PC Language: Cupcakes or Fairy Cakes?

Cupcakes -and the Magnolia Bakery, where they are baked- became popular after being extensively featured in the programme Sex and the City. A cupcake is a small cake for one person, usually made in a small paper cup container. As with larger cakes, icing and other decorations, such as sprinkles, are often put on them. A simple cupcake uses the same ingredients as most other traditional cakes: butter, sugar, eggs, and flour.
Cupcakes are often served during a celebration, such as children's birthday parties. They are a convenient alternative to cakes because they do not require plates, utensils, or dividing into pieces as they are small. Cupcakes were first invented in the early 1800's and the first recipes for them appeared in the book “American Cookery” by Amelia Simms.
In Australian English a cupcake is called a patty cake or a cup cake. In British English a cupcake is called a fairy cake. The name "fairy cake" makes reference to its size, which would be appropriate for a party of diminutive fairies to share. However, many people tend to disfavour the use of the word “fairy cake” because of its associations with homosexuality.

In English, “Fairy” is an offensive slang term used to refer to a male homosexual.
A butterfly cake is a variant of cupcake, also called fairy cake, because the top of this cake resembles butterfly or fairy "wings". This fanciful descriptive term can also be regarded as potentially offensive. The street term for homosexual in Mexico is “Mariposa”, meaning butterfly in Spanish. The stereotyped image of a homosexual is that of an effeminate male who leads an active social life composed of many appearances at bars and parties. Homosexuals may be called “Mariposas” because of their associations with butterflies symbolizing femininity, and the butterfly’s habit of “flitting” from flower to flower. In America, the term “Flit” has been commonly used as a synonym for homosexual. In British English, the butterfly (symbolizing transformation or metamorphosis) is a popular transgender symbol, used to identify transvestites, transsexuals, and other people who modify their gender.
A butterfly also symbolizes fire since fire is an element of transformation. Curiously, the word flamer (derived from flame) means a blatantly obvious homosexual person.
In this 21st century world, where people have to mind their words so as not to be politically incorrect, words such as fairy cake and butterfly cake can be tainted with negative or offensive connotations.

Did you know?

The term fruitcake (a heavy spiced cake containing nuts and candied or dried fruits) meaning an eccentric (crazy) person began to be used in the 1910s. It derived from the English expression "nutty as a fruitcake". By the 1930s the term fruitcake (a heavy spiced cake containing nuts and candied or dried fruits) began to be seen as not only negative but also to mean a male homosexual. It should be noted that gay people were regularly "treated" with castration, lobotomies, nerve surgery, and electroshock treatment, that is why the meaning of fruitcake, nutty, originally used for someone who is deemed insane, or crazy, was transferred to homosecual people since many apparently believed that they were mentally unsound. In the United States, psychiatric institutions ("mental hospitals") were called fruitcake factories while in 1960s Australia they were called fruit factories.