Girls Do Not Have Cooties

Diet Coke is for women. Coke Zero is for men. At least, that’s Coca Cola’s strategy. Released in the 1980’s, Diet Coke was Coca Cola’s sugar-free, low calorie alternative to its original drink. It’s marketed (in the US) as a diet drink, packaged in a standout white and silver can. However, since it’s release, Diet Coke consumers have largely been female. In 2005, Coca Cola sought to change this male avoidance of their diet soda. They released Coke Zero, a low-calorie version claiming to mimic the taste of original Coke. It’s packaged in a black can, often featuring sports or other manly icons. Though the two drinks differ by 0.3 calories and an additional artificial sweetener in one, Coke Zero was much more popular among men.

This Diet Coke/Coke Zero gender disparity was fundamentally influenced by gender portrayals in marketing. Men were opposed to Diet Coke because it was perceived to be feminine. The word “diet” and the more female-targeting promotional strategies and advertisement made it seem as if Diet Coke was created for women. Men refused to be seen drinking it. According to Jill J. Avery, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and former brand manager for Gillete, Braun, Samuel Adams, and AT&T: Coca Cola realized that despite the functionality of men drinking low-calorie or diet sodas, they “couldn’t bridge the gap image-wise without a new brand and product just for them.” By doing this, Coca Cola was giving men a drink of their own, untainted by female affiliation and feminization, thus avoiding gender contamination.

Gender contamination is a term used in marketing that describes “when one gender is using a brand as a symbol of their masculinity or femininity, and the incursion of the other gender into the brand threatens that.” Although its main usage now lies in branding and public relations, gender contamination is part of a much larger picture. It is a leftover remnant of ancient history and culture that continues to affect our contemporary society.

For a long time, gender contamination has been feared; in particular, men have feared it much more so than women. The source of these long-established fears have been reflected in the beliefs of several ancient cultures. In some, they believed that men could only touch certain magical totems or talismans; they believed that if a woman touched these objects, they would lose their powers. In others, they believed that female speech and female gaze were forms of gender contamination. According to their beliefs, these areas were inherently polluting and were as dangerous and disruptive to men as death. In such societies where men are the focus, it becomes much less socially acceptable for men to show feminine traits than it is for women to show masculine traits. Across many patriarchal, androcentric cultures, there has been a historic fear of gender contamination, especially by men.

However, despite these deeply rooted fears and hesitations, history has shown that female incursion is not always a negative. Throughout our pasts, women have broken down barriers and infiltrated domains previously untouchable. They’ve forever changed the way things were done and left their impact on society. For example, take the women of the US during the World War II era. America entered the war almost overnight and suddenly found a quickly increasing need for supplies and machinery with very short notice and little time to produce it. At first, many companies underestimated the labor shortage and women were left out of the workplace. Facilities were expanded, production was heavily increasing, and several companies were signing large, lucrative contracts with the government during wartime. Eventually women were hired to take the place of the men who were leaving factories and industrial plants to go to war. Without the admittance of women into the workplace, something previously regarded as primarily male, the war efforts would have been severely harmed; at-home support and wartime production would have been dramatically lower than they were with the help of the women. This opened the door for all women, not just minority and lower-class women, to continue working outside of the home. In this case, not only did female incursion help the situation at the time, it paved the way for social change in the future.

In the end, if women stick to Diet Coke and men commit completely to Coke Zero, there is still something to be said about gender contamination. Even if your drink of choice can’t change the world, there are so many possibilities that can arise from letting the opposite gender into a new domain. Despite the time and space that these fears span across, girls do not have cooties and giving females opportunity and a little bit of faith can forever revolutionize the way we function as a society.

Sources:

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7149.html

http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2009/2009-7.pdf

trey-sullivan.com/images/CocaCola.docx

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Diet_Coke.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/diet-coke-vs-coca-cola-zero_n_1199008.html

http://www.ajc.com/news/business/coke-zero-becomes-a-hero-for-coca-cola-co/nQkHh/

https://www.inkling.com/read/marketing-dhruv-grewal-michael-levy-3rd/chapter-8/coca-cola

http://www.nps.gov/pwro/collection/website/rosie.htm