“What are little girls made of?” – If there was a Freudian thread running throughout the boyish equivalent, then here it strikes tenfold. But of course, psychoanalysis wouldn’t have it any other way. Bountiful, luscious excesses, perhaps indicative of hysteria, sugar sweet proving sickly, and laced with sexual undertones. The flowers obviously hold allusions to intimate areas, and if we’ve spoken of bread as body before, then it is here that cake is presented as a more desirable meal, a palatable delight, destined to be consumed by men.

To hell with all that, the teeth, a full set of them to be precise (or crowns rather, but then sympathetic magic would dictate that similarity is one and the same, and via contact, even more) well, the teeth – they are clearly the crux of the matter. The means of consumption placed alongside objects of consumption, and what objects they are indeed. Sugar, the longstanding foe of enamel, and a particular culinary vice of the west, is the mainstay ingredient in this assemblage. If I spoke of cauldrons regarding, “What are little boys made of?” then here it should be obvious, again that spell making quality, the cast iron pot synonymous with the womb, and here it all turns in on itself.

Self consumption, or inner strength, the means by which Gretel proves triumphant within the Witch’s house, if we’re talking sugar and spice then perhaps we should glance back to day one, “Cherry and Flake.” Both boy and girl consume the same substance, and yet within this rhyme such things are brought into the realms of the feminine. I’m talking empowerment here. Like for like triumphs and masculine falters upon the ingestion of the female, sugar and spice, and everything nice, and all things besides, within little girls, hidden strength it doth hide.

I couldn’t resist an afterthought regarding vagina dentata, so here it is.