A PIECE OF CAKE

'Booba, can you please make me a dolly cake for my birthday?'

Sure!  Why not. I've done a few. For younger kids though. Age 2 or 3. This is for a 6 year old, and probably slopping on a bit of whipped cream and some sliced berries for decoration was not going to make the grade.

So I went to Chef Google and asked for some assistance with Dolly Varden cake, and check out what crazy obsessive women come up with. I couldn't believe my eyes. This was a far sight more complex than my previous attempts. But I'm up for a challenge!

'What's you favourite colour?' I asked Birthday Girl, expecting the usual pink, or Princess Elsa blue or such.
'Red! Aaaannd...black.'
Ummm...great! I'll do a Goth theme. That hasn't been done. Or an Essendon supporter doll. Why not.
'No, no! I changed my mind. Rainbow! I love the rainbow.'
Rainbow. Hmm, that's a LOT of food colouring. The kids will go mental. But there must be a shortcut...
Ah, taste the rainbow! Skittles! Haha, too easy. On a white background. Of fondant. Stuck on with...buttercream frosting.

Now I am committed enough to actually own a Dolly Varden cake tin which lends shape to the skirt of the doll. It is deep and stands on a narrow base.

The cake takes longer to bake because of the depth, and the tin when full of batter is unstable because of the narrow base. So when I made the cake batter which I marbled with blue, green and pink (eww, won't do that again), you would think that I would remember this, but of course when I checked on the cake after a reasonable time, the centre was still runny and then the tin tipped over when I slid the tray back into the oven. So, cursing, I whipped it back out and used a spatula to scoop the batter back into the hollowed cake and hoped that the Cake Goddess would not be a bitch and it would be OK.
And so it was. Didn't do the marbling pattern any favours though.

That was Thursday night. The party was scheduled for Sunday, and I was planning on decorating the cake on Sunday morning. I had bought the ready made fondant. I had food colouring. I even had Cholov Yisroel butter and cream for the frosting. And I had the kosher Skittles.

Friday, 40 minutes before Shabbos I remembered that I didn't have a doll.

I dashed out to Coles down the street and snagged a Barbie for $10. I was back home in 20 minutes and hello Shabbos.

Saturday night I actually could not sleep because of the cake. I tossed and turned and fretted over patterns and rainbows and, befuddled and slightly anxious, I got up at 7.30 - on a Sunday, people- and addressed the task at hand.

So it turns out, that unlike with a cheap $2 plastic Barbie knock-off, the legs of a real Barbie do not pop out. Removing the legs, while seemingly cruel, allows one to stick the doll's legless torso into a small depression on top of the cake, i.e. scoop out a bit of cake and stick on Frankenbarbie with some frosting. No can do with Real Barbie. This time was for real. So I used a zucchini corer (I have no idea why I own such a thing, but I do) and reamed out the cake as neatly as a geologist's core sample. I stripped Barbie of her hooker clothes and heels, wrapped her in plastic from the waist down, (to keep her clean and protect her impressive thigh gap) and thrust her into the hole in the cake. And it turned out that Barbie, with her impossibly long and shapely legs, was taller than the cake.

Huh. Never had this problem with Frankenbarbie. I needed something to elevate the cake and accommodate her legs. Corks? No, should be edible. More cake? Oy, too late, no time.
I found some marshmallows and with a stroke of genius, constructed a marshmallow-buttercream plinth, and Voila! Cake up to the waist now. Sort of.

Then the buttercream frosting, made with REAL butter and REAL cream. Yes, ma'am, no pareve fake stuff here. Nosirree.

Slather that on, fill in all the gaps. AND NOW. The Fondant.

I had bought a block of this, kosher of course, and had never worked with it before. But I had to try (refer to images of dolly cakes). You knead it and roll it and then you can cut it like cookie dough. And it was like kneading a brick, but it did soften eventually. Since I know a thing or two, I rolled it between 2 sheets of baking paper so I didn't have to curse it for sticking to stuff, and then I cut out dozens of hearts with a cookie cutter and stuck them on to the frosting. The marshmallow plinth was hidden and I built the skirt. And I made a little bodice for Barbie, so no more nudity.

