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In Buying In: What We Buy and Who We Are, Rob Walker discusses the “mysterious return of PBR.”

When I was an undergrad in Oklahoma in the late ’90s, PBR had very distinct connotations: it was a crappy, cheap beer you only drank if you didn’t have the money to buy better beer.  I know this in large part because I had a number of friends who weren’t in college and lived on low incomes for various reasons, including some who were in bands and kept crappy day jobs just until they got their big record deal. [Just FYI: a punk-influenced song about Schrodinger's cat can be quite catchy and informative, but it may not be the key to fame and fortune.]

I digress. The point is, they often drank PBR because it was cheap. As far as I could tell, they didn’t do so out of a sense that PBR was good or cool, but because they could buy larger quantities of it than other beer (I was never a beer drinker, so I wasn’t directly engaged in the decision-making process about which brand to buy). It was the beer version of ramen noodles: not necessarily exciting, but it’ll suffice if it’s all you can buy. And at various times I would overhear other people make nasty comments about PBR. It, and its drinkers, were, to put it bluntly, considered trashy by a lot of people.

But as Walker describes, PBR has become hip in a lot of places. Walker describes its resurgence since about 2002, when sales, which had dropped precipitously over the last twenty years, suddenly rose 5%. Portland, OR, seems to be the epicenter of the rediscovery of PBR, though it soon spread to other cities, with trendy bars adding it to their menu.

PBR, surprised by this, set about finding out what was going on. They eventually decided that PBR had become a “protest brand,” the non-hyped underdog beer that hipsters chose because it was non-mainstream and wasn’t constantly pushed at them by a PR machine. As a result, PBR rejected a lot of standard marketing tactics (though they did pay to have the beer placed in the 2009 movie Whip It, among others). Instead, they chose to focus on sponsoring events that the new customer base attended or participated in, but in a relatively quiet, non-intrusive way. Here’s a post for an event PBR is sponsoring this Saturday in Atlanta:

Part of PBR’s image, and attraction to people who consider themselves outsiders, is it’s association with what Walker calls a “blue-collar, honest-workingman, vaguely anticapitalist image” (p. 113). It’s old-school, blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth beer from the days of Milwaukee’s manufacturing and beer-producing glory. When you buy PBR, it lists a P.O. Box in Milwaukee, and the website lists Milwaukee at the bottom of the page.

Except…not so much. PBR is no longer headquartered in Milwaukee. In 1985 PBR was purchased by a man who was buying up a lot of low-market-share beer companies. He moved the headquarters to San Antonio (in May of this year he announced he sold PBR to another company; the headquarters are now in a suburb of Chicago). The move put about 250 people in Milwaukee out of work, including a lot of the blue-collar workers the beer is associated with.

On top of that, PBR doesn’t actually make beer anymore. Miller brews beer for the company, which then packages it in PBR cans. PBR is no longer a producer of beer; it’s a name and logo attached to beer made by a company many of the people drinking PBR would probably dislike.

On the one hand, PBR is a case that shows how consumers make decisions and can affect the marketplace independent of advertising campaigns; PBR certainly wasn’t spending a lot of money trying to woo this new demographic and didn’t initially know quite what to make of it. A group of consumers identified with PBR. That is, they saw the company as like them. They dislike in-your-face marketing, the feeling that companies are trying to manipulate them. They’re outsiders who see themselves as dissenters from a lot of mainstream culture. And PBR fits well with this identity; it’s the underdog, old-school beer company that isn’t actively trying to win over consumers. No TV commercials, no PBR babes in bikinis giving away free samples at bars. And it has working-class cachet.

But much of this is symbolic. Buying PBR makes money for Miller, a company that uses the loud marketing techniques hipsters express disdain for. At this point, you could argue that PBR is simply a beer fashion label. And while it might have associations with the working-class, the process of outsourcing its beer to Miller and moving headquarters to a different state left quite a few members of that class out of work. Walker argues that this indicates a new form of solidarity with blue-collar workers. It isn’t about making sure you’re buying from companies that pay a living wage or fighting for better working conditions. Symbolic solidarity — paying a nod to the working class by buying products (beer, clothing, etc.) — is often seen as sufficient. By drinking PBR you’re identifying with blue-collar workers in spirit, if not in any specific, concrete way.

PBR capitalizes on the perceptions of the brand while engaging in or working companies who engage in many of the practices that those who repopularized it were rejecting when they switched to PBR in the first place.

And, just to add one more twist to the story…in China, PBR sells a specialty beer called Blue Ribbon 1844:

How much does the beer sold by the cheap, working-class company cost in China? Why, $44 a bottle. A PBR executive who oversees the Asian market explains, “There’s the nouveau riche, and in China, perception is everything—look at me, I’m rich.” Not exactly the bike-messenger hipster crowd.

