake Bias… with fire-breathing kittens:

1. Notice when you are forming an impression that someone is “sweet,” “pleasant,” “agreeable,” etc. Do any assumptions or value judgments attach to this?

2. Now visualize that person transform into a skyscraper-high, fire-breathing kitten capable of scorching the whole metropolis. Let this temporarily change your perspective of who this sweet person is and what they’re capable of. Does this aggressive image inspire respect (or fear) that wasn’t there prior?

3. Proceed to giving them a raise, the mic, etc., as they expertly embody a sweet leadership style crucial to the organization, community, world.

ROAR

Ferocious Sweetness: a manifesto for the powerfully sweet ones

We don’t deserve to be underestimated, taken advantage of, or condescended to just because the world is harsh and we are not. We deserve to be estimated correctly (esteemed) and respected without having to become someone who lives with claws out. We deserve to live into the sweetness, ferociously guarding it as a rare and necessary antidote to a world of sandpaper and daggers. When we are being misunderstood or made less than, we must protest with pyrotechnics—lighting up our presence as worthy of both gratitude and respect. This will inevitably singe a few eyebrows, including our own, until our place in things is firmly established.

Becoming a Fire Ring

We all have an opportunity—I would say ‘duty,’ but no one likes to be told they have a duty—to become a ring of stones to safeguard the cupcakes as they protect their own sweetness. This means that the rottweilers and death-glaring cocker spaniels use their disagreeableness, their firm handshakes and their bizarre value in many power structures to actively lift up and protect the essential value of agreeable people. Voila:

Sending sprinkles + blowtorches from the belonging frontier,

Cat

P.S. — Here’s my cupcake delivering cupcakes to our old starbucks community :)