The Twittersphere yesterday erupted with outrage at the news: Pepsi was releasing “Lady Doritos,” a quieter, purse-friendly chip for women.
It’s the type of mockable, scoffable idea that’s perfect for Twitter. And to be fair, consumer shelves have seen their share of half-brained, pink washed products designed to capture women’s dollars, often at a premium. Bic Pens for Her come to mind. As do earplugs for women or tape for girls.
A “Doritos for women” seemed particular off-base emerging when it did, weeks after the second Women’s March and in an era of Time’s Up and #MeToo. Anger online came fast and furious, with social media reacting against what it thought was the latest symptom of a society that still had outdated, precious ideas about what women wanted and needed.
Good news, ladies. We got a female Colonel Sanders and Doritos that don’t crunch, so feminism is cancelled. We’ve achieved equality.
— OhNoSheTwitnt (@OhNoSheTwitnt) February 5, 2018
To some, the very idea of Lady Doritos was exhausting or even upsetting. Busy Phillips, the actress and influencer, called the chips “triggering” during an Instagram Live.
.@Doritos we’ve been through enough this year.
— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) February 5, 2018
To be sure, society still has lots of things to fix and lots of outdated ideas about women. But Lady Doritos, as a product, doesn’t actually exist.
The hubbub started when a quote from a Freakonomics podcast episode featuring Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi was misunderstood. In the podcast, the CEO mentioned a slew of ways that Pepsi is researching how users eat and use snacks of all kinds. Nooyi, you may or may not know, has been instrumental in diversifying Pepsi’s snack portfolio to include “Better for you” and “Good for you” offerings, products with whole grains and nuts. But, as the podcast interview explained, the company is interested in all the ways people consume snacks, including where they carry them after the snack leaves a pantry.
Here’s Nooyi’s full quote from the podcast.
“You know, when you eat out of a flex bag — you know, one of our single serve bags — especially as you watch a lot of the young guys eat the chips, they love their Doritos, and they lick their fingers with great glee, and when they reach the bottom of the bag they pour the little broken pieces into their mouth, because they don’t want to lose that taste of the…