So there you go…the long, bizarre, contradictory story of PBR.

UPDATE: I got an email from an employee of PBR, who says this in defense of the brand:

I just want clear up a huge misunderstanding…We actually are independent American Company, not owned by Miller Brewing. Pabst itself contracts out all its production to other breweries, and has become, in effect, a “virtual brewery.” This keeps our beer fresh and saves us the cost of shipping large distances. It saves the earth, and helps us keep cost low. Many brand do this, also a few micro brands, you be surprised. We are 100% American Company. We also have NOTHING to do with the China Brand. They are a totally separate company just to let  you know.

I thought it was only fair to share his viewpoint. However, I don’t know that there’s really a misunderstanding there. I know PBR isn’t owned by Miller, but rather that the company outsources production of their beer, and I *think* my discussion made that distinction. I apologize if anyone was confused by that. As for my assertion that buying PBR makes money for Miller, it’s not because Miller directly owns them, but because they get money for the outsourcing, which common sense indicates they profit from or they wouldn’t keep doing it.

I’m more skeptical about the claim that PBR has nothing to do with the China beer. The Chinese website for the beer has the regular PBR logo prominently displayed on both the site itself and the poster for the beer:

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Crystal and Corina C. sent in this image of an ad for Snack Factory Pretzel Crisps that recently appeared around NYC (from The Gothamist):

The ads led to some local resistance among those who felt the tagline, while meant to refer to the size of the pretzels, also links to ideas about body size. Here’s a video of a man making some modifications to one of the ads (from Salon):

According to NYC the Blog,

Responding to the criticisms via Twitter, Pretzel Crisps insisted they are just “using the word ‘thin’ in a creative way to describe our product,” and people are “interpreting [the ads] in their own way.”

Later they made another statement:

We hope people noticed what isn’t in the ads: No extra thin, scantily clad female models; No mention of dieting programs, points, etc… Our website and facebook page are all about EATING. We talk about pairing our product in different ways for appetizers. We want people to eat.

Finally, Pretzel Crisps announced they’re taking down the ads.

What struck me was the importance of social media in this whole process. Sites such as NYC the Blog publicized the resistance, magnifying its effect (would the company have even known about the guy pasting images to their ad if he hadn’t gotten NYC the Blog to post his video of it?); Pretzel Thins responded via Twitter; and the ongoing publicity of the criticisms as well as complaints to the company (which are a lot easier to make as a response to a tweet than if you have to look up contact info and get in touch individually) eventually led the company to end the ad campaign.

For a different example of resistance, see Lisa’s recent post on an astroturf protest campaign.

UPDATE: Well. As commenter Rebecca pointed out, they replaced those ads with new ones that indicate they may not have quite gotten the point of the criticisms (via Jezebel):

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Stacey Burns wrote in to tell us about her successful effort to fight an ad campaign that objectified women and trivialized sex work.  She explains:

USI Wireless, an Internet provider that has a ten-year contract to provide wireless to the city of Minneapolis, recently launched a new ad campaign promoting its service. The ad features the image of a young woman who we are clearly meant to read as a sex worker, accompanied by the text “FAST, CHEAP, and SATISFACTION GUARANTEED.”

A photo of the billboard was placed on Facebook, which she saw on a friend’s page, and then re-posted with a critique.  She contacted the company, whose representatives were “polite but dismissive, telling [her] that they test-marketed the ad and it did well in focus groups.”  The photo of the billboard went viral and she took it to the City Council, who “responded to public outcry and succeeded in getting the ad pulled from the 12 locations it was posted” (story here).

Burns’ story is a nice example of how collective action, facilitated by the internet, can make a difference.

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For more examples of this kind of resistance, read about fights against the Obama sock monkey, a Target ad, Mr. Wasabi, Frito Bandito, Motrin’s idea of motherhood, and the rebellyon.

For similar stories

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The role of women as both fans of and participants in organized sports has varied greatly in the U.S., as Karlene Ferrante demonstrates in her article* about gender and baseball. In the Victorian Era, a number of women’s baseball teams existed, and some women even played on men’s teams. For instance, Jackie Mitchell joined the Chattanooga Lookouts, a men’s team, when she was 17. In an exhibition game against the Yankees, she struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig…which people then attributed to them being nice and striking out on purpose. Discomfort with women in baseball increased over time, and eventually softball was created to provide an alternative perceived as being less strenuous and fast-paced.

