Cake Sitting as Queer Joy

Written by: Phoebe Hennell

Photography: Lauren Cremer

When I told my mum about cake sitting, she thought I was writing about babysitting desserts. Not quite. Rather, it is performance art involving the destruction of a cake. It can be burlesque, drag, theatre or whatever direction the performer takes it.

At the Old Nuns Head, a queer-run pub in Peckham, London that describes itself as “a home for all huns”, LGBTQIA+ people can sign up to sit on a cake in front of a cheering audience. Aptly named Cake Sit, the collective was founded by Daisy, and is now run by Sweet Cheeks, as Daisy returned home to New York.

“In British culture we are so coy about cake, despite absolutely loving it,” Sweet Cheeks tells me. “Just a cheeky, naughty slice, ‘I really shouldn’t’. We are ashamed of indulgence as it relates to shame about our bodies. There’s a sense of guilt along with the enjoyment. I think a lot of queer people can relate to that.”

The idea came from a niche tradition in New York. The artist Lindsay Dye, for example, worked as a prominent cake-sitting cam girl for years before retiring in 2022. She told Time Out New York how her chatroom audience would tip her to crack an egg, stir the batter, put the cake in the oven and finally sit. At gallery shows she would match the colour of her lingerie to the frosting. Dye sat on her last cake at Le Bain nightclub, Manhattan, a moment featured by Cake Zine, an independent print magazine exploring society through sweets.

While the London event is often sexy, Sweet Cheeks explains, it subverts the male gaze by simply letting queer people of all body types enjoy themselves through play. It does not exactly cater to food-play fetishism, known as “sploshing”; instead, it’s about celebrating queer joy, camp silliness and shamelessness.

Taking inspiration from across the pond, the organisers started open-mic cake sit nights at the Old Nuns Head. Now, the event is monthly. While FLINTA has turned out to be the dominant crowd, Cake Sit is for all queer people. “Someone’s dad even did one once.”

Wet Patch, a regular cake sitter at the event, adds: “FLINTA is the main crowd because of the venue being run by a wonderful lesbian powerhouse of a person, and other events there can be lesbian-focused. But, as ever, it’s embracing all the ‘queirdos.”