The Great American Beer Company
Amy Schultz
Over the past sixty years, societal views of gender and beer have rapidly evolved in the United States. Advertising by large brands has grown to be more accepting of a partnership by men and women to enjoy alcoholic beverages separately, but equally. However, corporate beer brands’ advertising strategies haven’t evolved, insisting through a visual language that men and women drink differently (and need separate products to do so). Gender marketing in a capitalist society, for a product as widely consumed and advertised as beer, directly correlates with how we see ourselves as individuals, and how we view gender as a whole.
The Great American Beer Company is a brand that openly parodies gender marketing by large beer brands of the world, with its two opposing gendered products Man Beer and Lady Beer. Through photography, merchandise, brand values, and gender-specific writing, this brand catalogue exposes the inherent sham that is marketing beverages based on gender, in a split duality of mirrored photography and targeted language. To the reader, the book is intended to play upon the familiar beer advertising we unknowingly absorb, exaggerated further with a “surgeon general”-like warning label, as if crossing the boundaries of gender marketing will affect the experience one has with each beverage.