We all know beer is an inherently masculine drink, as masculine as pillaging, cutting down trees, and drinking out of the skulls of your enemies. For centuries, we ladies have had to content ourselves with bitter brews that slightly raise our testosterone levels with every sip if we want to enjoy a beer. But now, at long last, we can finally sip on malty beverages designed especially for us--in hot pink and yellow, no less. 

Molson Coors, the brewing company responsible for Coors, Keystone Light, and Blue Moon, has finally decided to corner the feminine market. They say that women consumers are essential to their future growth as a company and as a part of the beer industry as a whole. And their plan for appealing to the gentler sex is to pump a butt-load of dye into their product. 

I'm well aware of the "pinkification" trend. Walk into any mainstream toy store (or section) and you'll see the goods cleanly gendered. Boys are taught to be boys--active, aggressive, fans of explosions and cars and weapons--while girls are taught to be nurturing, calm, passive, materialistic, concerned foremost with appearance. It's been a solid way to sell products and it's starting to leak into more adult-oriented products. You'll see things like bright pink backpacks or toolkits targeted specifically at women, while neutrally colored products (in shades like red, green, or blue) are simply for "people". 

I never thought I'd see blatant gendering in beer, though. The food industry's long been dividing their products into two categories--pink yogurt cups, red (and "extreme") jerky packets--but beer has always sort of been an equal-opportunity consumptive. Sure, beer ads may target straight men more aggressively--remember those "twins" ads?--but for the most part, beer ad campaigns take the form of advertising general nightlife and contemporary courtship to both sexes. 

I suppose we do have the whole Mike's line of fruity, girly malt drinks, as well as the bro-opted Smirnoff Ice, but I never really considered those beer. Granted, I don't tend to consider Keystone Light beer either, but that's the snobbery talking. What I don't understand is why on earth Molson Coors thinks women aren't already buying their products. People drink beer because they like the way it tastes and because it makes them feel nice inside. Women are already beer drinkers. They're not an untapped market. Perhaps some women shy away from the bitterer bubbly in favor of syrupy cocktails, but pandering to them with the same marketing techniques that try to get little girls to beg their mothers for glitter nail polish seems awfully condescending. You don't need to infantilize women to sell them beer. You just need to brew a good beer, or at least a cheap one that doesn't taste like carbonated urine. Surprisingly, women are real humans fully capable of cultivating their own palate, of appreciating quality, of making purchasing decisions in the same way men do. We don't need pinkwash on specialty, female-only products--especially not our beer. Besides, I can't imagine a beer that's translucent enough to hold visible bright pink dye would taste in any way like a real brew.