CONFESSIONS OF A WHITE SUPREMACIST

I could hear the words before she opened her mouth.
"You what?"
She snarled at me like I had just insulted her mother.
"I don't eat chocolate," I replied.
Her pursed lips resembled a tiny pink lemon.
"Are you on a diet of some sort?"
"No, I just don't like it."
"Strange girl," she muttered, thrusting the dessert plate at the unwitting person next to me.

Such a situation is not one I encounter frequently but one of the ruder examples of how people react when I turn away chocolate birthday cake.
However what I find particularly fascinating about this idiosyncrasy is how different people interpret it.
Females especially are short with me when they discover I do not share their true love and vice. Others express their apologies at my loss. Those like my housemate's stepmother described above assume I am a vegan on Weight Watchers.
Which is quite untrue. While I dislike milk and dark chocolate varieties, I have quite a healthy, womanly love of chocolate that is, white chocolate.
Although at times admitting to being shamelessly discriminatory puts me in controversial territory.
This tends to happen when I come across die-hard chocolate warriors adamant that there is no such thing as white chocolate.
One such time was during a holiday in Adelaide where I found myself dragged along to a chocolate factory that, as most do, specialises in darker varieties. While our tour guide politely accepted my refusal to take any samples I found myself confronted with a kind of colour-related prejudice evident in her repeated action of using her fingers to make quotation marks every time the word chocolate' followed the word white'.
And while I like to use the words racist' and monomaniacal' to describe confectionery companies who bring out white chocolate products only to take them off the market a few months later (cough, white Toblerone), I cannot deny that the clearance prices were more than satisfying.
And thus I cannot concede that this is a life of persecution.
In fact the most devastating part of my chocolate hating existence was most definately when Mars stopped making white Twix.
In primary school one of my classmates' mothers was always kind enough to bring me a vanilla cupcake while the rest of the class enjoyed a thick murky mud cake.

And Starbucks and Gloria Jeans identified a niche market and now sell white hot chocolates or whoclates' for colour-specific chocolate fans like me.
In fact, not liking milk or dark chocolate has advantages.
I am never tempted to indulge myself when my housemate brings home leftover chocolate scones from the bakery at which she works.
When buying ice cream I've never been faced with the dilemma of deciding between choc top, choc-chip, choc-mint, double choc, triple choc and so on.
And when I'm called upon by a distressed friend in need of comfort and cookie dough, I can be sure to leave her house with an empty bag once full of goodies yet a guilt-free conscience.
So while you might believe I'm abnormal, strange or as most people seem to think, in need of behavioural modification, at least when I make you a chocolate cake you can be sure I didn't violate the batter with my licked fingers.

Learn more about this author, Lauren Parle.
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