By Sharanya Gopinathan
A Hyderabad cafe has earned itself a place in our list of establishments that thinks it’s okay to literally objectify women to sell their products.
Ohri’s, which claims that its offerings make the city “hot and happening“, has decided to dedicate an entire section of their menu to “item bombs”: milkshakes named after female actors and celebrities, accompanied by unrelated words like “crunch”, “dazzle” and “hot”. According to The News Minute, it offers drinks like Kardashian Twist, Katrina’s Mango (sorry?), Shakira Crunch and Jacqueline Dazzle.
Amazingly, when the management was asked by customers about the sexism encoded in the names of their milkshakes, they responded, with no discernible trace of irony, by saying “These are just names of our popular milkshakes. We celebrate womanhood and any resemblance to a person is purely coincidental.” Because names like Kardashian and Shakira just offer themselves up casually to milkshakes with no reference to actual women in the real world, surely, and there’s no better celebration of womanhood than objectification.
Ohri’s isn’t the first establishment to try something like this: our examination of a series of Indian advertisements reveals that lots of companies need to fall back on gross sexism and sexualisation to sell their goods. I don’t know about you, but it definitely makes me wonder how awful their products are if they can’t find any other way they can sell them.
The Deccan Chronicle said that “in their defence”, these names are only listed in Ohri’s HiTec City outlet, which attracts a youthful clientele, except that that doesn’t really excuse anything. In fact, it’s pretty disappointing if young people in India need a big dose of sexism and objectification with their milkshakes, and that business owners have picked up on this. We know it seems like there’s a Kelis pun to be made here, but seriously, it’s 2017 and sexist milkshakes shouldn’t be bringing anyone to your yard.