Burger King Goes SJW In Fight Against Nonexistent “Pink Tax”
“we all pay the price when women are charged more. that’s why we dropped the price of chicken fries to $1.69 for everyone”
In a marketing stunt that has garnered a lot of attention, Burger King rolled out “Chick Fries” to demonstrate the unfairness of the “Pink Tax.” The problem? There is no “Pink Tax.”
The issue they are foregrounding is yet another of the seemingly endless stream of silly complaints the regressive left has taken up as a “the” most important socio-cultural inequity: the production and sale of products that are identical in every way other than that they are pink. The pink items, those marketed to women, purportedly cost more “42%” of the time . . . because sexism.
Reason notes that the “Pink Tax” fervor gained steam following a study by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) in which the DCA declared that it “affects almost every product marketed at American females, ‘from cradle to cane’.”
Here’s the Burger King ad:
One of the more laughable articles I found on this “Pink Tax” was from People; it’s too good not to share: “On average, women pay 42 percent more a year than men for essential products like tampons, pads and shampoo. Studies have found that female-branded products are priced higher than regular products.” Yep, we women are charged more for our tampons and pads then are men for theirs. Or something.
Hilarity aside, the regressive left has latched onto this latest SJW frivolity with some gusto; unfortunately, there is little merit to their argument.
Forbes reported in 2014:
. . . .[W]hy are the stores offering this different pricing? The obvious first answer is because they can. Everyone likes to be able to charge more rather than less. OK, but how do they know that they can charge more? Because they’ve tested this. Women will pay more for pink razors than men will for blue ones. Women will pay more for Excedrin Complete Menstrual than they will for Excedrin Extra Strength, exactly the same product except for the label. Entirely sensibly too, given that part of the effect that is being sought is the placebo effect of taking something you think will aid those menstrual pains.
People wouldn’t be able to charge different prices if the people doing the buying didn’t think they were not the same product. And given that the consumer is the only possible person to entrust with the defining of whether something is equal, the same, a perfect substitute, then the fact that they don’t tells us that price differences are entirely fine. If people thought they were the same product then price differentiation would not be possible.
Absolutely no legislative relief is necessary here. Everyone’s already got the choice and that they make the choices they do shows that they’re entirely happy with the choices they are making.
Or, to be obvious about it, the reason that a blue razor is not the same price as a pink razor is because a blue razor is not the same product as a pink razor. Nor is Excedrin Complete Menstrual the same as Excedrin Extra Strength.
While most products designed for and marketed to women are indeed different, there are still some things that at first glance seem to fall into the “women pay more” category. Examples of this can be seen more in services than in products: women do pay more for our dry cleaning (but we often have more delicate garments with more detail that needs careful ironing, starching, etc.), for our car repairs (I have tales I could tell on this one!), and for haircuts (we tend to have longer hair and/or require more detailed cuts. Washing, drying, and styling also add to our costs, but we can skip those if we so desired). Most of this, however, likely has little to do with ingrained sexism and more to do with production, sales/marketing, and good old-fashioned supply and demand.
Those of us who love a good sale know that the same exact product is discounted in certain colors and/or sizes. This is why I have a bright orange Dutch oven; I couldn’t see paying almost $50 more for a color that didn’t clash with my kitchen. Why was it cheaper? Did they think that I was a man because I had somehow accessed the men-only price point? Nope, they probably manufactured too many in this unpopular color, and it didn’t sell (it’s amazingly bright. And really really orange.). The only way to get rid of them was to significantly slash the price, and I was more than happy to benefit from this rational business decision.
Burger King’s virtue signalling new ad demonstrates how “woke” they are:
we all pay the price when women are charged more. that’s why we dropped the price of chicken fries to $1.69 for everyone. pic.twitter.com/0h3CtaxPaR
— Burger King (@BurgerKing) July 26, 2018
Twitter, however, is unimpressed.
oh sweet lawdy are you gonna regret this.
— Monster Energy Drone Pilot????????️? (@CountDankulaTV) July 27, 2018
If you did this for a real reason like breast cancer, I would spend more money. Those "women's products" cost more cause they have more stuff in them. Women want smooth sensitive products. Men just want what gets the job done at the cheapest price.
