Are Austin Craft Brewers Selling Beer or Objectification?

The ladies at the Bitch Beer blog want to know whether craft brewers should do better by their customers than to use the same old T&A advertising tactics beloved by the Budweisers of the world.

Why, they wonder, is the South Austin Brewing Company using a half-naked lady to sell craft beer ("Your champagne just got jealous!" because all women drink champagne always), and why are they doing it in, of all things, a roller derby program—contrasted, as it was, with a "badass" Lone Star ad featuring a derby girl crushing a beer can on her forehead?

We met too many ladies who had sworn off beer all together because they never experienced anything better than the watery adjunct crap some frat bro pumped them from a keg in college. To be frank, those efforts, and the efforts of so many passionate female (and for that matter, male) craft beer advocates that came long before us, are hindered when a male dominated industry puts out advertisements that feature women as titillating objects of affection rather than as valued consumers of their products.

Caroline at Bitch Beer writes that the South Austin Brewing Company is hardly the first or only craft beer brewery to take the tactic, and that her post is "not made in any effort to demonize them as some kind of lady-haters," but to highlight what she sees as a major obstacle preventing women from becoming part of the craft beer community: "is it really a community when a brewery's advertising has the potential to alienate half of the population?"

· How To Alienate Female Beer Drinkers In One Easy Step [Bitch Beer]
· All Craft Beer Coverage on Eater Austin [-EATX-]

[Photo: SABC's 'Groovy Sunday' Event/Facebook]

South Austin Brewing Company

415 East Saint Elmo Rd. Suite 1D, Austin, TX.