Does This Seem Slightly Sexist To You, Too?

See update at the bottom of the post.

On Monday, Patrick and I sat down with five women who work in the beer world to learn how far we've come from those babes-in-bikinis ads from the 80s and 90s (podcast to follow). It was an illuminating conversation, because we learned how far things have come--but how subtle sexism still lingers.

Well, today I got an email that makes me wonder if the more overt sexism isn't still an issue in at least a part of the beer world. AB InBev hired a firm to do some research about attitudes of women and what they drink, and the resulting "findings" are discouraging. Here's the set-up.

Picture this:  Three women walk into a bar.  The first orders wine, the second orders a cosmo, and the third orders beer.  Which woman, do you think, ends up in a conversation with the tall and mysterious stranger?  According to the Budweiser 'Beerpressions' National Survey—a first-of-its-kind study about how beverage choices influence first impressions—your drink may be worth a thousand words.    Based on a representative survey of 2,000 Americans conducted by Learndipity Data Insights, Budweiser asked respondents to match common bar drinks with the perceived personality traits of the people ordering them.

Got that? The research was designed to learn how men assess women in bars based on their beverage choice. At first glance, this appears to be a return to that neanderthal sexism of the ads, where women and beer become accoutrements for men's enjoyment. But surely that can't be right? It can.

Drink Choice #1:  Domestic Beer (Budweiser)

• 70% say a woman with domestic beer (Budweiser) is "friendly" and "low-maintenance."
• Conversely, only 36% believe a woman drinking imported beer is "low-maintenance."

To be scrupulously fair, women and men both rated each other, though the characterizations of women had a lot more to do with sexual availability than they did for men. ("Low-maintenance" is an especially freighted term.*) For a company that is trying to stanch the exodus from their brand, I wonder how effective this approach will be. Is this really going to be a winning pitch to a new generation of women drinkers?

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*In comments, Nick asks about why "low-maintenance" would be especially objectionable. I almost made more comment of that when I wrote the post, so let's correct the oversight and do that now.

Sexism is an innately male-centered way of seeing things. The value of women is assessed based on what they can do for men. "Low maintenance" fits into this because it's not a judgment of the women themselves (like other words that popped up--"predictable," "shallow," or "cautious"), but how well women serve men's needs. Put another way, ff I call you shallow, I'm making a judgment about you. If I say you're low-maintenance, I'm making a comment about your utility to me. And that feeds a very ancient and unpleasant way of thinking.

Craft Brewing Does Not Have a Sexism Problem

The summer of slow blogging continues, and today's anemic offering is a brief rebuttal to this silly article in Slate about sexism, rife in brewing, in which the subhead reads "There are gross puns and derogatory illustrations on far too many beer labels. The misogyny needs to stop." Writer Will Gordon trots through the case of some pretty egregious examples of sexism, but not, however, very many of them--and herein lies the problem. The existence of something does not make it a problem.

Take for example the case of Irvine, CA, which had two murders in 2013 (I can't find 2014 numbers, but this is an example so 2013 will suffice). The number of murders we consider acceptable is zero, of course, but at what point does the murder rate become a problem; you know, a situation that needs to be corrected as opposed to a situation of imperfection that is the state of the real world? It's a lot more than two, that's for sure, because in 2013, Irvine had the fewest murders of any large city in America.

Craft brewing (accepting this as a market segment if nothing else) has around 3,500 members making something on the order of + / - 50,000 different beer brands. Would we expect none of these breweries to be making products that are sexist? At what point does the sexism become a problem? You see the issue here.

Weirdly, Gordon acknowledges how integrated women are into this beer segment, citing craft beer's civic-mindedness and female consumption rates and cicerone memberships as evidence of how well it's doing. So the point is? Right: clicks. (Slate has made a business trying to write contrarian articles to drive traffic, with at least as many misses as hits. Put this in the swing-and-a-miss column.)