— …… (@VIPER_XXL) July 26, 2018
The pink tax is self imposed, you dweebs. Just buy the blue crap. Who freaking cares.
— Aubrey Bear (@NotReallyABear2) July 28, 2018
https://twitter.com/RcktRolfe/status/1022946631258390528
https://twitter.com/RcktRolfe/status/1022946631258390528
Don’t confuse the newest member of the frothing SGW self-righteous brigade with logic and reason.
https://twitter.com/Maxilatorn/status/1022953620344582144
https://twitter.com/DarkNookShop/status/1022957258836242438
And there’s the rub. Let’s allow, for argument’s sake, that there is merit to this “Pink Tax” nonsense. The regressive left is, in effect, arguing that women are too stupid to discern that the only difference between their pink product and that of men is that theirs is pink in color. This group of leftists has further determined that even a woman who knowingly pays more for a product in the color of her preference is somehow a victim. She’s not empowered and making her own decisions about how she spends her own money; the poor thing is deluded and needs to be shielded from herself.
The busybody left feels that its duty is to “protect” these feeble-minded women from their own ignorance and/or from making decisions based on their aesthetic preferences . . . with, get this, a proposed federal law to repeal a tax that is not a tax in the first place.
For the regressive left, protecting women from our own weakness, our ignorance, and/or our simple preference is a sign of progressive advancement “Forward!” and of inclusiveness, of equality and fairness, of leveling the playing field to the lowest common denominator. In this case, women, as an entire population, are the lowest common denominator. Assuming women are being ripped off is a problem; assuming that women who see the cost differential and pay it anyway need to be protected from themselves signals a catastrophic failure of today’s leftist feminism.
An argument that hinges on the unique inability of women to read a label and make our own purchasing decisions without busybody leftist groups and/or government intervention is incredibly and inherently demeaning, insulting, and yes, ultimately, sexist.
The regressive left’s goal, however, is not to abolish sexism; the radical left wants to undermine capitalism and the free market by gently “nudging” the public toward embracing economy-killing government-mandated price controls.
No thanks, Burger King. It’s Chick-fil-A for me.
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Comments
Somebody is willing to pay more. Why?
Because they like it better.
This proposed bill, if I understand it correctly, would go much farther than it sounds. If two flavors of the same product cost the same to produce, but one is more popular and so is priced higher, this would forbid it; they’d have to either sell the more popular flavor for less than people are willing to pay, which is stupid, or else stop selling the less popular flavor altogether. Which would you do? So if you’re one of those who prefers the less popular flavor, or one of those who’s willing to accept it in exchange for the discounted price, tough luck.
Let’s take it even further. Often the exact same product is available with a name brand, a supermarket house brand, and a “dollar store” brand. Many people are willing to pay more for the cachet of the name brand, or at least for not enduring the negative cachet of the “dollar store” brand. This would require them all to charge the lowest price, so either the name brand would have to stop making the product, or they’d pay the dollar stores to stop making their brand, at the expense of the poor people who shop there.
I fail to see any reason for a down-vote on this. When you are correct, you deserve recognition of it. You even qualified your statement of the potential implications of the proposed bill by stating “…if I understand it correctly…”.
When is Prostrate Cancer Awareness month again?
I’m part of a Rapier Club, we did a Pirate Skit for some local kids org. My female sparring partner remarked she wanted to give the girls a good female role model. I responded, the boys need good female role models too.
Feminism has given momentum to a pendulum that will swing back and destroy them, and maybe all the gains since the Suffrage Movement.
Men are tuning out. History says that won’t end well – a large population of jaded young men is one of the most lethal threats to Society.
Given that there’s no combative sport where women can even hope to hold their own against men, she’s chosen an odd hill to die on.
Some women do pay more than they have to. Take deodorant as an example, unit cost of men’s is lower than women’s. I pointed this out to my children, and the girls, who are now adults, buy men’s deodorant. The same is true for blue jeans and so much more. Why do so many women fall for this?
We don’t fall for it, JD, at least most of us don’t. I do like my jeans to fit my fabulicious curves, so boy jeans don’t work for me (though I did get them back in the day when I could still be measured by a waist and leg length :P). And I do like my deodorant not to stink up the place with the manly musky stench of much deodorant marketed to men. A guy can carry that off with no problem. Me? I like my deodorant stench-free, non-caking, and invisible (in both sight and scent; we wear perfume and don’t want that man deodorant messing with it). And yeah, I’ll pay a couple bucks more for it.
