Ah, gender stereotypes.
They’ve existed for as long as gender has, primarily consisting of washing up liquid adverts, lazy husbands, and the assumption that women can’t work or make rational decisions when they’re bleeding from their wombs once a month.
Oh, and pink. Lots of pink.
Pink itself is a grand colour – a muted mix of red and white, it’s fairly inconsequential and doesn’t really represent feminity even though a lot of people still use it to do so (see every gender reveal party, ever).
Still though, a lot of people generally don’t take to fondly to things when they’re marketed towards women and also pink in colour.
Partly because they’re not representative of the ‘female experience,’ but also because it’s just lazy.
That’s why when BrewDog launched their pink beer for girls just before International Women’s Day, a lot of people (understandably) weren’t that impressed.
We’ve created a beer for girls. And it’s pink. Because women only like pink and glitter, right?
🤦♀️ #Sarcasm
Lets show that enough is enough with stereotypes. pic.twitter.com/g1zonXFInm
— BrewDog (@BrewDog) March 6, 2018
However, BrewDog are actually pretty woke and it turns out that they didn’t just create a beer for women just for the laugh.
According to them, they created it to shed light on the gender pay gap and the glaring inequalities faced by women in the workplace and elsewhere.
They say that the beer for girls is actually a satirical look at the way many companies rebrand their products in an attempt to appeal to women and to essentially make more money.
“Satirically dubbed Beer for Girls, Pink IPA is BrewDog’s clarion call to close the gender pay gap in the UK and around the world and to expose sexist marketing to women, particularly within the beer industry.
“This is our overt parody on the failed, tone-deaf campaigns that some brands have attempted in order to attract women.”
This is not ‘beer for girls’. This is beer for equality.
Pink IPA has landed.https://t.co/MRWnqaADXg pic.twitter.com/J9Kk4khk1h
— BrewDog (@BrewDog) March 6, 2018
In order to address the pay gap (which currently stands at 20 percent in the UK), women will be permitted to buy the pink beer for girls for 20 percent less than men at BrewDog bars.
The company will also be donating 20 percent of their proceeds from the pink IPA to charity.
Despite this, people aren’t too convinced that the pink beer campaign was executed correctly or that it says anything meaningful about gender inequality at all.
https://twitter.com/georgina_breeze/status/970956250509905920
It’s lazy marketing though. Why do you need to make it pink and have beer for women on the bottle to appeal to women?! The idea is amazing but this execution is terrible
— Thom Steph (@ThomGSteph) March 6, 2018
“Lazily targeting the female market with sub-par products designed by expensive research are inherently patronising.”
What, you mean like repackaging the EXACT SAME BEER with a pink label and calling it “beer for women”? ?
P.S. Try hiring a competent copywriter.
— Louie Saxton (@L_Houston_) March 6, 2018
Others simply thought that while the idea of satire was decent, it just wasn’t clear enough from the product itself.
Doesn’t matter. It’s not clear in the initial campaign so it’s poorly thought through.
— Hannah Rutherford (she/her) 🌱 (@lomadia) March 6, 2018
https://twitter.com/saybwee/status/971028935562678272
"this is not 'beer for girls'" pic.twitter.com/ire0SWVKhZ
— niamh (@full_hearts) March 6, 2018
Either way, women are still earning a lot less money than men.
And if a satirical beer for girls can help to change that, then it probably wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
