Culture

Doritos Are Making ‘Lady-Friendly’ Chips And Thank God Folks, Women Are Finally Equal

Apparently women "don't like to crunch too loudly in public".

by Max Koslowski  6 February 2018

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That’s it, we’ve done it! Feminism is finished now. Doritos have announced that they are finally making ‘lady-friendly’ chips.

The global Chief Executive of PepsiCo, the company that owns Doritos, announced the move in an interview with Freakonomics Radio, solving a problem that literally no one thought existed.

“Although women would love to crunch crisps loudly, lick their fingers and pour crumbs from the bag into their mouth afterwards, they prefer not to do this in public,” Indra Noovi told the Freakonomics hosts.

“You watch a lot of the young guys eat the chips, they love their Doritos, and they lick their fingers with great glee, and when they reach the bottom of the bag they pour the little broken pieces into their mouth, because they don’t want to lose that taste of the flavour, and the broken chips in the bottom. Women would love to do the same, but they don’t. They don’t like to crunch too loudly in public. And they don’t lick their fingers.

“And how can you put it in a purse? Because women love to carry a snack in their purse.”

What.

Believe it or not these are 100 percent real quotes from the CEO of PepsiCo.

Obviously, there is nothing inherent to women that means they can’t lick their fingers or tip the Doritos bag straight into their mouth. Instead, ridiculous, archaic standards require women to be more polite in public.

There were plenty of people of people not happy with Doritos’ decision.

It’s actually similar backlash to the reaction that occurred when Bic announced their ‘Bic for Her’ pens back in 2012.

The pen, which comes in colours such as lavender and mint, advertised an “elegant design” and “thin barrel to fit a woman’s hand”. Bic received some absolutely scathing reviews online for the move.

When Will This Stop Happening?

Some places, like the United Kingdom, have banned advertisements that play on gender stereotypes. When the UK Advertising Standards Authority decided this in 2017, they argued that this type of marketing reinforces unfair gender norms.

At the time, a spokeswoman said that gender norms could be extremely limiting.

“Some gender stereotypes in ads can contribute to harm for adults and children by limiting how people see themselves and how others see them, potentially restricting the life decisions they take,” said Ella Smillie, an employee of the Committees of Advertising Practice.

“The introduction of a new advertising rule from 2018 will help advertisers to know where to draw the line on the use of acceptable and unacceptable stereotypes.”

There has even been a global push to end gendered advertising: in partnership with UN Women, companies like Unilever, Facebook, Google and Alibaba created the Unstereotype Initiative in early 2017. The initiative’s key aim is to stop women being represented as cooks in family-oriented advertising.

Australia has its own advertising standards, but experts fear that these won’t ever be enough to clamp down on gendered products and advertising. All we’ve got is a blanket rule that prevents advertisements from being discriminatory – but the whole industry pretty much just regulates itself, and a lot of people worry that they don’t do a good enough job of it.

Noovi concluded the Freakonomics interview by saying that they were “getting ready to launch a bunch” of the female-minded Doritos products soon.

We can’t wait.