In other words, we do think about what we buy, and we do know that in some cases we are willing to spend more for a product that is . . . lovely and floral and pretty. Companies would be stupid to ignore this simple fact. One-size-fits-all is not for all, and if I want a razor that has a lovely aloe and lavender “cushion” that moisturizes and soothes, so what? I’m paying for it, not some leftist loon who thinks I should be shaving my legs with a (blue) hacksaw.
The reason that women pay for a product marketed to women than men do for a similar product is simply because they DO PAY MORE. Toiletries cost a manufacturer almost the the same to produce whether it has a scent which men find attractive or one which women find attractive. The difference usually is that men are 1) less likely to pay a premium price for the product and 2)men have a tendency to use the same product for years and years, without changing. Women, not so much.
Fashions are even worse. The cost to make your average cotton/polyester blouse is the same as that of a comparable men’s shirt. Yet, the woman’s blouse usually sells for 30-50% more. Manufacturers price them that way because women will pay the additional price point. There is an additional problem in the fact that women’s “fashions” change much more rapidly then men’s. An Arrow men’s dress shirt looks exactly the same today as it looked 50 years ago and the ubiquitous men’s t-shirt hasn’t changed since WWII.
If women pay more for what are basically the same products as men, that is largely their own fault.
All that being said, Chick Fries campaign is just an attempt to cash in on some feeling of victimization among women.
I don’t know any women who would be attracted by such a “victimization” angle, but I do know some men who might meekly go along because they think there’s some issue, or they want to “support women”, or something.
Artichoke, you are neglecting the obvious and oldest reason in the world.
Jawbreaker – I think that was covered under the “or something” category.
Regarding clothing, you provided the most likely answer (possibly without intention). Scale of production is a cost factor. If a manufacturer of shirts can produce 1 million shirts of the same pattern for fifteen years straight, the cost to the manufacturer in setup (cutting patterns, sewing speed through experience, etc.) is lessened vs. a shirt intended for women where next season the taste in shirts may be (and often is) different.
As you noted, production costs for many (though not all) toiletries is often similar. But similar is not exactly the same and saving 1 or 2/10ths of a cent on each item produced adds up when production is in the millions per annum. Not to mention there are products which have totally different production methods and, presumably, costs (e.g. antiperspirants stick vs. roll-on).
I do not want to use deodorant in flavors like “Swagger” or “Campfire.” A few cents to smell like a woman (if I can be so stereotypical) works for me.
Because I LOVE when Right Guard clashes with my Shalimar.
Forget it, I’ll buy the scentless, colorless women’s deodorant.
Unscented,no?
Thank you for the Shalimar reference, it stirred memories for me. Because it was my mother’s favorite perfume, I decided to look it up and I now know the probable reason for her preference. A history of the perfume notes it was a favorite in the 20s of the “flappers”, which my mother proudly proclaimed to have been (did I mention I’m no longer a youngster?). In the ’50s through early ’60s it was the one thing a cousin, my brother and I had to send home from PX purchase in Germany. Anyway, thanks for the memories.
I have been sitting here laughing to myself just imagining the Carl’s Jr take on this. They are so good, CJ doesn’t even have to put them on the tube. people google them.
“And they charge more for drinks!” The stupid, it burns
I seem to remember a few bars around military bases that used to advertise half-price or even free drinks for women for the simple and obvious reason that the more women there were, the more guys would show up.
Ahh! Oceanside in 1968.
Not just around military bases, lesser cost for females was a fairly common practice at least one or two nights each week, though I think “Women’s Lib” did great damage to that particular benefit.
The HILARIOUS feature of this ad is that, since the photo stylist unfortunately placed the pink box of fries further from the camera than the regular box, the pink box appears about 16% SMALLER than the regular box. Which means, of course, that since they both sell at the same $1.69 price, the pink fries are STILL 16% more expensive than the regular fries!
Great messaging, geniuses!
That’s funny! Because when I first looked at that picture, I wondered why the regular box was bigger, but I didn’t waste much time thinking about it.
