I hear it from women in the store every single day, “I don’t like beer”. They’re usually accompanied by their boyfriends or husbands who typically reinforce this notion by saying something like “yeah, she really hates beer”. There’s a deep cultural reason for both men and women’s attitudes regarding beer and it’s one that we need to confront and overcome.

We don’t typically think too much about gender roles in what we eat and drink, we just accept that some things are appropriate for men and some for women -- and when those lines cross, it’s like when the beams get crossed in Ghostbusters, chaos ensues. Well, I for one, am openly advocating chaos. If a man wants to drink a cosmo and a woman wants to enjoy an imperial stout I say good on them both. Drink what you want and tell the world to shut the hell up.

This notion that beer is for men and wine and fruity cocktails is for women is rooted very deeply in our cultural subconscious and our history. These stereotypes have been reinforced by marketers and manufacturers of beer, wine and spirits for decades now. While no one really benefits they are hesitant to challenge the status quo because it plays into those longstanding cultural norms.

Beer advertisements have especially been guilty of this by tying beer so closely to male-oriented sporting events and activities. If you look at television ads from the 50’s and 60’s all the way through today you can see that other than the end of animated characters in the ads the way beer is presented to the public has changed very little. Women are background characters there only to entice young men into buying whatever watered down pilsener or they’re shown as lacking any understanding of men and their fixation on beer.

Two examples of this are the Miller Lite ads from a few years back with the girls wrestling in a fountain and the Heineken ads featuring the walk-in closet and cooler. In the Miller Lite ad the girls and their catfight are the fantasy of two guys who think this would be a great commercial, their dates sit looking completely vexed by this conversation and it closes with the two fantasy girls making out. The other ad is the Heineken ad that features a group of women fawning over a new walk-in closet when they hear shrieks of joy coming from downstairs where men are fawning over a walk-in cooler filled with green bottles of Heineken. Neither of these ads would lead any woman to want to enjoy a beer instead of glass of wine or a cocktail. If you’re going to market to women you need a more sophisticated approach that doesn’t insult their intelligence or paint them as blow-up dolls.

Now in an examination of what men drink and why we find a very different reason why they choose beer over other beverages, it’s all about being manly and not appearing feminine. The guy with the beer is the guy that gets the girl, is on the winning team of whatever sport is being featured at that time and is rugged & self-confident. This leaves all other beverages except for whiskies as the preferred drink of women and homosexuals. Here in the store we hear ciders and fruit beers often referred to as “chick” drinks all the time which is really a shame since these products can be truly amazing and very approachable for everyone, men or women. Unfortunately too many American men are so insecure in their sexuality they can’t bring themselves to be seen with something insufficiently manly.

The same thing is seen with women except for them it’s not ciders and fruit beers that are suspect of inappropriate beverage choice it’s stouts, porters or other “dark” beers. All too often a woman will complain that they find Guinness disgusting or thick or bitter or whatever they’ve been led to think about it after maybe having a sip of it just once years back at a St. Patricks Day party after having five or six crappy green beers. When you challenge them on this and pour them a taste of Old Rasputin for example they discover that in actuality they’re a stout drinker. What’s odd about this is even though they really enjoy it, they rarely leave with a bottle because it wouldn’t look right for them to be drinking something like that while all their friends are having a glass of Chardonnay.

Well I say it’s time to shake off the shackles that bind us to these outdated stereotypes, belly up to the bar and experience something new, something that the drink police find inappropriate for us no matter what our gender. If you’re a man pick up a bottle of cider or mead from a craft cidery or meadery. If you’re a woman, pick up an imperial stout or IPA and if anyone has a problem with what you’re drinking, then that’s their problem.