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<\/a><\/p>\nThe boxes serve as a runner around our walls. They\u2019re a fascinating and unique decorative element of which I\u2019m quite proud and which get a lot of comments from our friends. It\u2019s a good record of our travels and our life together. They are not meant and usually are not read as endorsements of every beer we drink, but are in the context of over a hundred other examples of packaging. Pedestrian PBR is next to regional Yuengling, and obscure Backfin is next to a sampler pack. Every box that we (or occasionally a friend who works at a beer store) consume goes up on our wall, regardless of aesthetic or political merit: they are meant to provoke critique and examination of the relative merits and values in different packages of different beer.<\/p>\n
Since I\u2019m surrounded by the boxes all day, I begin to pick up on elements of their design. Namely, that males and whiteness are constantly normalized within the design of the boxes**:<\/p>\n
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Excepting the daguerreotype-esque Southern Ale, all of the men above are shown enjoying the beer, usually while engaging in their daily duties or in making the beer. The cottonwood man is not actively engaged, but he is holding the wheat that will make the beer, thus conferring involvement in the beer on him. The Highlands man is somewhat othered by the bagpipes, and I\u2019m not sure how the man in the Rogue ale is constructed, but both are drinking and enjoying the beer they\u2019re intended to represent. They are active and involved \u2013 not passive, not just drinking the beer, not just there. They are constructed as dynamic and effectual as they drink the beer<\/a>. And they are all white: men of color are erased in beer packaging as far as I’ve seen.<\/p>\n Now, let\u2019s look at the women that show up on the wall:<\/p>\n Women love<\/a> to drink<\/a>. Women love beer<\/a>. But you would never know it from their scarce representation in beer packaging.<\/p>\n In the beer packages I\u2019ve got up, women are not engaged in the act of drinking the beer that they represent. In fact, they\u2019re not engaged in anything. Except opening their mouths, or, um, being on fire. They\u2019re\u2026 objects. More specifically, sexual objects that have in most cases been disembodied<\/a>. They\u2019re floating heads, with their mouths open.<\/p>\n It gets worse when you look at how, specifically, the women of color are constructed. Look at the “Bad Penny” packaging above, and this one that I recently saw at a music festival:<\/p>\n The black women are constructed as reductive, exotic others, black women whose sexuality exists for the inebriated male gaze. It is not a coincidence that both have afros. Natural hair beautiful and laudatory, but there is only one kind of natural hair here: the style that is often problematized as dangerous and exotic, as another element that makes them an exotic experience for the male drinker.<\/p>\n Their sexuality is especially lacking in agency: the naked woman in the sexual chocolate ads is literally presented as an offering to the male gaze. She\u2019s not engaged with the viewer by drinking, or by making eye contact. She is passive, and coded as naked: she is wearing a tube top, but it\u2019s obscured by lettering of the same color as the top. A cartoon figure, she is not active; she is just there, waiting to be debased.<\/p>\n The \u201cBad Penny\u201d character is making eye contact, but her eyes are heavily lidded, unlike the white women above. I took the \u201cbad\u201d in the name of the beer to be capitalization on blaxploitation by an alcohol company that aligns itself with kyriarchical forces: it\u2019s the \u201cBig Boss\u201d. If the producer of this beer is the boss, where does that leave the women who hawk it?<\/p>\n Speaking of othering, let\u2019s look at another one I found online:<\/p>\n Note again the heavily lidded eyes, the more explicit nudity. Though she is at least shown to be holding liquid, she\u2019s not drinking it or enjoying it; she\u2019s pandering to the male gaze with an oh-so-subtle finger in her mouth.<\/p>\n This is supposed to construct Aztec culture (which I am not well-versed in discussing). Please note the feathers, the background, and the jewelry as elements of othering and exoticization that I can\u2019t fully articulate. Also not that this is not in a stein, as with most males shown with beer, but in some kind of \u201cprimitive\u201d-looking stone goblet.<\/p>\n Women in the marketing of beer is a grim, grim field. Beer is a man\u2019s drink, and women are excluded from independent enjoyment of it. They are not the drinkers of beer; they\u2019re the sex that sells the beer, the static objects of intoxicated lust.<\/p>\n To end on a less grim note, I did come across one ad that struck me as positive:<\/p>\n This woman is not being objectified, or reduced to an othered sexual object. She is normalized by her whiteness, but also by her active enjoyment of beer. She\u2019s drinking, which is what women do with beer.<\/p>\n ETA: <\/a>meloukhia <\/a>pointed out this label, which I’d seen before:<\/p>\n While the legs are somewhat sexual, and her eyes are closed, this woman is engaged and active – she is enjoying the beer, and life. Check out the comments for more beer packaging and discussion.<\/p>\n *It should be noted that while I appreciate the aesthetics of this example of packaging, this is an example of how voodoo is problematized and othered \u2013 especially when paired with a loaded word like \u201cDixie\u201d.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n **Many, though not all, of these packages repeat the imagery shown here in packaging of other varieties of beer.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n —————————–<\/p>\n Rachel McCarthy James is a writer and tutor living in Virginia. She writes about feminism and stuff at\u00a0Deeply Problematic<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/a>
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