In baseball and other sports, a taboo against women emerged. Many sports were seen as too rough to be appropriate for women to watch, but players and fans also worried that women presented a threat to male players, who might be distracted by the presence of women and thus not focus exclusively on the game (for a more recent example, see our post about Jessica Simpson and Tony Romo). Many believed that sex sapped a player’s strength, and many players avoided sex for several days before a game. Ferrante writes,

…in the early days of baseball women were allowed to watch games only if they were escorted. Unescorted women, and sometimes even escorted women, were harassed by cursing, spitting [fans]. (p. 249-250)

I thought of this when I saw the article Larry Harnisch (of The Daily Mirror) sent me from the L.A. Times, published on April 17, 1910. The story is about Maud Effinger, a woman who dressed in her husband’s clothing so she could attend a prizefight, which women were barred from attending (she writes about having to slip past police at the entrance):

The story, written by Maud herself, who seems rather saucy (sorry the last image is so small):

I don’t know why, exactly, women weren’t allowed into boxing matches. I suspect it might have been a combination of a belief that it was too rough for women’s delicate sensibilities, that scantily-clad men were inappropriate for them to see, and the taboo against women and their distracting ways. But the fact that she had to go incognito, slip past police, and sit in an area where she wouldn’t attract much attention indicates that the ban on women was taken quite seriously.

* Karlene Ferrante. 1994. “Baseball and the Social Construction of Gender.” Women, Media and Sport: Challenging Gender Values.

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Gender Across Borders is planning a series about the use of music as a means of survival to run May 9 and 10. Music can be used to entertain and to explain. It can be used to foment revolution and to inspire social change. But it can also be used as a means of survival. In [...]

Mary, writer of the fabulous blog Cooking with the Junior League, sent in an episode of the PBS series Faces of America. The episode, titled “Becoming American,” looks at the immigrant origins of various celebrities (Meryl Streep, Stephen Colbert) in the period of massive immigration to the U.S. from about 1820 until 1924.

The segment Mary found interesting is about the grandfather of Queen Noor. An immigrant from Syria, he became a naturalized citizen, which Mary says “was unusual because at the time, only ‘white’ and ‘black’ people could be naturalized…but during this time, Syrians started taking their cases to court to prove that they were white, and could, as a result, become naturalized citizens.” It’s a great example of the social construction of race and the way groups have actively resisted the ways they were categorized.

The segment on Queen Noor’s grandfather starts at 36:23.

Also see our post on suing for whiteness.

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Ada A., Katrin, Filip S., and Missives from Marx all let us know about PinkStinks, a campaign in the UK that “challenges the culture of pink which invades every aspect of girls’ lives”:

The aim is a worthy one: the webpage discusses concerns about girls’ body image, self esteem issues, the sexualization of young women, and so on.

They link to this video, which I thought was neat:

While I totally get the idea and support the effort to provide girls with a wider set of images of what they can aspire to do or be like, the “pink stinks” name, and some of the t-shirts on the site, give me a some pause:

If you read different parts of the site, it’s clear that pink is a stand-in for the socialization of girls into a particular type of femininity, and the campaign is attempting to combat the narrowing of girls’ aspirations and role models. But it brings up an issue I face whenever I’m trying to pick out clothes for my 3-year-old niece: how do you reject the trappings of that socially-approved version of femininity without devaluing femininity, girls, and women themselves? All things equal, I’ll usually pick a green t-shirt instead of a pink t-shirt for my niece because I feel like giving her a pink t-shirt signals to her an approval of all the things we associate with “pink culture”–valuing looks over smarts, worrying about boys, and so on, and because I know she is frequently encouraged to declare pink her “favorite” color by those buying her gifts.

But we often see that in the attempt to provide girls with more options, those who accept elements of mainstream femininity are devalued. My students who are trying to distance themselves from ideas of passive femininity often disparage “girly-girls,” those they see as unambiguously accepting pink culture. Thus, wearing a sparkly barrette or painting your nails pink becomes inherently problematic, a sign that you must be boy-obsessed, dumb, superficial, and so on.

I don’t think this campaign overall is doing that–if you read through it, the message is more complex and clearly about giving girls a wider array of options to choose from as they construct their identities. But much of the online discussion of it seems to miss the nuance and veer more into the simplistic interpretation of “pink stinks” as “empowering girls means rejecting and devaluing everything currently associated with femininity, as well as those who do it,” and the t-shirts seem to play into that a little.

Many of the things associated with femininity–being nurturing, say, or liking to cook–are, in fact, quite lovely, and problematic only when we say that only girls can/should like them, that all girls ought to, and that they’re less worthwhile than things boys do. Adding to the devaluing of women and femininity in an attempt to resist gender norms is, ultimately, counter-productive.

