Halifax — This past week has seen another wave of young adult students flooding into university towns across Atlantic Canada, often experiencing freedom and homesickness in equal measures. According to a new study published by the Association of Canadian Confectioners (ACA), 58 percent of those students will use that newfound freedom to indulge in experimentation with new, perhaps previously, forbidden sugary novelties.
“While first-year university students are often prone to making choices that their parents might not approve of — this may include everything from Cinnabon to non-traditional poutines to 24-hour all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants — we have found that BeaverTails are the real forbidden fruit that freshman girls can’t stay away from,” said ACA spokesperson Genevieve Kandinsky. “‘The dessert that dare not speak its name,’ if you will.”
BeaverTails, a long, flat, fried-dough confection that can be covered in a combination of whipped cream, banana slices, crumbled cookies, cinnamon sugar and chocolate hazelnut, are often discouraged by more conservative families as being “sinful,” “decadent” and “pancreas-rotting boardwalk-stall trash food for garbage people.” However, for young women living on their own for the first time, eating BeaverTails can be a way of exploring a new form of alimentary pleasure, as well as a means of establishing their boundaries outside the traditional, and often patriarchal, family unit.
“My dad would be so mad if he knew how many BeaverTails I ate last year,” said Emily [not her real name]. “But sometimes, you know… when it’s late and the party’s died down a bit, but everyone’s still, like, suuuper wasted off frozen lime-a-ritas? Me and some of the sorority sisters would be hanging out in our pajamas watching reruns of Republic of Doyle and somebody on screen is, like, totally devouring a chocolate hazelnut BeaverTail. And someone’s like, as a joke, like, ‘ha ha that might be fun to try,’ and so one thing leads to another and pretty soon we’re all going downtown, getting that sticky, sweet whipped cream and cinnamon sugar just everywhere.”
“I probably won’t eat BeaverTails forever,” said Emily’s roommate “Christina” [also not her real name]. “But sometimes they’re just easier to deal with than guys, who are just, like, so boring and loud. Chad will never understand me like an eight-dollar clump of fried dough covered in Oreo crumbs does. And when I graduate with my degree in structural engineering and I’m married with kids and a minivan and working 60 hours a week, at least I’ll have memories of when I went wild with the other girls at school.”
“I hope [Christina] and I stay in touch throughout our degree and, like, after we graduate,” said Emily. “It’d be nice to sneak off once in a while and go snack on a Beavertail without our men realizing it. They’re so naughty. And surprisingly filling.”
Mrs. Kandinsky of the ACA says that the increased interest in BeaverTails among co-eds is normal, but it seems that the enthusiasm tends to level out among the population as more statistics are gathered about graduate students and working professionals. “I’ve been in the workforce for nearly 20 years and married for 10, and I still enjoy getting a BeaverTail after a dinner-and-a-movie Friday night date,” Kandinsky explained.
“Not my wife, though. She hates them.”