After admiring the bride-like creation, with plastic wrap veiling all over her face and hair, keeping it nice and clean, I set to work sticking Skittles in a sort of rainbow gradation of colour EXCEPT it turns out that kosher Skittles do not have red or blue. Plenty of green, yellow, orange and a murky violet, but no red or blue. Anyway, I toiled away with the Skittles and a little dab of frosting sticking them all on, one by one, until I ran out of them.

I had a scrap of fondant left so I dyed it red and made a sash with a BOW, noch, so at least there was red, then orange, yellow, green, NO BLUE (or indigo, goes without saying) and violet. Eh, what 6 year old would notice, I thought.

Then I freed Barbie from her scary-looking plastic head wrap and here she is.

 See the bow? See? See?

Ta-daa!

It had taken 2 hours.

Then everyone came to set up, and when I mentioned, with some pride, the buttercream frosting with the REAL butter etc, Birthday Girl's mummy went a bit pale and told me that the menu included hot dogs. I must have missed the memo. After an initial frisson of panic, we decided that the cake would be served first, and then games etc and then hotdogs. Saved from Treyf.

And when it was time to cut the cake, you wouldn't believe it, one of the little girls informed me that it was not a rainbow, because there was NO BLUE. But, aha! On cutting the cake, the marbled blue green and pink interior (ew) made up for that. Take that, smart little kid.

And in 2 minutes she was eaten, down to the marshmallows. After stripping Barbie of her fondant bodice and Glad Wrap fetishwear, a quick wipe over with a cloth and on went her pink mini and hooker heels, and Barbie was ready to be fought over by Miss 6 and her feisty little sister, Princess 3.

After the party was over and the presents unwrapped, with some maternal prompting, Miss 6 thanked me and told me that I was the Best Booba.

I know. I have the apron to prove it. (Okay, different spelling, same sentiment.)

WO/MAN

What does it mean, to be a woman? Or to be a man?

Now that Bruce has transitioned to Caitlyn and been photographed by Annie Leibowitz, there is comment, there is bemusement, there is chatter and judgement and well-wishing and confusion. Bruce was living a lie, and Caitlyn is now free. But what does it all mean?

Superficially, Caitlyn is a woman. She seems feminine, wears make-up and has long hair and wears dresses and heels. Her breasts are full and plump,  her skin is hairless and smooth (and the photoshopping is VERY smooth, Ms Leibowitz, for let us not forget that Caitlyn is 65 years old) and she looks very attractive. Let us not spoil the party by saying that she has male genitalia and XY chromosomes, for that is irrelevant. Caitlyn is a woman. And, since gender identity and sexuality are two separate entities, Caitlyn is a lesbian, I believe; she still loves women but is no longer married to one.

I am a woman. I don't have beautiful glossy hair, long nails or wear heels. Until I was 40 I hardly wore makeup and didn't have a manicure. When I was a kid I didn't like dolls or tea parties and I never owned a thing that was pink. When I was 18 I had long flowing hair and wore long flowing dresses and tried walking around barefoot, a faux-hippie chick who never smoked pot, studied hard, and got into med school. When I was 21 I cropped my hair and wore pants and drank whisky and smoked cigars, a faux-tough chick/lesbian-who-wasn't. Fast-forward a few years and I was married with 7 kids, having had an epiphany of sorts, and the Orthodox lifestyle and philosophy stuck. But I still love Acca Dacca and turn the car radio up to 11 when 'Jailbreak' comes on.

I'm nearly 60 now, younger than Caitlyn, and I don't look nearly as hot as her. My (small) boobs sag and I have stretch marks and varicose veins, and my post-menopausal skin tends to dry out if I don't use industrial-strength moisturiser. My ovaries are now a liability, because my mother and grandmother both died of ovarian cancer so I plan on finally having them removed surgically later this year. And when they, along with my long-passed fertility, are gone, I will still be a woman.

I may have mentioned that, many years ago, I worked in the field of Gender Dysphoria. That is to say, in 1980 I worked as a trainee psychiatrist in the old Queen Vic hospital which later relocated to Monash Medical Centre, under Dr Trudy Kennedy, dealing with patients who strongly felt that they were born into the 'wrong body' and were of the opposite sex. In the main, these were men who strongly felt that they were women. In their heads, they were women. They wanted to be rid of the accoutrements of masculinity and they wanted to live as women in an approximation of the body of a woman. Some of these people were mentally ill, and a sex-change operation was never going to fix that. But there were many who were not psychotic or crazy, but they were miserable in their bodies and only transitioning would help them.

