Tag: beer and women

| Uncategorised

Sexy or sexist? This is not just CAMRA-bashing

I wasn’t going to comment on this. But I started leaving a comment on someone else’s blog and it started getting a bit too long so I thought I should stick it here instead.

In case you haven’t heard: CAMRA, quite reasonably, would like to recruit more young people. To help do so, it produced and distributed a leaflet for use by university real ale societies. Some people who saw the leaflet were offended by it, finding it sexist. One even started a petition to have the leaflet withdrawn.

The outcry was a success. CAMRA has withdrawn the leaflet and apologised ‘for any offence caused’, defending its actions by revealing that sizeable numbers of young men and women were consulted on the design, and liked it. Crucially CAMRA’s statement stops short of acknowledging that there was any real justification for people to be offended.

It’s a classic beer industry ding-dong. Now the offending leaflet has been withdrawn and CAMRA has admitted that they ‘got it wrong’, some on either side think it’s time to let the matter drop. But with opinions ranging from not seeing what all the fuss is about to wanting to burn CAMRA’s offices to the ground, it’s not going to go away easily.

It’s important then that before we move on, everyone – especially CAMRA – needs to acknowledge what the problem is.

Everyone I’ve shown the leaflet to – mainly people outside the beer industry and with little interest in either CAMRA or CAMRA-bashing – has been appalled by it.

Whatever your views on sexism (or not) the women are highly sexualised and stylised, whereas the bloke in the top picture is just wearing an ordinary T-shirt. That gives a very clear contextual suggestion that the sexualised women are there for the ordinary ale-drinking bloke’s delectation.

The front of the leaflet is sort of better in that both the man and woman are dressed in the same period costume. That would make it forgivable, were it not for the fact that in the pose, the man is physically possessive of the woman. You see, it’s not just the clothes: in both sets of images, the women are portrayed as being subservient to the men.

The picture of the woman on her own shows a pose I have never seen a real woman strike when she’s drinking a pint. Again, it’s highly stylised, highly sexualised, and clearly has its roots in the imagery and shapes of Burlesque dancing.

Burlesque has been championed by some women as empowering, but ridiculed by others as ‘middle-class stripping’. If a woman wants to dress like this, stand like that or even take her clothes off in public, she has every right to do so, but the choice is hers.

The problem here is that the women shown are presumably there to demonstrate that women drink real ale too. The reason CAMRA wants to communicate that message is that CAMRA, real ale and beer generally are still seen as being male-dominated. This broader context again reinforces the suggestion that these women are not empowered, but are here as eye candy for the lads.

There is still a great deal of sexism in the drinks industry, and real ale is no exception. I’ve just been working at drinks trade shows where young women were leered at and openly complemented on the merits of their tits and arses, sometimes by senior figures in the industry. Every female real ale drinker I know has at some point been subject to sexist comments for daring to drink real ale.

If these tasty birds had been in a Foster’s or Carling ad, or in a lad’s magazine, few would have defended their use as anything other than lairy, laddish titillation. If they’d been in an article about beer in Cosmopolitan magazine, I think they would have caused less offence, but I suspect ale-drinking women would still have seen them as condescending and patronising. Context is all.

And then there’s the student context: when the LSE’s rugby club has had to be banned for persistent misogyny, and Oxford and Cambridge have had to introduce compulsory sexual consent training, and the National Union of Students has published a report on the increasing prevalence of harassment,
stalking, violence and sexual assault, it’s obvious that campus sexism is a real danger to female students and not just harmless ‘banter’.

In the recent Cask Report, one of our main and most widely repeated headlines was that real ale drinkers no longer agree with the statement that ‘real ale is not a drink for women or young people.’ But nearly half of all publicans still DO agree with this statement.

The industry is behind the times when it comes to gender equality and relations with women. Someone in CAMRA – even if they personally felt the leaflet was fine and operated within the style and tone of contemporary studenty imagery – should have realised that it was simply too risky for a supposed consumer champion to use. If I try to tell my female friends that beer has thrown off its sexist image, as we were trying to suggest in the Cask Report, they could simply bring up this leaflet and laugh in my face.

It’s good that CAMRA reacted so quickly and withdrew the offending article, but the damage is done. And what still upsets those who complained is that, while the organisation genuinely did not want to cause offence, it doesn’t seem to understand why it did.

You might also like...

| Uncategorised

Beer is not as fattening as you think – and that’s official

No, the number of calories in a pint has not somehow miraculously fallen, or found to be overstated.  But new research carried out by the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) has found that a significant majority of people in Britain believe there are more calories in beer than there really are.

When asked, 60 per cent of men overestimated the calories in a pint, and a whopping 74% of women did the same.

The fact that three out of four women believe beer is more calorific than it really is is surely a significant factor in the very low proportion of women who drink beer, and one that is easily remedied – hey, brewers, you could simply do an information campaign informing people of the truth rather than spending million on a patronising clear ‘beer’ in a bottle with pretty flowers on.

Revealing details of the research, the BBPA included some handy stats which you may want to share with weight-conscious friends down the pub:

  • A half pint (284ml) of 2.8% ABV bitter is 80 calories
  • A half pint (284ml) of 4% ABV lager is 96 calories
  • A 175ml glass of 12.5% red wine is 119 calories
  • A 175ml glass of 12.5% white wine is 131 calories

Yes, a pint is more than a glass of wine.  But at 220 calories for a pint of premium cask ale, that’s really not too many (and the point is, it still remains much lower than most people think).  I once did WeightWatchers, and a pint of ale has the same points value as a naked baked potato with no filling, no butter, nothing.

I’m not sure there are many people who would describe a baked potato as fattening.  So why do people who drink beer get fat (because yes, some of them – me as a case in point – do)? Well, you wouldn’t have a nice dinner and then go out afterwards and eat five or six baked potatoes, would you? 

It’s all about moderation – the beer itself is not fattening, but eat or drink too much of anything and over time it will start to show.

And of course, the industry sanctioned lined – which also happens to be true – is that a bag of crisps almost doubles the calorific value of a round, while a packet of peanuts contains twice as many calories as a pint of beer.

On another note, you might have spotted the comparison above with a 2.8% pint of beer.  That’s because the research (carried out by ComRes with a sample of over 2000 adults nationwide) also asked people if they would consider drinking a 2.8% beer as a refresher on a hot day.  This follows the new tax break that came in last year for beers of 2.8% or below as an effort to get people to moderate their alcohol consumption.   (Something we could all have welcomed if it wasn’t being paid for by a tax hike on beers of over 7%, which hammers the craft beer industry and displays a total lack of understanding of the beer market).

A lot of drinkers – myself included – are sceptical about whether a beer can deliver flavour at 2.8%, and wonder why the limit wasn’t set at 3.4% – not a huge difference in alcohol, but a massive one in terms of what a brewer can do.  (Trinity from Redemption Brewery at 3% ABV is a beer that some people drink because it’s low ABV, but most drink in spite of its ABV – it’s simply a wonderful beer; forget the alcohol.)  But the research shows that about a third of people – more women than men – are happy to give 2.8% a go.

That figure would surely have been higher if the limit had been a little more realistic, but that’s what we’re stuck with and many brewers are now rising to the challenge of making beer at 2.8% that’s still worth drinking.  I’ll be doing a blind tasting of a wide range of low ABV beers very soon, damning the bad and praising any we find that are worth a go.  I know craft beer is playing in high ABVs just now, but when you drink as much beer as I do, it’s very nice indeed to have a low strength alternative.

And if it’s lower in calories too, well, that does us no harm at all.

You might also like...

| Uncategorised

Do women need their own beer?

Alongside beer styles, craft beer, cask versus keg and other such burning issues, the notion of ‘beer for women’ reared its head again this week with Molson Coors’ launch of Animee, a new attempt to persuade the 79% of British women who don’t currently drink beer to start doing so.  I was at the launch on Monday night. So was Melissa Cole, who is true to form in her outspoken views on the subject here.  Sophie Atherton also weighed in on the Guardian blog here.

I agree with the gist of what both are saying, but not on every single point.  I also get a sort of itching in my brain when commenters who have not seen, smelled or tasted these products dismiss them as ‘piss’.  How do you know?  Even when I slag off something like Stella Black, I taste the damn stuff first.

I believe the launch of Animee is misguided and flawed, but there are some good points in there if you look hard enough.  I’ll sum this up in a list of positives and negatives, to make it easy.

Negative:
The whole idea of a beer for women in the first place. It’s never worked, because it’s not what’s needed.  I’m not surprised Melissa feels patronised – I’d feel the same if someone tried to flog me a ‘wine for men’. As Melissa points out, women don’t want a product that segregates them – they just want a product that doesn’t actively alienate them.  Wine, cocktails, cider and premium spirits are neither masculine nor feminine, and they all seem to be doing just fine.  The only reason beer is overtly masculine is the long heritage of macho advertising in the UK – beer is far more unisex in other countries.  In Spain, 40% of total beer volume is drunk by women, and it’s mainstream lager, same as here.  (Nice mainstream lager though, it has to be said.)

Positive:
The fact that Molson Coors are trying.  This was presented on Monday as part of a broader programme of ideas and initiatives to really promote beer across the board.  Molson Coors are a big multinational brewer who talk about beer in marketing speak (the subject of another piece). But I get the impression they do actually care about beer.  They show signs of understanding it, and respecting it.  Growing Sharps and Worthington are as much part of their plan as boosting Carling – which, by the way, also got a shout on Monday night.  A new 4.8% ‘premium’ version, Carling Chrome, is bland, pretty tasteless, but not watery and without the nasty aftertaste some of these beers have.  On the beer for women thing, they’ve spoken to tens of thousands of women and really got to the heart of what’s keeping them from beer.

Negative:
Given all that research, I just don’t understand Animee as a response to it.  The main barriers are all about image – not the product.  So why launch a different product?  I find the beers that convert women who ‘don’t like’ beer tend to be very strongly flavoured – American IPAs or Imperial porters and stouts – because these women are currently drinking wine that has comparable characteristics.  I don’t see the need to launch a product that doesn’t actually look or taste like beer at all, and don’t understand how a product that doesn’t look or taste like beer, that has different language around it from beer (‘clear filtered’, ‘lemon’ and ‘rose’ anyone?) is going to attract women to drinking beer more generally.  It’s actually only beer because Molson Coors say it is – it’s not going to change anyone’s attitude to what ‘beer’ is or can be.  Any women who drink this will do so despite it being called beer.

Positive:
It might not be beer, but actually I thought the product wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t remotely like beer, but I did enjoy it, especially the clear filtered one.  Light and refreshing, it would be a pleasant summer drink, an alternative to mainstream cider.  I also think the packaging, if you look at it for what it is, manages to be unisex and quite stylish, a few beers cues here and there, not too girly.  I know, I know, it’s in clear glass.  That is a marketing decision because – and I say this as someone who has done countless focus groups over the last 15 years – every single drinker who is not knowledgable enough about beer to know about light strike says they overwhelmingly prefer clear glass.  It just looks better, and for many drinkers, beer is about style over substance.  Of course I don’t agree with that or like it, but it’s true.

So overall, I suspect Animee will go the same way as all other attempts to market a beer specifically for women.  But I hope Molson Coors don’t give up.  I hope they will try some different strategies.  And I hope other big brewers will follow their example.  I also hope they will read the comments from the many women responding to Melissa’s and Sophie’s pieces saying there are beers for women, in the shape of cask ale.  And I also hope they will look very closely at this:

Project Venus is a collaboration between female brewers. On 28th July, Kathy Britton, of Oldershaw Brewery, Sara Barton of Brewster’s, Michelle Kelsall from Offbeat Brewery, Sophie de Ronde from Brentwood Brewing Company and Sue Hayward from The Waen Brewery will gather at Oldershaw’s to brew their second cask ale. The whole thing will be filmed by Marverine Cole, AKA Beer Beauty.

Of course Project Venus is tiny compared to Animee.  But I’d be fascinated to see a side-by-side tasting of the two, and see which women prefer.

You might also like...

| Uncategorised

Beer and women – and me – on the telly

Filmed this the day after Stoke Newington Literary Festival, back in June (which is why there are huge bags under my eyes).  It went out on BBC Midlands last night.

Marverine Cole, who produced the segment, has since gone on to become a fully fledged beer evangelist, better known as the Beer Beauty.

Great job Marverine!

You might also like...