Lady Doritos... feed into a society that continues to segment women based on sexist presumptions.
PepsiCo are not launching Lady Doritos. Last week, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi fanned speculation when she mentioned on a Freaknomics podcast that the brand was considering making crisps more amenable to female snackers. Nooyi lamented that women ‘don’t like to crunch too loudly in public. And they don’t lick their fingers generously and they don’t like to pour the little broken pieces, and the flavour, into their mouths.’
With people on the internet quick to fight back and complain that women’s rights had been reduced to cheese-flavoured dust, a spokeswoman backtracked, telling Ad Age: ‘We already have Doritos for women – they’re called Doritos, and they’re enjoyed by millions of people every day.’ But of course, there was a caveat: ‘At the same time, we know needs and preferences continue to evolve and w’'re always looking for new ways to engage and delight our consumers.’
So PepsiCo is not launching Lady Doritos – it cannot, in 2018, be that tone deaf to the conversation on marketing to women. And yet, we are constantly hearing about women-targeted products that are for their palates. A self-proclaimed feminist gin, Pomp & Whimsy, wants to bring ‘fourth-wave feminism’ to the alcohol industry, according to The Spirits Business. The gin is made for ‘our taste, our style, our modern times’. For founder Dr Nicola Nice, ‘female branding, where it exists, is often reductionist, simplifying femininity to purely stereotypical portrayals of women’. And yet, have a guess what colour Pomp & Whimsy is. Millennial Pink gin for the Millennial Pink woman.