Apart from that year at the coal-face, I worked for many years in General Practice in St Kilda which  catered to the denizens of St Kilda including a fair number of trans-people. There were many who came from far away as well because the doctor who had worked there some years before was known to be tolerant and non-judgemental. So the transwomen came for their Oestrogen and Androcur prescriptions, but also for coughs and colds etc etc. During that time, I only saw one person who had changed his mind, i.e., was born a boy, started transitioning with hormones age 16 - all very shady, not through a clinic- but then realised that he was a 'normal gay male'- his words- and he wanted the breasts off. I referred him to the GD clinic at Monash but he never turned up, so goodness knows what happened to this poor kid. I only saw him once but this particular guy was no doubt a person who had been poorly parented, probably abused, and was confused about a lot of things.

I have a friend, a very conservative surgeon, who scoffs at the whole phenomenon. He said to me, 'If I had a patient who came to me and said, 'Doctor, I'm not a man, I'm really a giraffe', I wouldn't paint spots on him and teach him to eat leaves and stretch his neck. I would say that he was crazy and send him to a psychiatrist. Same thing if a man tells me he's really a woman.'

And yet.

It's a real thing. It's a source of much suffering. It's not a lifestyle choice. It's associated with a terrible rate of attempted suicide and suicide in young people. It's not good enough to 'giraffe' them.
It's not entirely clear, however, that hormonal and surgical treatment is going to fix these problems. Although there is some subjective satisfaction after gender reassignment surgery, the rates of suicide attempt and psychological distress is still very high.

It's not a simple problem. And I think that the field of paediatric GD is a minefield. I have never worked in this field. There is a GD clinic at the Royal Children's Hospital here which is run by a respected psychiatrist, Dr Campbell Paul, which treats children from as young as 5 to age 17, after which there is the Monash GD Clinic.

Now, I think this is even more vexed. If a 5 year old girl says that she hates being a girl and she wants to be a boy, what is she saying? Is she saying that she never wants to have babies? Is she saying she hates the idea of menstruation? No. She is usually saying that she wants to play with trucks and get  muddy and wear boys' clothes, or she has been bullied by the mean girls, or perhaps worse. Does she really understand what it means to be a woman or not in the arc of life? Ditto for a boy. Surely in this day and age we can respond to this by saying, cool, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, wear ties and trousers, climb trees, that's alright, and it doesn't make you a boy. Instead we are seeing this stuff about how we have to accept the reality that 'some boys are born with vaginas and some girls are born with penises'. I know that people who are saying this think that they are being very liberal in their understanding and acceptance of gender fluidity, but in fact, I think it reflects the opposite. I think it reflects real rigidity in understanding gender roles. My mother never said that I was not a real girl because I would rather play in the mud than with dollies. GD is more intense and complex than this example, but the more interviews I hear from transgendered people, the more I hear how many grew up hearing that they couldn't do this or that because they were a boy or a girl. I wonder how things might have turned out differently with more blurring of what is acceptable gender conforming behaviour. It's not so long ago that an athletic girl was called a 'tomboy', but now that we accept athleticism in girls, we hardly hear the term.

So I'm not dismissing Gender Dysphoria, and I hope I don't come across as if I am. I think it is a thing that we are going to hear more about as our society becomes, for better or worse, more unstitched about matters of gender and sexuality. It's not that common, but it is a tremendous source of misery and it must be flagged and dealt with by trained professionals in the context of accepting families, or, in the absence of a supportive family, then a supportive community. We need to be less judgemental and more educated. Just as being accepting of gays doesn't make people more gay, accepting trans people won't make more people want to transition. The answer might not in the end be surgery and hormones; the answer might just be accepting that there are those who just don't fit into the gender binary of male and female (even the Talmud recognised 6 genders) and helping them get the help they need, which will be different in every case.

Good luck, Caitlyn, I hope you really have found what you were looking for.