My guess as to why they did this is that marketing was trying to figure out how to get attention for the new product, and somebody came up with the idea of “Chick Fries!”. But then somebody else shot it down with “oh that’sexist, everyone will criticize it, we can’t do that”. But they liked it so much that they decided “hey lets saddle it with this big SJW storyline about how we’re not sexist and then we can go with the sexist ad campaign!”
If you know marketing people, you know that’s how they think. And yeah, as somebody said, I think it’s too clever by half.
Never fails to amuse me when I see “Investing for Women” courses offered at the local community college or by financial gurus hustling for business.
#Choice.
That said, for every man that has ever overpaid, your rights do not matter.
For every baby that has paid the ultimate price, your life does not matter.
#SocialProgress
This makes a good corollary to the Bloomberg Rule.
If you’re fast food restaurant is virtue signaling about feminism or climate change, expect shitty food.
I’m trying to imagine their senior staff meeting-
“We could spend the money on upgrades to make a better deal, or we could mewl about how woke we are for 1/10 the cost”
Not a good sign.
Nothing is going to compensate for lousy food. There are a Wendy’s, a MacDonald’s, a Burger King and a Whataburger within a half mile radius near me. The Whataburger almost always has a few cars in line waiting for food. The rest have an occasional car at the window when I drive by.
Now you have gone and done it! Now I’m gong to think about #4 cheeseburgers all night.
“If your fast food restaurant is virtue signaling about feminism or climate change, expect shitty food”
This doesn’t look like virtue signaling to me. It looks like a deliberate parody of virtue signaling.
Well then, that was another mistake of BK’s marketing department, because we passed the Poe’s Law point of no return several years ago.
Nobody can be counted on to know if this is real or a parody.
Remember, this is the same outfit that thought it was a good idea to depict a guy in a mask and a creepy costume hiding in your bedroom at night.
Arminius’ corollary:
“If your mayor and city council have voted to become sanctuary cities for illegals and have passed resolutions regarding their policies on nuclear weapons, global warming, income inequality, and world peace, expect potholed roads, homeless people defecating on the sidewalks, used heroin needles littering the public sphere, erratic to non-existent trash removal, no basic police services, and the snow will melt before they figure out how to put plows on the road.
And when the snow melts in the spring you’ll find bodies on the bus stop benches because the freakin’ bus never showed up.
But hey! At least you know your mayor and councilwoman is all over the abolishing ICE dealio!”
It’s an emotional hook for corporate, political, and activist profits, which targets the 50% of women who identify as feminist and the male feminists who prey on them.
The article fails to mention the pink razor is usually cheaper than the blue. Which is why our home has them.
Just bought a pink Furminator to groom my female cat. It was cheaper than the blue one.
And what did your, ahem, pussy cat think?
I couldn’t see paying almost $50 more for a color that didn’t clash with my kitchen.
I do it the American Guy way—get whatever color’s on sale, and if the looks annoy me, put dimmer light bulbs in the kitchen. So I get the inexpensive appliance and save money on electricity—win-win!
Hee! Love it! 🙂
i’ve never particularly liked Booger King… they didn’t have to go out of their way to make sure i never eat there.
but they did. 😎
get woke, go broke.
Damn, another SJW place where I won’t eat anymore. I’ve just about made the decision to buy a burr grinder and grind my own danged coffee beans rather than continue to buy Starbucks Italian Roast. I’ll have to sort out the dark roasts on Amazon–and wean my wife from her Starbucks Italian Roast habit. But goodbye Burger King. That’s easy to do—just don’t go there anymore.
Get your coffee from Black Rifle Coffee Company and not from Bezos. https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ It really is great coffee.
That’s it! I’m done. When they start politicizing “fries,” it’s time for me to throw in the towel. I’d like to go up into the mountains and let society work this out. Wake me when it’s over.
Meanwhile in Canada the SJWs are losing their s*** over a guy who identified as woman so he could knock $1100 off what would have been his $4500 car insurance bill.
The people writing the rules don’t want to live under the rules they wrote. They are livid. How dare this man (misgendering is a crime in Canuckistan, except this time apparently) take what is so sacred as gender identity (so sacred they reduced it to a whim) and change his/her gender to save a buck (the people who wrote the rules who are now b****ing about the rules they wrote said their could be no second guessing). The NERVE of that guy, say the the authoritarian statists, using our rules as designed.
