Lesley Stahl Investigates Marissa Mayer's Matchless Fashion Sense

After having her image frosted by the New York Times and Charlie Rose, Google VP Marissa Mayer, the cupcake princess of search, is hungry for more press. Luckily, Lesley Stahl arrived to spread more on!

In an epic 7,738-word interview, the CBS newswoman probes Mayer on privacy, womanhood, fashion, and cupcakes. She even cites Valleywag! (We would love to have been a fly on the wall and seen Mayer's expression when Stahl uttered the gossip blog's name.)

Stahl, otherwise a close study of Valleywag's reporting on Mayer, mistakenly promotes Mayer to "queen of cupcakes." Mayer, who gushed to San Francisco about how vanilla frosting gave her "brain euphoria," had previously denied having any business interest whatsoever in cupcakes.

But, in what looks like a desperate attempt to make herself look more serious for Stahl, Mayer appears to make up a crazy-sounding story about how her enthusiasm for cupcakes was really just an exercise in exploring it as a business idea. And then, when Stahl asks her if she's going to quit Google to become a cupcakepreneur, Mayer hastily denies it:

LESLEY: Yes. Good analogy. To me, Marissa, you are a really, really interesting person because I think your interests are diverse and unexpected. Let me say that. A surprise. And I guess what I'm specifically talking about now is cupcakes, Marissa. You're the queen of cupcakes. What is that? Tell me what that is. Every time I read anything about you, the cupcakes come up.
MARISSA: I don't think I'm the queen of cupcakes.
LESLEY: No?
MARISSA: I do have a legendary sweet tooth. But I think that, you know, one of the key things I think about here at Google is consumers – what they're interested in, what's a fad right now, what's a basic need. One observation I made a few years ago, just from a business perspective, is that I think the same way we saw the rise of the Krispy Kreme donut, people see the rise of the cupcakes. For example, Crumbs is now franchising. Someone's going to take cupcakes and they're going to figure out how to bake them in Subway-like ovens and frost them up right in front of you and franchise it. Because I think that, especially now because of the economic downturn, cupcakes are simple, they are comforting, they're inexpensive.
LESLEY: They're fattening.
MARISSA: And they can scale. But they're interesting from a business perspective. It's a prediction that I made around the next fad. I do have a sweet tooth. I do like to bake. I have my various spreadsheets analyzing different recipes and looking at the differences between them.
...
LESLEY: You know, The New York Times [actually, Valleywag -Ed.] recently created somewhat of a mini-storm by suggesting that you were thinking of leaving Google. And your job at Google is to think about what's next for Google. Are you beginning to think about what's next for Marissa?
MARISSA: I'm very challenged at Google. I'm very happy at Google. I don't understand where the rumor came from. It really was baseless. I couldn't be happier with my role here, our progress at Google, or my team.
LESLEY: In other words – let's get it on the record at wowOwow.com: You are not about to open Marissa's Cupcake Company?
MARISSA: No. Absolutely not.

But the best part is when the ladyreporter and the ladyexecutive start talking ladyfashion:

LESLEY: OK, so you're a geek, right? That's what you said.
MARISSA: Yes.
LESLEY: But, you know, geeks don't wear clothes that match, as somebody said.
MARISSA: Who makes that rule?
LESLEY: Well you just have to observe -
MARISSA: To me a geek is one who is really enthusiastic about technology, likes to hack on things and we have a lot of attention to detail. Why shouldn't our clothes match?

We could think of many words to describe Mayer's unique, Skittles-inspired fashion sense. But never would it occur to us to use the word "match" in explicating her nouveau gauche way with clothing. Look for yourselves, and discuss how best to summarize Mayer's matchless taste: