While perusing through an exhaustive compilation of beer blogs last night, I saw one that piqued my interest: Taking The Beard Out Of Beer. Hmmmm…has someone discovered the secret ingredient in my homebrew?
In all seriousness, I have found it fascinating that in this great American mass of consumers, shopping carts guided by males carry beer (typically) and those guided by females carry so-called “girly” drinks: i.e. Schmirnoff Ice. There is a drastic polarization between what “guy drinks” are and “gal drinks” are, beer typically being a guy drink. Research has shown that males account for 75% of the beer consuming population, and based off what we witness in the blog world, female beer geeks are an even slighter minority. Why is this so perplexing to me?
- Beer tastes so good…why wouldn’t a woman find it as delicious as me and my buddies?
- Foofy drinks are a guaranteed stomach ache for the immoderate partaker.
- Post WWII and especially post-sexual revolution America has seen the gender distinctions blurred…i.e. Men are more domesticated and women have integrated more into the workforce.
- There really isn’t a foofy food category when compared to the alcoholic beverage industry.
Differences between the sexes, are natural, no doubt. Men are not born with uterus’ after all and women are hard pressed to grow burly lumber jack beards. But beer?
In the blog mentioned above, the author discusses a Coors initiative that actually focused research to discover why there seems to be a female aversion to beer. The survey revealed that it isn’t the flavor of beer, perse, that keeps women from consuming it in the same quantities of men, but other factors such as glassware and a general lack of knowledge when ordering. Well, I can’t swallow this because it’s Coors we’re talking about here. They weren’t out trying to find why fine craft beer is consumed by more males, but why their beer is not. The general population when ordering, males included, choose between Bud, Coors, and Miller. How much knowledge does one need to choose between bland, bland, and bland? And glassware??? Sheesh…
Per the results of their research, Coors is apparently putting out a beer geared towards women. As you might have guessed, it isn’t really beer. Taking the Beard Out of Beer describes it as:
A (currently nameless) ultra-fine filtered beer to take out all colour (and one presumes flavour), it is then pumped full of things like ‘dragon fruit’ and ‘green tea’, which merely creates a fizzy, synthetic and grossly sweet flavour, in other words it’s an airhead of a product –
Is this the problem? Marketing? Are the big industries stuck in the pre-sexual revolution America and deciding for our country’s genders what constitutes a manly drink and what constitutes a sissy drink? If so, it is mind boggling. Unless you are selling maxi pads or jock straps, gender based marketing is only going to shrink your marketing base or get you in hot water with the ACLU.
Don’t get me wrong, I know there are women out there who love a nice bold craft beer. I am married to one, but really, for the most part, beer=man and fruit malt beverage=women. This has got to change, if anything for the sake of millions of females’ underprivileged taste buds.
Perhaps there is a science to the connundrum. Could it be that the female brain, fo rthe most part, is hard wired to interpret sweet fruity flavors more favorably than a standard beer? If so, they are just trying the wrong beer. A nice Lambic might be common ground.
What do you think? Does the special lady in your life prefer Zima, or for the ladies, does your man go after a sudcy draught? Why or why not?
This post could lead to some nice discussion as to whether gender distinction is good, bad, or natural…
Should I admit my wife drinks more beer than me?
But please note, we are quite well known for bucking the gender stereotypes – she’s the bacon lover, I’m the bigger (dark) chocolate fan…
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And I should note we’re not talking whimpy beer here…the proper stuff. She’s Irish, btw
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Maybe it has to do with knowledge (or should I say, lack thereof) of beer. Beer commercials are for Bud, Coors, or Miller and sometimes Corona (especially in early May). Most commercials I see are geared towards men. Hot babes, stupid human tricks, or just inane shtick seem more male-oriented.
Maybe it’s this sort of marketing that turns many women off to beer in the first place. Maybe I’m full of it.
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David,
You should steer your wife over to this site! Don’t worry, I change diapers and my wife swings a hammer with me when we remodel! I actually read an interesting article not too long ago about pairing beer with chocolate. i can see it working with a nice dry stout.
Big Tex,
You are full of it! haha, just kidding. I was thinking more along the lines of marketing geared toward women and completely neglected to mention the sweaty-man marketing you describe. You are absolutely right. Have you seen the Heineken commercial where the gal is showing off her walk in closet, and the guy is showing off his walk-in beer cooler?
I may be a hypocrite though, because I laughed out loud on the way to work at a “Real Men Of Genius” commercial. (we solute you Mr. SUV limo driver).
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You bring up some good questions Nate. I’ve wondered the same thing about chewing tobacco and spitting goobers in public. One just doesn’t see women engaging in those activities as much as men.
Women also don’t seem to be as interested in hunting, commercial fishing, or heavy duty pickup trucks, but they have seemed to have closed the gap in the tattoo and body piercing realms.
I think eventually more women will come along once they find there is more than Bud/Coors/Corona out there, but that’s true with men as well. That’s the value of blogs like yours because maybe even if some dude tries something new as a result of something they read about here, and then as a result his wife/girlfriend/mistress tries something new and it snowballs from there.
Word of mouth is how it’s going to work long term.
Personally, I think beers specifically marketed to women are doomed and are a stupid idea. (Except maybe Zima which we’ve discussed several times) What a smart beer company would do is partner with a popular cosmetics line like MAC and figure out a promotion somehow.
Still, I wonder how chewing tobacco might be better marketed to Women. I think we need more tobacco chewing, spitting women. Don’t you?
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“spitting goobers out there”
LOL. I ‘ve never heard that term before, but it cracked me up.
I thought your comment was insightful. There are differences between the sexes, no doubt. I personally, find many of them refreshing. I read in article in preparation for this post that scientifically examined a woman’s brain, citing it is built for empathy and care more so than a man’s. It actually brought up hunting/etc. that you mentioned, and stated that for the most part, a man’s brain is wired with his hormones to enjoy these things. Maybe I’m weird then, because I’ve never hunted.
I think that you MAC promotion idea is actually good. you should market it.
As far as tobacco chewing women go, I’ll pass. Chewing tobacco is one product I wish wasn’t marketed to anyone. I tended bar to pay for school and take care of my family during graduate school. It was in southern Missouri where being a man was more about having the biggest wad of crud in your lip than the biggest, errr…shoe size. No offense to all our tobacco chewing freinds out there, but these guys would spit their stuff into Styrofoam cups, drink brew, and chat with me. I like the conversation, but the smell and sound of the spitting literally made me feel nauseous.
What do you do for a living? Marketing?
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I only used tobaccy-chewing as an example – personally I also think its repulsive but women just don’t do it. Maybe its the same reason they don’t get into beer as much as men?
I don’t hunt either, but I do have a deep craving to get a monster truck to crush cars with. Just thinking aloud – I should probably stop.
It could also be a legitimate difference outside of marketing or culture as you mentioned when the scientists looked at the (smaller) brains of women. Maybe beer is just something that women take longer to acquire as a taste than men do?
Still, 3 of the 6 members of The Brew Club are women, so maybe the ratio is better out here in Jersey! I also liked the point that Big Tex made. The advertising is typically so low-brow it insults the intelligence. Men are used to it, women just stay away.
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Nate:
SUV Limo Driver? My favorite is Mr. Way Too Proud of Texas Guy. There’s some truth to this one.
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Argh! The HTML demons have stuck!
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Big Tex I hate those little beasts myself. I fixed the code for ya!
The SUV one was new to me…not half as funny as Texas Guy! I actually have a don’t mess with texas shirt.
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I think there is a “foofy” food category… chocolate, desserts- women are more inclined to like sweets. Maybe the reason why more women don’t drink beer is because they don’t take the time to find the sweet beers that taste just a good as the foofy drinks. I have girl friends who love beer now that they’ve tried more than just Bud Light.
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I think you’re right on, San. Once they find the sweetness locked in the malt, then they can go after the more bitter “hard” or bitter beers, like an IPA, in which the sweetness is there, just disguised. It’s true for men too, I suppose. I bet a lot of guys start drinking crappy beer even though at first they don’t like it, because “that’s what men do,” but after a while they get used to the flavor.
Thanks for weighing in! I am glad a female (and a hot one at that!) got in on this discussion!
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[...] actually filled the cans with Miller Light. The megolomaniacal company did not want their loyal brainwashed consumers to get to big for their britches after indulging in the fancy triple hopped delight mistakenly [...]
I just wanted to add the discussion, albeit a couple weeks after the fact (we were out of the country, in my defense). In my experience, early on one of the reasons I did not want to drink beer was because it was not a feminine enough drink–unlike WINE, which is the drink of choice for many of my girl friends. Also, I didn’t like the taste of most of the beers I had tried, so that factor combined with the lack of feminimity did not encourage me to venture into the beer realm.
On the other hand, I know of guys who continue to drink crappy beer–even if they don’t particularly like it–because of the expectation that men should drink beer…at least to be accepted by their crappy-beer-drinking friends. For the most part, I don’t think women have to cave under this pressure, so if they don’t like the taste of beers they’ve had (even when it’s an unfair judgment), they don’t have any motivation to continue to venture into the realm of beer.
Ah, gender conditioning! It’s amazing on the things we can miss out on in life when we aren’t willing to ask why we think what we think.
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That’s exactly what I was going for Andrea, thanks for weighing in. If i forgot to mention anywhere in the article or comments, I read a couple of “scientific” (hard to prove on the web) articles stating that female taste receptors, brain interpretation, and hormones were different than males and thus certain foods are more/less appealing.
To some extent, I must say, I am guilty of frequent gender conditioning (but not at the beer level). I do encourage Malachi to play with Batman over Barbie!
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