I’m surprised Canada allows differential auto insurance pricing. Maybe I shouldn’t, it benefits women and not men, so it meets progressive approval. Lauren Southern’s car insurance must be extra-expensive then.
It gets even worse. The transphobic auto insurance companies only collect data on the non-existent gender binary of male and female, which we have all learned is merely an artificial social construct.
Suppose you identify as third-sex, two-spirit, gender queer, or femme person of transgender experience. How are the bigots even supposed to know what to charge you when male and female are only two choices among dozens if not hundreds of fantabulous choices in a rapidly expanding universe of available and even yet to be discovered genders? And perhaps even parallel universes of genders. The possibilities here are endless given that there are approximately 8 billion people on this planet and each one can choose a different gender each day for the rest of their lives.
And don’t even get me started on the small-minded, unimaginative misgendering, hate-mongering soulless ghouls who design and use the cramped, outdated actuarial tables based on the thoroughly debunked gender binary at life and health insurance companies.
They need to get with the 21st century gender program or else. Misgendering is no longer a microaggression. It’s a serious human rights violation that has been outlawed in all forward looking, diverse and inclusive progressive communities. In fact, so diverse and inclusive there simply isn’t any room for these reactionary intolerant phobes and ists.
The serious hate crime of misgendering carries potential jail time for repeat offenders in Canada. In NYC businesses can be fined up to $250,000 for each instance of misgendereing.
Which is why I’m switching to NYC-based insurance companies and I’m going to file complaints with the NYC Commission on Human Rights each time I get an email, letter, or any form of communication from them because every single time they’ll be wrong. My internal, deeply held sense of my own gender doesn’t just change day-to-day it changes hour-to-hour. Heck, sometimes my internal, deeply held sense of my own gender changes several times an hour as the New York PRIDE activists keep adding to the Commission on Human Rights’ list.
These companies are each going to pay millions in fines the the great city of New York which has clearly solved all its other problems.
Or, each company can get off the hook by making a one time settlement with me for a measly $1 million bucks which is a bargain compared to all the potential fines they can avoid.
I think they’ll settle.
Worse yet, what if they were to discover that persons with gender dysphoria disorders are also encumbered with other social anxiety issues that lead to greater loss risk profiles that need to be otherwise actuarially (financially) accounted for?
It would have been fine if the person were a biological female getting some advantage by gendering as a male. (I don’t use 3rd person singular at all so I don’t get confused and accidentally get in big trouble — or else create a misleading impression by calling someone with XX chromosomes “male”, someone with XY “female”.)
So they are arguing that women can’t read a label at the same time they are demanding so much information be put into labels that they can’t be read…
The Burger Kings around me never have many cars. Not sure how they stay in business.
One BK is right next to MickeyD’s, MD’s has lines of cars snaking around the building in the morning, BK might have three cars in the drive thru. How bad do you have to be that you’d rather wait in MD’s drive thru for an extra five or ten minutes rather than zipping through BK?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the BK parking lot have more than ten cars during lunch or dinner times.
I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, gents, you engage in the hook-up cult at your own risk. On the other hand, ladies, if you’re a girl over 18 then it’s your own d@mned fault.
Fat women, rejoice!
(Hear that, mooooochelle?)
Watch for Burger King’s stock to crash.
You shouldn’t talk down fat women. Who give us so much to hold onto.
I want to thank whoever gave me the thumbs down as it gives me the excuse to talk up big, beautiful women.
http://time.com/3697015/sports-illustrated-swimsuit-edition-plus-size-model-robyn-lawley/
Click on the link. Robyn Lawley is a “plus size model?” In my book she’s practically anorexic. I want to cook for her. My Italian grandmothers’ contribution to the gene pool kicks in. “Youah so skeeny. I make you a nice Cioppino. Eat. Mangia, mangia!”
When I say big and beautiful I don’t mean the morbidly obese. The kind of woman you DO NOT want to see in anything approaching nudity in public. Morbidly obese. Body parts that God never intended to meet slamming together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y69tkCbeC5o
“The Legend of Trigglypuff”
Yeah, that’s not it.
