Given the fact that I no longer have much in the way of clout even in my own building (see Girl, Naughty), it strikes me that if (a) I have a any future in the "craft" beer business at all, and (b) it's something I genuinely want to pursue in the years to come, depending on how the mayoral campaign turns out this fall, then it may well be the case that only by being outside the "craft" beer biz entirely will it be possible to address such issues with any degree of truthfulness.
Why do I say this? Because it isn't always possible to tell the truth when you're selling your own product, or standing too close to something you love dearly. Sometimes, you just have to go to the mattresses instead -- and this is NOT a sexual reference.
But for the moment, once more with feeling ...
Craft Brewing Has a Sexism Problem, by Will Gordon (Slate)
There are gross puns and derogatory illustrations on far too many beer labels. The misogyny needs to stop.
1978 was the worst year for beer diversity in post-Prohibition America, with only 89 breweries operating in the entire country. Most of those breweries sucked, so a nation addled by other drugs might not have realized that things were starting to look up. President Carter decriminalized home-brewing that year, empowering a generation of garage-based drinkers and dreamers to develop their own recipes and techniques. A lot of these hobbyists eventually went pro, leading to the well-chronicled rise of craft beer.
Now the U.S. is home to more than 3,500 breweries, half of which have opened since 2010. There are currently thousands of companies making beer that’s better than pretty much anything that was available up through the mid-1990s. The new-wave brewers have distinguished themselves from their predecessors by employing better ingredients in innovative ways. But there’s one area in which they’re stuck in 1978: A lot of craft beer marketing is astonishingly sexist.
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