Oh yuck, it's the anti-Yorkie bar just for girls. Where's the fun in that?
I hope it’s corporate sabotage, that an employee annoyed at Kraft’s running of Cadbury has done it as an act of subversion, a sort of marketing stink bomb. Otherwise, I can’t understand how the confectioner’s ad for its new chocolate bar, Crispello, made it into print.
“They’re tiny,” it simpers, probably in the silky tones of the Caramel bunny. “They’ll make your boyfriend’s hands look bigger. Chocolatey treat for you. Ego boost for him.”
It seems a brave strategy: compete to see which of the sexes you can patronise more! Apparently in Cadbury world, male self-esteem is so easily manipulated that a sweet treat fitting in a palm provides a hit of testosterone. As for women, not only are we deemed foolish enough to date such a man and subservient enough to pick a chocolate bar to please him but we’re the ones who are expected to buy into this hooey.
The ads, at least, are revealing about the product. For Crispello is supposed to be the anti-Yorkie, a bar just for “girls”. So it’s low calorie because only women need to worry about their waistlines, and it comes in three parts, because obviously we wouldn’t want to come across as heifers by eating it all in a single sitting.
It’s one of an irritating group of new products aimed at women. There are also Bic’s famous “for her” pens, which are “designed to fit comfortably in a woman’s hand” and Fujitsu’s Floral Kiss laptops (alas, not on sale in this country) that come in a colour the company calls “feminine pink”. They are an extension of the sparkly, pastel veil that has been cast over girlhood, which flogs princess-related pink tat to girls and monster-related blue tat to boys.
This probably says more about capitalism than it does about sexism. Companies will always sniff out new ways to make money and inventing sex-specific products (which you can slap a pink premium on) is an easy way to do it.
But there’s a patronising message at their heart: that women are fragile creatures who couldn’t handle something unisex. Just like the ads for cleaning fluids that portray men as Neanderthals who couldn’t possibly scour an oven, these “just for women” products and the way they are marketed reinforce gender stereotypes, becoming a form of social determinism.
Of course, the retort of companies is that they wouldn’t make it if women wouldn’t buy it. Which is why the reaction to Crispello is so heartening. Cadbury asked women to tweet their “justifications” for eating a bar (because chocolate consumption has to involve guilt). Only two women have bothered, the second one writing: “HATE the sexist… ad. Puts me off Cadbury’s. Women don’t need this s**t.” Quite.
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