I mean a woman who hasn’t entirely let herself go, but has some meat on her bones and I can take to a restaurant or cook for knowing she’s going to enjoy eating as much as I will. And won’t bring up the word “dieting” once.
Now I’m really going to poke the hornets’ nest.
According to the article, “plus size” model Robyn Lawley is a size twelve. The average American woman is a size 14.
I not only like a woman who knows she’s smoking hot at size 18 but (shocka) knows she looks really good without make-up.
Now go insane, thumbs downers.
This is a real shame for me because I used to enjoy Burger King much more than their competitors. Now, they’re dead to me.
My dear sweet wife gets up at 5:30 every morning and fresh grinds 8o’clock coffee for me. There is nothing better.
To me Starbucks tastes like its filtered through a used sweatsock.
That was supposed to be a reply to Comanche Voter. Stupid interwebz. MUST BE LOGGED IN TO REPLY……LOGIN…ENTER USERNAME AND PASSWORD…. PASSWORD NOT FOUND….CHANGE PASSWORD….reads email… ENTER NEW PASSWORD…. “Pa$$word1” PASSWORD IS ALREADY IN USE….sonofabitch.
“For the regressive left, protecting women from our own weakness, our ignorance, and/or our simple preference is a sign of progressive advancement “Forward!” and of inclusiveness, of equality and fairness, of leveling the playing field to the lowest common denominator.”
This reminds me of Obamalamadingdong’s “Julia” campaign.
Successful marketing, when drug dealers take your product in exchange. Or how Tide became the unit of drug currency.
http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/index1.html
Procter & Gamble spends heavily on research and development to continually refine the sensory by-products of doing the laundry with its leading detergent. Tide’s original scent was “citruslike,” in the words of Sundar Raman, the marketing director of Procter & Gamble’s North American fabric-care division, but has evolved into a “citrus, floral, and fruity experience” with hints of lemon, orange, roses, lily, and apple. When combined in a complex perfume, these notes help cover up the odors of the cleaning agents that would otherwise waft out during the wash cycle. But P&G also chose each scent to do a specific job. The smell of citrus, for instance, has been shown to correlate strongly with perceptions of cleanliness. “That natural, fresh-and-clean smell is stimulating and creates an instantaneous mood of being happy,” says Craig Warren, a former researcher for the firm International Flavors & Fragrances who, until the late nineties, did work with P&G. Floral scents, for their part, have been known to evoke strong feelings of maternal love and kinship. (Home visits by Saatchi researchers have found that very ardent Tide fans sometimes carry bottles as if cradling a baby.) The goal of all these efforts is to turn clothes-washing into more than a to-do; it’s being a good parent, a good person. It’s a message that may also explain why among some lower-income shoppers, according a 2012 newsletter by branding agency Daymon Worldwide, “being able to afford Tide laundry detergent is seen as a sign of success.”
The manipulation is strong with this one.
I guess a lot of people here might not be familiar with the seminal works of Mr. Bill Hicks. WARNING: You will never be able to look at a commercial the same way again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo2IoF9iktU
I suppose it would be both sexist and racist to point out that since white women on average live longer than black men yet pay the same FICA taxes, therefore Social Security is a means whereby the earnings of black men are transferred to white women?
For that matter, those few companies that still offer defined-benefit pensions use the same formulas to calculate benefits for both sexes, even though that means the present value calculation presents men with pensions that are worth less.
And when it comes to private or government pensions, it’s not as if beneficiaries can just “read the label” before buying to fix things.
The feminist-activist formula seems to be that if men appear to be advantaged at any time for any reason then that is an Outrage!, whereas where women are advantaged, well, that’s not their problem to fix, is it? And then they’re further outraged when someone points out that this sort of activism is better characterized as “it’s never enough: you owe us plenty, we owe you less than nothing!” than as a quest for equality.
So is the menstrual Excedrin really exactly the same as the extra-strength Excedrin. The article left me confused about that.
The ad implies female innumeracy or maybe it’s more general cashier stupidity. The female counter person says “they’re 2.39 extra” when actually the price difference is $1.40. Back in the day, counter people were supposed to have some sense of amounts of money, which some of the better ones achieved by mastering simple arithmetic — not just bigger / smaller.