Oh Sh*t, Miller Lite Selling Beer To WOMEN, IS THAT EVEN LEGAL? (No)
Let's discuss that (sort of) new Miller Lite ad with Ilana Glazer.
Beer companies have started defying the supposed social contract that requires they target their advertising campaigns exclusively at white cis male heterosexuals with emotional problems. When Bud Light ran a brief sponsorship featuring TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who is trans but still insists on existing in the world, the backlash was truly unhinged. Actual members of Congress announced they were boycotting their beloved Bud Light.
Around the same time, Miller Lite launched an ad campaign with standup comic and "Broad City" star Ilana Glazer. In the "Bad $#!T to Good $#!T" ad, Miller calls out beer companies' history of almost comically sexist advertising.
PREVIOUSLY: Bigots Have Big Sad Over Bud Light Not 'Apologizing' To Them Enough
Glazer discusses how women were among the first beer makers (it's true!) and notes that women were rarely presented as actual beer drinkers but rather objects in ads aimed at horny men.
"How did the industry pay homage to the founding mothers of beer?" she asks. "They put us in bikinis." (Well, they probably wouldn't have hired Glazer — that's not a dig, just a comment about how lookist and often racist these ads were.)
Glazer reveals that Miller Lite has resolved to "scour the internet" for all their old beer ads and posters that objectified women (so, all of them, Katie) and turn them (through SCIENCE) into fertilizer that Miller will donate to female hops owners. That's a decent PR move for Women's History Month that harms no one, so obviously right-wingers won't let this stand. Whiny baby men who stumbled upon this commercial almost two months later declared that Miller Lite had also "gone woke" (not a thing) and must now "go broke."
OutKick founder Clay Travis, who’s too dumb to know how time works, said, “Miller Lite saw the Bud Light disaster and decided they needed their own woke beer ad.”
Megyn Kelly viciously attacked Mulvaney over the Bud Light ad because she's a vicious bigot, and Tuesday, Kelly complained on her show about the horrible Miller Lite ad that she literally just learned about. Her guests were Fifth Column podcast hosts Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch, who resemble the focus group members for a 1990s beer ad campaign. Moynihan compared the "Bad $#!T to Good $#!T" conceit to a Stalinist purge and the Khmer Rouge because he is a student of history and not at all prone to hyperbole. It was deranged right-wingers who literally shot up Bud Light cans because a trans woman touched one. That is more emblematic of a "purge." The Miller Lite campaign just feels like a form of recycling.
Miller Lite specifically started selling sex with a 1993 commercial that featured a girl sitting on the beach in a yellow bikini. A clever advertising person realized that one woman in a bikini increased their market share so three women in a bikini could possibly triple it or just look hot.
I’d forgotten how awful these ads are. You’d almost think they were deliberate parody, like those Simpsons Duff ads. The worst was perhaps the 2003 spot literally called “Cat Fight wherePlayboymodels Tanya Ballinger and Kitana Baker fight over whether Miller Lite 'tastes great' or is 'less filling.'" They end up rolling around in mud or cement or something sticky before making out. This has nothing to do with the merit and quality of Miller Lite. It’s not as if you need to maintain an erection while consuming the beverage.
Oh, and Meghan Markle played a bartender in a 2010 Miller Lite ad, but she remained fully clothed.
Glazer told People Magazine: "When I was young that kind of imagery was scary and bad and made me feel alienated. I felt like this product is not for me. I'm not going to grow up and drink beer if this is how it's being advertised."
"I would love to see more big companies, like Miller Lite, put their money where their mouth is in supporting women, women of color and Black women, in their industries," Glazer said. "More than just the representation … and using the opportunity to celebrate women merely as a framework, actually making it mean something in dollars."
In contrast to the Glazer spot, the Dylan Mulvaney promotion was very much like a traditional beer ad. A pretty young woman dressed like Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany's brings us beers and confesses that she doesn't know anything about sports. Kelly, a horrible human being, might've said that Mulvaney was "offensive" to women, but it's not like she's supportive of a non-trans woman expressing herself.
Joe Rogan jumped on the incel bandwagon this week, complaining on his podcast, “I hate identity politics with a passion. I really do. It’s so stupid. Human beings made beer. Okay. And some human beings look good in bikinis. It’s like, what are we doing?”
Rogan is either incredibly disingenuous or just plain stupid if he doesn’t recognize that identity politics played a major role in how beer has been sold for decades now: Young heterosexual men were specifically targeted in ads featuring conventionally attractive women who were seemingly allergic to clothing.
Miller Lite wants to sell beer to all human beings. This inclusive marketing approach might upset certain men who treat beer ads as prime time-acceptable porn, but they’ll just have to deal.
Rogan questioned the ad campaign’s entire premise. Yes, the team of women who spearheaded the campaign probably did their research like fucking professionals, but Rogan still demands that they show him their work: “‘Women do it. Women do it. Women do it.' I’d like to see a pie chart of how many women are actually involved in making beer or drinking beer."
Women account for two percent of brewers today, but they were pushed out of the field they literally created. The brewing industry is white male dominated but not by chance. Rogan’s argument is typical right-wing assholery: Acknowledging historical bias and correcting it is "woke identity politics.” In reality, men like Rogan can’t cope with the very idea of an even playing field or a beer industry that doesn’t run ads with bikini-clad women performing for the drunken male gaze.
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Rogan's success is literally attributable to identity politics. In-groups vs out-groups is the bedrock of branding, capitalism, and especially politics. Doofus.
Y'know, for someone who "really hates identity politics," that stereotypical 80s teen movie preppy villain's dumbass jock sidekick who never has had and never will have an original thought in his life sure indulges in A LOT of it...