Obviously, sexist beer labels are worthy of contempt and the breweries that made them, of opprobrium. But their mere existence doesn't illustrate that, as the title of this article claimed, craft brewing has a sexism problem. The article actually manages to prove the opposite; if you can't come up with any more than a few examples out of the tens of thousands of possible cases, you've illustrated there's actually no problem at all.

Collagen Beer for the Ladies

Since we've been having this discussion about gender and beer, it seems appropriate to pass along this little tidbit:

Recently, Suntory Holdings Limited launched the latest beer targeted at women in Japan and named it “Precious.” It has five percent alcohol and two grams of collagen per can. The tag line is: “Guys can tell if a girl is taking collagen or not.”

Now, aside from that 1960s-era sentiment, what's the story with collagen?
And as far as anti-aging elements go, the collagen expert believes topical therapy (like using advanced moisturizer with retinol, antioxidants, DNA repair enzymes etc.) is the most effective. But...

While more collagen in your skin could make you look younger, collagen in itself isn’t considered an anti-aging ingredient, according to Dr. Ostad. Our digestive system works to break up the collagen just like any other food or drink.

And so...

It would, according to Dr. Ariel Ostad, collagen expert and Clinical Assistant Professor of Dermatology at New York University Medical Center. Alcohol is not healthy for the body or for your skin’s complexion. It actually inflames the skin resulting in puffiness, rosacea and irritation. With only two grams of collagen per can, “there isn’t enough collagen to make a remarkable difference for your skin’s complexion,” said Dr. Ostad.

This is far from the first time a beer company has tried to appeal to women and it surely won't be the last. I can't speak to how this Japanese-only product is likely to sell because I'm ignorant of the market. But it has all the hallmarks of a classic #fail. 1) Beer company tries to lure women to beer with a specifically feminine flourish (additive, brand, label, name)? Check. 2) Fails to see how this ghettoizes a product, limiting its appeal, and subtly (or not so subtly) condescends to its target audience? Check. 3) Appears to have completely ignored flavor in favor of packaging and branding? Check.

Ah well.

Strip Clubs and Sexism in Craft Beer

There were a number of interesting subplots to the Craft Brewers Conference last week, but none more so than the attention lavished on Portland's famous strip clubs. And from old England to New England to Montreal, many women found it pretty offensive. Stan has a good round-up of some of the voices in that debate, but I wanted to add a local's perspective. As with so many things, the further away from a situation you are, the clearer the lines look. Up close, they're fuzzier.

1. Why so many strip clubs?
Oregon isn't a particularly libertine place (a majority of residents came from New England and the Midwest) and Portland, with its sapphire-blue politics, is pretty women-friendly, two facts that make strip clubs seem like a weird fit. And indeed, strip clubs have been controversial for decades. They exist because Oregon has one of the most liberal free-speech laws on the books. ("No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever.") In two famous cases, limits on strip clubs came up before the Oregon Supreme Court (in 1982 and 2005) and both times the Court said strip clubs were protected by the Constitution. (It also means a rather liberal interpretation of "expression"--full nudity is Constitutionally kosher.)

2. Prudery, objectification, and agency
Portlanders have had all the strip club debates--often. When they are such a prominent fixture of your streets, you have to think through the thorny issues. Are strippers victims of patriarchy or third-wave feminists expressing their bodies naturally? If you see strippers as victims, you are obliquely asserting that they have no agency in the matter. This is one of those times when living far away may make things less clear. Once you know a stripper (as I have), it's not so easy to take the I-know-what's-best position. On the other hand, it's pretty clear why strip clubs exist. Not everyone who walks into a strip club is thinking about the wonderful celebration of women's rights they're about to experience.

