Honey, Do Me a Favour and Don’t Call Me Cupcake #MakeOutInIndia

Don’t call your boyfriend or girlfriend baby, you’re infantilising them.

I’m not your cupcake. (Photo: iStockphoto)

Look, there’s a little bit of a problem.

At the risk of sounding a bit judgemental, I think we may be doing the dating thing just a teeny bit wrong. It doesn’t matter how you identify sexually or who you’re dating – there is a fair chance you’re calling them one of many dessert names.

Cupcake? Shame on you. Sweetie pie? Diabetes. Muffin? How dare you. Let’s get one thing very clear: people are not cake. Think about it. You’ve decided that your significant other is edible, but dessert isn’t very much more than just that. When was the last time you associated apple pie with a rational, feeling human being?

I’m nobody to preach. I’ve been in a series of unpleasant relationships and I’ve called people adorable food names. You want proof that it isn’t adorable? Take a look at a well-meaning friend’s face. It’ll struggle between a grimace, a cringe and judgement, as it well should.

I’ve saved the most grating for last, though. DON’T call your significant other baby. Take, for example, the conventional man-woman relationship.

Fellow men, this is a plea that has previously fallen on deaf ears. Please don’t call your girlfriends ‘baby’! We aren’t babies. Calling us babies means that we are defenceless, incompetent and useless – but cute (oh, how nice!). Also, ‘baby’ is NOT sexy. Have you ever looked at a baby and thought, damn, what a er... babe? If you have, forgive me, but you need help.

Fellow women, you’re not in the clear either. You are every bit as guilty of calling your significant other baby, inexplicable food names or baffling combinations of the two. Here, let’s try one: babycakes. Thank you. I now feel like a cannibal. The men (or women) we’re dating are not babies for us to mother; helpless men who cannot look after themselves. It’s offensive and demeaning.

Speaking of offensive and demeaning, please, please don’t babytalk. You have spent years learning to communicate effectively and it would be marvellous if you put it to good use. Don’t gurgle and squawk and squeal. You’re alarming a bewildered and deeply unfortunate bystander.

When we’re calling someone baby or cooing to them, it means we find their vulnerability and defencelessness ‘cute’ and attractive. That’s dangerous.

We’re cultivating unequal relationships, and setting them up for failure. Because, let’s face it, the aim cannot possibly be to infantilise the one we love and (presumably) respect. Shouldn’t it rather be to develop an equation of equality, where he/she and you grow together?

Remember her? The original cuppycake girl. She’s adorable when she does it, we’re less so.

So call him or her ‘honeybun’ and ‘babycake’ and coo all you want, but remember what you’re doing.