Could you imagine yourself having a ‘delicious’ taste of a Kardashian Twist? Or perhaps sip on a Jacqueline Dazzle or a Shakira Crunch?
Well now you can, because Ohri’s restaurant in Hyderabad’s Hitec City has apparently decided that milkshakes are too vanilla unless you tag them with a woman celebrity’s name.
What’s more, according to a Deccan Chronicle report, all of these milkshakes are grouped together in the menu as ‘item bombs’. Of course, when a customer pointed out the sexism behind these names, the owners justified them with the ‘what’s in a name?’ argument. “We celebrate womanhood and any resemblance to a person is purely coincidental,” they claimed.
Disclaimer to the rescue!
Of course, if you venture into the territory of alcohol and cocktails, there’s plenty of precedent to such sexist naming.
According to a listicle by Huffpost on embarrassing cocktail names, there do exist masterpieces like ‘Fuzzy navel’, ‘Angel’s tit’ (oh, the blasphemy!) and ‘The Red-headed Slut’. And here’s Thrillist’s compilation of the most sexist names and labels in craft beer. These include ‘Double Wench’ and ‘Midnight Sun Panty Peeler’.
Alcohol advertising and promotions have always been targeted at men, and the industry is only just waking up to the fact that women drinkers are being alienated with such casual sexism. However, even such sexist hotspots as beer commercials are now beginning to get a rethink.
Ohri’s, though, is something of a trendsetter, deciding that even when it comes to milkshakes, it’s the male customer, and the male customer who likes a healthy dose of objectified women with his milkshake, that needs to be appealed to. Why else would you name a milkshake ‘Katrina’s mango’?
To Ohri’s credit, however, they’re not the first restaurant, bar or hotel to think it’s OK to alienate women customers to get a chuckle out of male customers. As Ladies Finger wrote last year, food and drink establishments have happily peddled everything from rape jokes to casual misogyny in the guise of humour.