3. Titillation for fun and profit
Oregonians have made our peace with them, but some percentage of visitors always turn into 16-year-old boys when they hear there are strip clubs here. Three years ago, I was gobsmacked to hear that Redhook was going to host a strip club crawl. "Beer and strip clubs?--partay!" By merely hosting the CBC in Portland, strip clubs were guaranteed to become an issue. Since Portland's strip clubs always magnetize people coming to the city, I suppose it was inevitable that they would play a starring role in the CBC. It seems crazy to associate your brand with an activity that will offend some decent proportion of your customer base, but it happens regularly.

4. Women, beer, and Portland
The beer world is overwhelming dominated by white men. It has a history of racism, bigotry, and rampant sexism. If you go to any beer geek event--like the CBC, say--you'll see an ocean of white, mostly male folk. Anyone who would like to see this world evolve has to take special steps to avoid making the same mistakes that have made it an exclusive club for so long. 

And here's where Portland and Oregon really have shined. We have a number of women brewers and this is where the Pink Boots Society was formed. If you walk into any pub in town, you'll see a pretty even distribution of men and women (all drinking, naturally, good Oregon beer). Women run some of the best pubs in town, write about beer, and even (until recently), talked about it on the radio. It's frustrating to think that people will walk away think Portland is this uniquely sexist city, when the picture's a lot brighter than that.

That said, if this whole strip club discussion got the brewing industry thinking more deeply about its own sexism and how to include women, I'm willing to have Portland take its lumps.

Gallup's Latest Alcohol Preferences Survey: Noisy

The last couple years, Gallup has sent me a link to their annual alcohol preferences survey. This year they didn't and it fell to Alan to alert me to the latest numbers. One of the things that really lept off the page last year were the number of women who were apparently flocking to beer. I illustrated the numbers with this handy graph:

Women Citing Beer as Preferred Beverage

_____________________2009____2010__Change
All__________________21%_____27% ___+6%
Under 49 years old___25%_____35% ___+10%
Over 50 years old____15%_____18% ___+3%

Great, right? Well, this year's numbers show a substantial reversal--still positive over '09's numbers, but only modestly so.

Women Citing Beer as Preferred Beverage

_____________________2009____2010___2011
All__________________21%_____27% ___22%
Under 49 years old___25%_____35% ___28%
Over 50 years old____15%_____18% ___17%

The numbers are worse for beer across the map. Beer was favored by 41% of respondents last year and only 36% this year (wine gained 3% to 35% and liquor 2% to 23%)--tied for the lowest ever measured. And it was down particularly badly among young people, who cited it as their favorite alcohol in just 39% of cases (down from 51%).

Of course, it's pretty clear we're just seeing poll "noise." These surveys have a margin of error of ±4%. When you look at the graphs, you see a lot of zig-zagging year-to-year. It's hard to think that such large populations are swinging in preference one year to the next. Rather, there are trends that become exaggerated by single data points.


If you consider the averages, things appear a little different. Over the past ten years, beer is cited as the favorite by an average of 41% of respondents (high of 46, low of 39). That is off the average from the previous decade's average of 45% (high 47%, low 42%). Wine has picked up some the slack, cited by 33% of people over the past decade, up from 30% the decade before. The remainder goes to liquor.

So if we go back to the number for women, I think we could assume the same phenomenon. (Unfortunately, we don't have numbers going back two decades, so we can't see the trendline.) Probably things are moving in the right direction, but far more modestly than it appeared after last year's survey.

Attracting Women to Beer, Non-Beervana Edition

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that Molson Coors was releasing two new beers into the British market. It didn't strike enthusiasm into the hearts of Beervana's women--and no surprise. We've achieved near gender-blindness in our beer consumption here, and the idea of a light-bodied, low-carbonation rose-flavored beer seems a little condescending to women used to drinking toothsome saisons, stouts, and IPAs. But lest we get ahead of ourselves, it is worth considering the plight of the British scene. And Kristy, who commented on that post and works for the brewery, has:

The amount of beer drunk by women in the UK is just about the lowest of any beer drinking country in the world and 60% of women here don't drink beer ever. What's worse is as a beer industry we've effectively ignored women so the numbers should come as no surprise but we believe it's the right time to do something different.

