Wheeling out the sexist tropes: Part II

My monthly column for CAMRA’s What’s Brewing this month looks at the furore over the logo proposed for this year’s St Albans Beer and Cider Festival and why I dislike it. I looked at the Male Gaze and the objectification of women and a positive counter-example in Castle Rock’s rebrand of Elsie Mo back in 2018. If you haven’t read it, pop over to What’s Brewing now and give it a look. I’ll wait. (click here)

Right. Everybody caught up? Good.

The thing that I didn’t have space to talk about in that article was why this issue matters to me. I’ve talked before about how businesses can choose to make simple changes to their branding to avoid things which are sexist or possibly offensive. I seem to be wheeling out the old Tiny Rebel article from 2021 a lot recently, but it’s certainly pertinent. Why do something that you know might upset a few people when you can take a different route and try not to actively offend anyone? We all know that you can’t please all the people all of the time and no doubt whatever theme or image the St Albans committee chose, they would end up with detractors saying they didn’t like the decision. But not liking something for reasons of personal taste or preference is different from choosing to use an illustration that has sexist overtones.

And this is where we get to the nub of why, ultimately, sexism in beer branding really gets to me. You see, I have a little girl. She’s a great kid, a smart little cookie. Not far off hitting five years old. We do everything we can to open her eyes to the world, so she can pick out truth where she sees it. She knows what adverts are and why they show them to us. She’s starting to get to grips with sponsored content too, understanding that sometimes the videos that she sees are trying to sell her something without being overtly presented as an advertisement. These nuances are often subtle and difficult for a child, who has little true idea of money and how strong a driver it is for some people.

She’s not particularly gullible is what I’m saying. But she is very young. Born during the pandemic and with very little access to television or the internet in her first few years, we, as her parents, pretty much controlled the narrative in her first few years. We decided what information she could access. But from about the age of 3, external influences started to creep in. You can’t stop it. They want to watch a bit more stuff on YouTube. They go to nursery and then start school and begin to learn about the world through the eyes of their peers too. Their curiosity is wide, and things like people’s behaviour, posters and just the general day-to-day of society are invariably taken note of when you leave the home.

We are not big on ‘normal’ in our house, and we’ve taught Bam Bam that everyone is different – and that’s OK. She knows that all families are different – some people have a mum and a dad, others have two mums, for example. She knows that those things are all fine too. We don’t really do gender stereotypes in this house – Papa does practically all the cooking, for example. If anyone “goes out to work”, it’s me, although usually we both work from home so it’s not a big deal. I do the laundry, he does the dishes. You get it.

Despite this, we’ve noticed gender norms have been creeping in. Who knows where from. Undoubtedly the tiny drip, drip, drip of a million social influences is coming into play. Pink is her favourite colour at the moment, along with blue and purple. I remember once regifting a stack of pink clothing from a bag that a friend handed down to us to avoid having her dressed head to toe in pink all the time for just this reason. Occasionally she comes out with odd comments; “girls don’t play X” or “boys can’t be Y”. They seem strange and alien in our household and we always reinforce that people can wear what they like, do what they like and be what they like, regardless of what gender they are.

That’s why I can’t turn a blind eye when I see a beer festival logo that has a sexist image front and centre. That’s why I have to call out things that aren’t acceptable, even when others around me are saying “surely it’s not that big of a deal.” On its own, no, it’s probably not a big deal. But my daughter isn’t very good at reading yet, so the additional tagline which explains the historical context and the inspiration for the logo would pass her by. She just sees the lady with her skirt shuffled up and her bare feet on a programme, on a glass – things that, if I attended the festival, could well be brought back into my home. It’s another drip telling her that the male gaze is the way society sees women and another drop telling her what she should aspire to be when she’s older.

And I don’t want that for her. I want her to make her own decisions and not be brainwashed into thinking that beauty is more important than agency. It’s not acceptable for me to be lazy and complacent when it comes to inclusivity, because while my mind is mature enough to understand context and intention, hers is not. She needs me to help guide her to live a life that is as free of discrimination as possible – both against her and by her. Every single one of these little battles is important.