The Joy of Loafing

And a special NYC community care event on 6/14

Cake friends,

Summer is finally underway, and so is our next issue. We’re working on the proofs for Forbidden Fruit now, and can already tell that this issue will be a favorite. It truly has everything: childhood mango heists, viral fruitarianism, durian mooncakes, black market fruity Juul pods, etc. In the meantime, we’re sharing a piece from Daily Bread in the newsletter today: The Joy of Loafing by Adam Spiegelman.

If you’re in NYC, we’re hosting a special event with our friends at One Love Community Fridge on June 14. It’s like a dessert potluck, only each guest brings two items: one to package on-site and distribute in One Love’s network of community fridges across the city, and one to eat and share in community with other bakers at the event. We’ll have coffee generously provided by Bótani Café to help fuel the packing and snacking, and a little magazine stand featuring issues from our archive, with a portion of proceeds benefiting OLCF.

Sign-ups are live now for two sessions, with limited slots available to ensure there’s enough room to package dessert and hang. If you’re unable to attend but still want to support this effort, we’re collecting donations to cover the cost of packaging—any additional funds will support OLCF’s ongoing work feeding New Yorkers.

Illustration by Meta Witte

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The Joy of Loafing

By Adam Spiegelman

I have read that the origin of the noun “loaf” is Old English, meaning a portion of bread baked in a mass of definite form. A loaf is a loaf because it is a whole, and suggests nourishment. But the origin of “loaf,” the verb describing lack of action—a bread-like dormancy—is uncertain. What might it mean to love loafing; to prefer lazing and loitering, ambling from perch to perch? What might it mean that I am a chronic loafer?

The figure in repose is a defining image in the art historical canon, an object of aspiration. I think of Titian’s Venus of Urbino, for instance, depicting a naked beauty propped up in bed, gazing coyly at us while lounging in a renaissance palace. Or Delacroix’s Odalisque Reclining on Divan, a fully supine nude, his zaftig subject intoxicated with languor. Centuries later, the loafer has become a much maligned figure. Today, we worship optimization and venerate the grind, the hustle. We buy devices that evaluate our sleep for maximum efficiency. Reclining on my direct-to-consumer mattress swathed in my microfiber sheet set, am I life imitating art or am I “bed-rotting”? Splayed across the couch, hand in a bag of Nerds Gummy Clusters, scrolling my phone, am I “going goblin mode” or am I “in repose”?

Few people these days truly aspire to loafing, to listlessness or idleness. Slothfulness—that famed sin—horrifies: the fear that by surrendering momentum we might enter an inescapable torpor, that our bodies might go permanently slack, might balloon and bulge yeastily. And yet, the loafer can also be a sex symbol. I think of the classic white male Gen X slacker—Matt Dillon in Singles, Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites—misunderstood, ambitionless, and charming. These heartthrobs smoke weed, quit jobs on a dime, and rhapsodize about The Man. They flirt with that tragic contemporary category, the “failson,” yet remain sensitive and sympathetic. And why? Because loafing is a characteristic symptom of the artistic temperament—punks, poets, and e-girl coquettes are all native loafers. To lounge is a balm for our soul.

Yet, nowadays, the sellout is sexier than ever. Every time I scroll through the apps, new, abstruse metrics for filtering out “undesirables” in the dating pool crowd my screen. 6’5 blue eyes in finance is pedestrian. “250k is the new 100k,” one Reddit post declares. “Remote work a must,” a “dating coach” on X insists, “but always groomed.”

Hustle culture is universally troubling: fact. A post on my feed titled “F*CK FRIENDS” goes on to list reasons you shouldn’t rely on, wait for, or listen to other people. This is the quiet part said aloud, the subtext of all the biohacking and mindset-altering: the world is invariably hostile, and unless relationships with other people have profit potential, they are superfluous, no, they are toxic.

It’s a cold, sad world that doesn’t make space for the loafer. Tucked in the plush crook of my sectional, I return to the reclining figure, to Toulouse-Lautrec’s L’Abandon (Les Deux Amies), two girls stretched languidly across a canary yellow divan. One rests her arm on her forehead in a melodramatic gesture of exhaustion, the other turns toward her, conspiratorially. There’s a reason Toulouse-Lautrec called this scene “Abandonment”: these girls have left the world behind—its pathological demands for progress and productivity. Together, they luxuriate in their shared womb, like bread left to proof, growing full and complex. This, they seem to say, is rapture, is ecstasy. Is loafing a rebellion? Can it be anti-capitalist? Who cares? It’s a good time with the girls. Is that not enough?

Adam Spiegelman is a poet and essayist who can’t get the loaf slicer at Whole Foods to work right.

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Pre-order: A cookbook of gravestone recipes with interviews from the families by Rosie Grant.

Visit: Privy Privy, an immersive experience created by artists Donna Oblongata and Patrick Costello is open through June 30th in NYC, transforming a gallery space into a queer nightclub featuring glory holes—through which human hands offer visitors ice cream cones.

Read: Cake Zine contributor Bronwen Wyatt’s smart essay on the moral panic surrounding sugar.

Bake: Nicola Lamb’s mango princess cake.

Read: Cake Zine co-founder Tanya Bush wrote a piece for T Magazine on the resurgence of chiffon cakes.

Get in the Kitchen: Cake Zine co-founder Aliza Abarbanel shared her philosophy and on cooking and biggest food world hot-take for W&P.