Animee has been developed based on 2 years of research of over 30,000 women (beer & non beer drinkers) and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. What it does is offers real choice in the beer category for everyone - that to me has to be a good thing!!

If you think she doesn't have standing in the discussion, go read her profile and see what you think. Look, it's easy to dismiss macro lager as a lower form of beer--beer geeks do it every day. But it is in fact the beer most people drink by a very large margin. Even in Britain, industrial lagers have displaced the beloved pint of cask bitter as the beer of choice. More to the point, Molson Coors happens to brew industrial lagers, and it's a bit much to expect them to play outside their sandbox. They're trying to expand the market by reaching the half who ignore them. To play devil's advocate: where's the downside? This seems as much a cultural problem as a beer problem. If Molson Coors can make beer acceptable to women, isn't that a good thing? Then it's up to Fuller's to make bitter acceptable to them. Mock the product, but the intent? I'm less certain about mocking that.

A rising tide...

Martyn Cornell, speaking for the prosecution, dissents--by way of satire.

A Craft Brewery Goes Paleolithic

I had promised to myself that I'd quit stealing content from Jay Brooks, but I can't let this one go. He posted a video today of two commercials from Atlanta-based Red Brick Brewing. In terms of tastelessness, tawdriness, and flat-out misogyny, they rival anything Coors or A-B ever aired. Behold:

"Blondes go down easy, real easy." This tagline, which is enormously offensive on its own, is all the worse with the degrading images and lecherous voice-over (double entendre very much intended).

Not only is it offensive, it's stupid. Craft brewing has been fantastic at shedding beer's sexist image--and as a consequence watched their sales grow. Retrograde "girls are for laughing at and screwing" beer ads are a sure way to turn them (and me) off.

Atlanta, world-headquarters of Hooters restaurants, is probably not the most enlightened city in the world. And certainly not the beeriest. (Web copy for the Blonde ale they're advertising here: "Good attack, fresh not too aggressive, the acidity though is quite present. There is a smooth texture, caressing of fresh barley and lemony flavors towards the end. Short finish with characters of slight bitterness, fresh coffee beans and blond chocolate." Please, quit torturing those innocent sentences! It's more egregious than even Bill's mocking beer-description generator.) So probably this is a reflection of nothing more than one boneheaded brewery owner who should probably be in a different business. Still, it's worth a chorus of boos, and will most assuredly be in my mind in 11 months when I assemble the next DMS Awards.

The Year of the Woman?

Although I've noticed for a few years that more and more women have become avid fans of good beer, it seems that in the last couple--and 2010 in particular--women have really become major stakeholders. Here's a good example. The new female collective "Ladies of Craft Beer" is one of this year's most active blogs, and yesterday Stevie Caldarola interviewed Deschutes brewer Veronica Vega.

Women bloggers interviewing a brewing woman. Even five years ago, this would have been a pretty remarkable thing--now, not so much. (Cool, certainly; remarkable, no.) Five years ago, the likelihood that the interview was with Teri Fahrendorf, one of the country's first female brewers, would have been pretty high. Teri went on to found the Pink Boots Society, which supports women in the world of beer. The post about Vega caught my eye because it makes at least two women brewing in Bend, which is pretty remarkable. I looked on Pink Boots' list of members and saw that eighteen women now brew professionally or own breweries in Oregon. The list also includes folks like Lisa Morrison, world-famous beer writer, and Megan Flynn, editor and publisher of Beer Northwest.

A decade ago, this was an incredibly male-dominated field. It's still heavily skewed toward men (most of the women brewing in Oregon are assistants), but the trajectory has changed sharply. Next month I'll do my usual year-end review; I'm thinking we may have to call 2010 the year of the woman.

