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Drinks with sexist names banned from UK beer festival

Beverages such as Leg-Spreader and Village Bike are barred from the event

Tuesday 06 August 2019 14:48 BST

(Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The organisers of the Great British Beer Festival, which opened on Tuesday, have announced that drinks with “sexist” names have been banned from this year's event.

For 2019, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has prohibited the sale of a number of boozy beverages including those named Dizzy Blonde, Slack Alice, Leg-Spreader and Village Bike.

The organisation has also called time on beer pump clips and bottle labels that feature artwork of female pin-ups.

CAMRA made the decision to change the line-up of beers on offer at this year’s event after a survey revealed that 68 per cent of women would be unlikely to buy a beer if they saw it advertised in a sexist way.

Abigail Newton, national organiser at CAMRA, said that each of the 1,000 beers, ciders and perries on sale at the Great British Beer Festival had been checked to ensure they adhered to CAMRA's “charter and code of conduct, which details its commitment to inclusivity and diversity”.

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

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1/12The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Anne Hathaway

The 32-year-old actress said she has already experiences job rejections because of her age. “Now I'm in my early thirties and I'm like, 'Why did that 24-year-old get that part? I was that 24-year-old once. I can't be upset about it, it's the way things are,” she told Glamour.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Helen Mirren

On news that Maggie Gyllenhaal had been turned down for being ‘too old’, aged 37, to play a 55-year-old man’s partner: “It’s f***ing outrageous. It’s ridiculous. Honestly, it’s so annoying. And ’twas ever thus. We all watched James Bond as he got more and more geriatric, and his girlfriends got younger and younger. It’s so annoying.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Gyllenhaal revealed she was told by a Hollywood producer that she was too old, aged 37, to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man. “It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made feel angry, and then it made me laugh,” she said at the time.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep has helped fund an all-female screenwriters group called The Writer’s Lab to encourage more women to pen Hollywood scripts. She previously told Vogue in 2011: “Once women pass childbearing age they could only be seen as grotesque on some level.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Emma Thompson

The actress said she thought Hollywood is “still completely s***” when it comes to treating women equally to men. ““When I was younger, I really did think we were on our way to a better world. And when I look at it now, it is in a worse state than I have known it, particularly for women, and I find that very disturbing and sad.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Elizabeth Banks

Banks said she was driven from acting to directing due to the lack of roles for older women in Hollywood. “"[Industry sexism] drove me to direct for sure. I definitely was feeling that I was unfulfilled and a little bit bored by the things that were coming across my desk. I mean look at Gwyneth Paltrow who has her Oscar [for Shakespeare in Love] and played fifth banana to Iron Man,” she told Deadline.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Viola Davis

“I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size 2 be a sexualised role in TV or film. I'm a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualised woman. I was the prototype of the ‘mommified’ role,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Liv Tyler

The Lord of the Rings actress said she only get cast in roles where she is treated as a “second class citizen” at the age of 38. “When you’re in your teens or twenties, there is an abundance of ingenue parts which are exciting to play. But at [my age], you’re usually the wife or the girlfriend - a sort of second-class citizen. There are more interesting roles for women when they get a bit older,” she told More magazine.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Cate Blanchett

The actress famously called out sexism on the red carpet at the 2014 Screen Actors Guild Awards. When a camera operator scanned her up and down, she said: “Do you do this to the guys?” In her Oscar acceptance speech for Blue Jasmine, she reminded the film industry that movies with leading women can still be successful. “And thank you to... those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women at the centre, are niche experiences. They are not -- audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.”

Gareth Cattermole/Getty

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Ellen Page

Asked if she had ever encountered sexism in Hollywood, Page told The Guardian: ‘Oh my God, yeah! It's constant! It's how you're treated, it's how you're looked at, how you're expected to look in a photoshoot, it's how you're expected to shut up and not have an opinion, it's how you... If you're a girl and you don't fit the very specific vision of what a girl should be, which is always from a man's perspective, then you're a little bit at a loss.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Zoe Saldana

The actress says she refuses roles where she has to play the generic girlfriend, wife or sexy bombshell. "It's very hard being a woman in a man's world, and I recognised it was a man's world even when I was a kid. It's an inequality and injustice that drove me crazy, and which I always spoke out against — and I've always been outspoken,” she told Manhattan magazine.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Charlize Theron

The actress spoke to ELLE about negotiating equal pay for the Snow White and the Huntsman sequel: "This is a good time for us to bring this to a place of fairness, and girls need to know that being a feminist is a good thing. It doesn't mean that you hate men. It means equal rights. If you're doing the same job, you should be compensated and treated in the same way."

Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

Newton added that CAMRA recognises it has an important role to play in making women feel more welcome within the beer world.

“It's hard to understand why some brewers would actively choose to alienate the vast majority of their potential customers with material likely to only appeal to a tiny and shrinking percentage,” Newton said.

"We need to do more to encourage female beer drinkers, which are currently only 17 per cent of the population, despite the fact that they make up more than 50 per cent of the potential market.

“Beer is not a man's drinks or a woman's drink, it is a drink for everyone. There is a huge amount of work that needs to be done to overcome outdated stereotypes.”

In addition to removing drinks with offensive names, CAMRA has also chosen to hold collections to raise money for Stonewall, a charity that campaigns for the equality of LGBT+ people, during the five-day festival at London's Olympia.

Last year, Marks & Spencer was embroiled in a sexism row for selling a Pornstar Martini drink in a can.

Feminist campaigning group Object accused the retailer of “normalising porn” on Twitter.

Alongside a photograph of the drinks on store shelves, the organisation wrote: “Marks & Spencer normalising porn.

“And if you try to complain online, the system rejects the word 'porn'. Mixed messages huh?”

The tweet amassed more than 200 likes and was flooded with comments from people who agreed.

“Repulsive. We all need to complain to M&S,” one person wrote.

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Another added: “Do you seriously think a 'porn star' is something to which your customers should be aspiring, given that the vast majority of porn involves degrading, hurting and raping young women??”

In response to the comments on social media, an M&S Spokesperson told The Independent: “Porn Star Martini is a common and popular name for a passion fruit cocktail drink. We launched it back in September and it has already become one of our most popular cocktails."

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