If you were miffed about Carlsberg’s stab at marketing a beer towards women that they considered to be “gender neutral,” then prepare to lose your shit over “Chick Beer.” The pink-and-black, polka-dotted bottle that comes in a six-pack box designed in the shape of a purse is targeting that coveted 25% of beer sales attributed to women.
Founder Shazz Lewis spoke to the Village Voice about her inspirations for the overly-girly packaging:
I knew I wanted to make it stand out. There was no sense of going halfway. I wanted to use pink and black and do something extremely iconic [by depicting it using an image of] a purse and a little black dress. I wanted it to be fun and sexy and I wanted people to have a good time with it. Beer’s about fun.
Okay. Put aside your horror that this woman thinks that an icon for women is a “little black dress.” Because we need to deal with the highly offensive story of how the beer came to be, aka The Chick Story, on Chick Beer’s official website:
The idea to create a brand of beer specifically for women kept stirring in our brains and hearts. We thought about it night and day, and decided that we really wanted to be able to give women a choice that reflected their tastes, and was female-centric. After two years of effort, Chick Beer is our answer.
The idea for the name “Chick Beer” was obvious. For years, men have dismissing lighter beers as chick beers, something “not on par with what real men drink”. Our take on this: “Since when is Chick a bad thing?
We love Chick Flicks, Chick Lit, and now we can love Chick Beer!! Enjoy!
The only good to come from all this is that 5% of profits will go to “charities that empower women.” We can get behind that. For now, the beer is only sold in Maryland, but you can request that your local beer distributor carry said brand if you’d like. Or, you know, not.