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In the aftermath of the 8.8 earthquake that killed hundreds in Chile, many are making the inevitable comparison between Chile and Haiti, where a smaller earthquake killed more than 200,000 people. NPR and other news sources have focused on how Chile was more “prepared” — its buildings more sound, its infrastructure more “developed,” its people more [...]

Members of PIKE fraternity at the University of California, San Diego came under fire this month for hosting a party, called” The Compton Cookout,” designed to mock black Americans and Black history month (less than 2% of UCSD students are black).  People are shocked and horrified, and rightly so, though it’s just one in what seems to be a constant stream of such parties.  Becca C. asked us to post about it.

Its Facebook page shown below (which, interestingly, is part of what made the party visible enough to protest) explicitly describes how people are to dress and act (trigger warning; it’s quite upsetting):

February marks a very important month in American society. No, i’m not referring to Valentines day or Presidents day. I’m talking about Black History month. As a time to celebrate and in hopes of showing respect, the Regents community cordially invites you to its very first Compton Cookout.

For guys: I expect all males to be rockin Jersey’s, stuntin’ up in ya White T (XXXL smallest size acceptable), anything FUBU, Ecko, Rockawear, High/low top Jordans or Dunks, Chains, Jorts, stunner shades, 59 50 hats, Tats, etc.

For girls: For those of you who are unfamiliar with ghetto chicks-Ghetto chicks usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes – they consider Baby Phat to be high class and expensive couture. They also have short, nappy hair, and usually wear cheap weave, usually in bad colors, such as purple or bright red. They look and act similar to Shenaynay, and speak very loudly, while rolling their neck, and waving their finger in your face. Ghetto chicks have a very limited vocabulary, and attempt to make up for it, by forming new words, such as “constipulated”, or simply cursing persistently, or using other types of vulgarities, and making noises, such as “hmmg!”, or smacking their lips, and making other angry noises, grunts, and faces. The objective is for all you lovely ladies to look, act, and essentially take on these “respectable” qualities throughout the day (transcription borrowed from Threadbared).

The page:

When the first Facebook page was taken down, a student put up a second page in objection (Compton Cookout Part Deux: First Amendment Pride):

A diverse group of students, with the support of many faculty, protested the administration’s slow response to the event (chronicled at Stop Racism UCSD).

But the vocal resistance to the overt prejudice and hateful stereotyping created a counter-resistance.  A student-run TV station defended the party with racial epithets and, then, a student hung a noose in the library:

This is sociologically interesting because it illustrates the backlash phenomenon.  Backlash is a common response to any effort to point out or undermine prejudice, discrimination, and inequality.  We’ve posted about it in response to racist products (Mr. Wasabi, the Black “Lil’ Monkey” doll, and the Obama sock monkey) as well as anti-rape campaigns.  As I wrote in a previous post:

…resistance to oppression is met with counter-resistance.  Until inequality is challenged, things often seem to be just fine; when groups stand up and demand equality, we suddenly see how fiercely people will defend their privilege.

Remember, the Klu Klux Klan emerged only after slaves had been emancipated; whites didn’t need to put black people in their place when they were in their place.  Those who are protesting the Compton Cookout, by not standing by and letting the (largely white) administration address (or fail to address) the party as it pleases, are refusing to stay in their place.  The backlash is proof that they are actually perceived to be a threat.

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In 1934 the MPAA voluntarily passed the Motion Picture Production Code, more generally known as the Hays Code, largely to avoid governmental regulation. The code prohibited certain plotlines and imagery from films and in publicity materials produced by the MPAA. Among others, there was to be no cleavage, no lace underthings, no drugs or drinking, no corpses, and no one shown getting away with a crime.

Larry of The Daily Mirror sent me an L.A. Times article from October 28, 1979. It was written by Teet Carl, who describes his experiences trying to stay within the boundaries the Hays Code allowed and some of the ridiculous problems he encountered.

According to Teet, A.L. Shafer, the head of photography at Columbia, took a photo that intentionally incorporated all of the 10 banned items into one image. Here’s the image and the top 10 no-nos:

The photograph was clandestinely passed around among photographers and publicists in Hollywood as a method of symbolic protest to the Hays Code.

While the Hays Code is no longer in effect, the movie This Film Is Not Yet Rated makes it clear that the MPAA still functionally censors certain content by requiring directors to take out certain types of content to get a PG-13 rating, including allowing more female nudity than male nudity and rating scenes of gay sex more harshly than heterosexual sex. Clearly we’re in no way whatsoever still living under a version of the Hays Code, but the MPAA hasn’t given up its prerogative to define what is inappropriate, often based in sexism and homophobia.

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