Inside The Viral ‘Buttergate’ That Rocked The Illinois State Fair

A video from the Illinois State Fair this year is shocking Midwesterners.

A staple of both the Iowa and Illinois State Fairs are butter sculptures. They're incredibly amazing works of art, like cows and people (this year, Iowa honored women's basketball superstar Caitlin Clark in a butter sculpture). They're a classic.

Buttergate 2023

Ever have those moments where your whole life feels like a lie? A lot of folks on social media did when one picture from the Illinois State Fair of their butter cow went viral. According to Yahoo, the picture reached about 15 million people on Twitter (now X) and people have thoughts. Take a look at it and see if you can tell why.

Yep, that's a mesh frame on a cow that many thought was made totally out of butter.

The betrayal.

Now, the Iowa State Fair owns that the butter sculptures are not just giant bricks of only butter. Their website says the cow's base is a "wood, metal, wire and steel mesh frame" with about 600 pounds of butter on it. It might feel like just logic that there has to be something besides butter to hold this huge sculpture up.

However, the Illinois State Fair's website never specifies that the cow has a mesh or non-butter frame.

Comments about the picture include:

I feel decieved. It should have been a solid block of butter. If we cannot believe in butter cows, what can we believe in.

The disappointment I feel learning that the butter cow is not solid butter is akin to discovering Santa isn't real.

That isn't to say that there's not a lot of butter on the butter cow at the Illinois State Fair. The fair's website says that 500 pounds of butter go into the sculpture so don't worry, you're still getting your incredible butter visual.