Women Are Craft Brewing's Future

I recently spoke to a journalist doing a story on the future of craft beer. (A worthy topic for a post, but not this one.) He was interested to know how much growth craft breweries in the Northwest might be expected to enjoy. A lot can be said there, but I highlighted one factor I thought has gone relatively unexamined. Per capita beer drinking has remained pretty steady over the years, fluctuating only slightly year by year. Different states consume beer at different rates, but the trendline for individual states remains steady, too. Therefore, all things being equal, if craft breweries want to increase market share, they must take it away from macros and imports.

Ah, but all things are not equal. The other way they can do it is find new segments who don't currently drink beer. And there's a HUGE one: women. They constitute half the drinkers in America, and they barely sniff the stuff. Ladies prefer cocktails and wine. I posted results of a Gallup poll last year showing that only a fifth of female drinkers cited beer as their preferred beverage. (Men, of course, prefer beer--58% will choose it over wine or liquor.)

I just got an email from Gallup pointing me to this year's poll. Guess what--it looks like we're already seeing some substantial movement.

Women Citing Beer as Preferred Beverage

_____________________2009____2010__Change
All__________________21%_____27% ___+6%
Under 49 years old___25%_____35% ___+10%
Over 50 years old____15%_____18% ___+3%

This appears to be real movement. The margin of error is 4%, and the trends are all consistent. While we can't be certain those numbers are exactly accurate, we have to assume the actual movement toward more beer-drinking is. Moreover, if women were taking to beer, you'd expect to see the trend emerge among younger women--and so it is. The really big finding: in the past year, younger women have made a serious move toward beer as their preferred beverage. A year ago, it was the third-most preferred beverage; this year it was way out in front of liquor, and only trailing wine by 4%. It's not unreasonable to envision a future when beer is the preferred beverage among men and women.

Gallup doesn't break consumption down by type, so for all we know, these women might be Pabst drinkers. Surely some are. But you have to imagine that craft beer is picking up a disproportionate share of that shift. The beer is better and more vivid-tasting, and the marketing is far more woman-friendly than the still borderline misogynistic macro campaigns.

If I were a craft brewery, I would be extremely aggressive about trying to market to women. You may convert a few Bud men to your Sang Noirs, but it's going to be a lot easier to convert pinot women.

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PHOTO: DAILY MAIL

Coors for the Ladies

Last night, Gillian Edwards left an intriguing comment on my gender preferences post:

I work for an initiative called BitterSweet Partnership in the UK which has been set up to address the fact the UK beer industry has traditionally ignored women (an example being stereotypcial and sexist advertising) Beer shouldn’t be pitched as a masculine drink and it’s great to get other people’s opinions on this.

Sounds good, right? I envisioned a little grassroots effort where women worked to pop the kind of cultural stereotypes I discussed in my post. Pro-beer, pro-women, cool. Sadly, no.

Rather, it's a very highly-produced site owned and operated by the Molson Coors corporation. Using a classic technique, the company is playing to a targeted group with a sympathetic campaign. But while it comes packaged in social-justice wrapping paper, it's just an old-time marketing campaign. Coors has no particular interest in encouraging beer-drinking among women or dispelling long-held stereotypes. They want to encourage women to drink Coors, period.

A couple years ago, Coors launched a Latino-targeted campaign, and with admirable candor, admitted that the goal was to play on emotional sympathies to push product:

"The African American and Hispanic markets together make up nearly one-third of the population in the U.S. and 21 percent of all U.S. males ages 21-34 are Hispanic. While Coors Light's cold refreshment is the same for any consumer, we tailor how we communicate that message to ensure it builds the personality of the brand and connects emotionally with multicultural consumers."

This is no different. It's a company using exactly the same Madison Avenue techniques to appeal to women that it used when it objectified them in ads like the Coors Light twins series. Or the more offensive "Wingman" spots. In politics, this kind of thing is called "astroturf" because it mimics a grassroots campaign. In the commercial sphere, it's just called marketing. Caveat emptor--and for me, no sale.

Coors is not pro-women. It's pro-Coors.