Hey, Lady Dorito!

I’m actually a big fan of the salty, crunchy, crispy food group.

Mostly, if I have something in that category around, it’s Food Should Taste Good Multigrain Tortilla Chips. (As brand names go, this is admittedly a weird one. Isn’t food tasting good something of a given?Having asked myself this question, I do have to then think of the creamed corn of my childhood and realize, well, there actually are some folks who think that food should taste like vomit, so maybe naming your brand Food Should Taste Good is on point.)

For potato chips, I’m a Cape Cod girl, but I will say that for the last two Christmas Eves, my cousin MB has brought a way-back treat: Ruffles (those ridges!) with sour cream and dried onion soup mix dip. I won’t say that they outsell the shrimp, but this appetizer disappears before some of the more upscale and Trader Joe-ish alternatives.

Once in a while, I’ll go for Fritos, mostly because nothing tastes like a Frito other than a Frito, and I like to place a chip on the tip of my pinky. Just because.

I like Cheetos (preferring the puffs to the latter-day crunchy version), even though you end up licking some strange orange guck off of your fingers, and with a scrim of that guck on your teeth.

There are a few salty-crunchy-crispy snacks I don’t like.

One is Pringles, which I find oddly bland and blandly odd.

Although I tolerate an occasional sour-cream-and-onion flavored chip, if I accidentally happen upon one, I tend to avoid flavored chips.

And I don’t especially like Doritos, which to me overdo it on the chemical front. (How I can justify Cheetos is anyone’s guess.)

Nonetheless, I’ve watched the Dorito (Dorita?) hoo-hah with some interest.

It all began when Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi, on a Frekonomics podcast, indicated that Pepsi was considering the ladies:

“As you watch a lot of the young guys eat the chips, they love their Doritos, and they lick their fingers with great glee, and when they reach the bottom of the bag, they pour the little broken pieces into their mouth because they don’t want to lose that taste of the flavor. … Women would love to do the same, but they don’t. They don’t like to crunch too loudly in public,” she said. The company’s future chip for women will be “low-crunch, the full taste profile, not have so much of the flavor stick on the fingers, and how can you put it in a purse? Because women love to carry a snack in their purse.” (Source: Washington Post)

While I can avoid the need by living and walking in a city where I’m never more than a few minutes from a snack-filled CVS, I’ll give you that women love to carry snacks in their purse – who doesn’t? – but women “don’t like to crunch too loudly in public”?

Where have I been all these years? I hadn’t realized that this was yet another of those unspoken ladylike rules. I must not have been listening the day that was taught. Or maybe I’m just a natural crunch hold-backer who understands intuitively that she mustn’t crunch.

Nah! The only way to avoid crunching a chip is to hold it in your mouth until a well of spit turns it soggy, and then swallow it. Well, that’s no fun!

Anyway, I’m always interested when a consumer product that seems perfectly unisex ends up with gendered versions.

There are very few products that I can think of that are naturally M or F. Viagra, Tampax…

And, yes, clothing. Unisex clothing, as far as I can tell, is built for the male form. If you have hips or breasts, you’ll be going up a size and end up looking like the saggy baggy elephant.

I’ve fallen into the “it’s for girls” trap on occasion. I buy the girly-girl shaving cream. And I’ve got a girly-girl razor. But I also use the razor and blades bequeathed to me by my late husband and, come to find out, they work just fine on leg hair.

But do women need our very own version of Doritos?

I won’t say that this is the very worst sexist product idea – I mean, it’s really hard to top the talking Barbie which uttered the immortal phrase “Math class is tough!” – but if a gal wants to eat Doritos, isn’t part of Dorito-ing the noise-making and finger-lickin’ goodness of the whole thing? (I’ll take a pass on going after the crumbs. A chip shard is one thing. Definitely worth pursuing. But the crumbs at the bottom of any snack bag are crumby and IMHO not worth the effort. I suspect there are plenty of guys who feel the same way.)

Anyway, after the Indra Nooyi podcast comment was picked up by one news outlet, written up as there was definitely a version of Doritos for women coming out (as opposed to Pepsi’s considering different packaging that might appeal more to women, which is what Nooyi actually said), Lady Doritos became a thing. Things, as we know, go viral. And the Internet went predictably wild. After all, what’s the Internet for if not to ridicule dumb stuff?

Some of the tweets were excellent of course. Here’s Julia Beard’s:

WE DO NOT WANT: #LadyDoritos
Lady Laxatives
Lady Power Tools
Lady Shavers
Little Lady Lego
Lady Wages
WE DO WANT:
Lady Prime Minister
Lady Leaders
Lady Pope

Marie Connor wrote:

Women: We want equal pay for equal work and an end to sex discrimination in the workplace. Society: Here’s a bag of Lady Doritos so you won’t have to crunch too loudly in front of your male colleagues.

The capper came from a woman named Geraldine:

What if Lady Doritos are just regular Doritos but when a woman buys a bag she only gets 77% of the chips a guy would.#LadyDoritos

Pepsi wasn’t happy with all the fun-making:

Soon, PepsiCo was insisting it was all a misunderstanding. “The reporting on a specific Doritos product for female consumers is inaccurate,” the company said in a statement released on Monday night. “We already have Doritos for women — they’re called Doritos, and they’re enjoyed by millions of people every day. At the same time, we know needs and preferences continue to evolve, and we’re always looking for new ways to engage and delight our consumers.” (Source: NY Times)

Me? Whether they change the recipe for Doritos or not, I don’t imagine that I’ll convert to Doritos. If I’m in pursuit of orange and chemicals on my fingertips, give me a Cheetos puff any old day. And whether it’s a Dorito, Cheeto, or upscale coastal elite Food Should Taste Good Multigrain Tortilla Chip, putting a snack in a pink package isn’t going to make me want to buy it. Then again, I’m an old geezer, not the sort of consumer that Pepsi wants to engage with and delight.