Chocolate giant Mars, Inc. has recently launched a new chocolate bar specifically marketed to women. "Fling" bars have less than 85 calories and come in bright pink packaging. According to the product website, Fling is meant to "celebrate the female spirit." You may be wondering exactly what the "female spirit" entails. Well, according to Mars, they are referring to that "unapologetically feminine playful, naughty, flirtatious, and alluring nature that brings shimmer into the world." The website goes on to say: "At under 85 calories per finger, it's slim, but not skinny . Indulgent but not greedy. Naughty but nice." The ad campaign is unabashedly over-sexualized and offensive -- playing to the lowest common denominator of gender stereotypes as well as contributing to harmful body images. NPR has an interesting piece on the advertising here.
In addition to the upsetting sexist assumptions on which the ad campaign is based, the ads also serve to mask the company's purchasing policies which are indeed quite "greedy" and "naughty." So who are the people who grow the main ingredient in Fling chocolate and do they get to experience the same pleasure promised to women who consume Mars chocolate here in the US?
For many years, there has been an ongoing problem of trafficked and child labor on cocoa farms in West Africa that supply for major chocolate companies like Mars. Since 2001, people all around the world have been calling for Mars and other companies like Hershey and Nestle to support Fair Trade and stop exploiting cocoa farmers in Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana. One of the major reasons why labor rights are not protected on cocoa farms is that farmers do not receive a fair price for cocoa beans, forcing them to put kids to work and cut back on labor costs. Mars and other companies have been funding various programs in West Africa for years without much of an improvement on the ground (check out the International Labor Rights Forum's update report from last year for more). Part of the problem is that these companies never acknowledge how their purchasing policies specifically result in labor rights abuses and trap cocoa farmers in an ongoing cycle of poverty -- far from the "indulgent" lifestyle embodied by the Fling bar. Mars recently made some new sustainability commitments, but they are not as strong as they need to be.
Meanwhile, other companies have worked directly with cocoa farmers in building a fair and just model for cocoa growing. One example is Divine Chocolate which sources its cocoa from the Kuapa Kokoo Fair Trade cocoa cooperative in Ghana and is co-owned by the farmers themselves. One of the most important parts of the way Kuapa Kokoo operates is through empowering the leadership of women in their democratic cooperative. I recommend checking out these videos to see Kuapa Kokoo farmers talk about what the cooperative and Divine Chocolate mean to them -- especially this video of Comfort Kumeah, national secretary of Kuapa Kokoo. You can check out other chocolate companies who have committed to a high bar ethical cocoa sourcing policy here and ILRF's chocolate buying guide here.
While Mars' Fling bar is designed to appeal to insulting stereotypes of women and their corporate policies contribute to poor living and working conditions for women cocoa farmers and their families, I hope that consumers will support companies that take the empowerment of women and the protection of workers' rights seriously. We've had way too many years of "naughty" treatment from chocolate companies like Mars.
One more thing... For more about the marketing strategy for the Fling bar when Mars released them in New Zealand, check out the video below.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: "Pleasure" for whom?.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/13789
Thank you for this amazing post. It's not much, but for what it's worth, I just sent letters to Nestle and Mars through the links provided by ILRF.
Mars also tests on animals.
Why?
Noooo idea.
Down with Mars! (Can another company start making a vegan snickers.....?)
This is another example of marketing to women gone wrong. Marketing Execs rely on tired stereotypes to appeal to a market they make no effort to understand. Why wrong with doing studies?
Also note, that like so many other things marketed to women they include low calories.
I hadn't really known about the human rights issues associated with cocoa. Though it is easy to see how mega-corporations would once again value the "bottom line" over human rights.
So their serious about the name? The website...kinda disturbs me.
That NZ website...they actually have an app or something that loads a fake commitment like a doctor's appt into your outlook calendar, so you can have a real fling. Wow.
It's not much, but I also sent out a letter. This was a fantastic, thorough post. Thank you so much for the information; I'm going to be sure that everyone knows to boycott this.
What's wrong with being " unapologetically feminine playful, naughty, flirtatious, and alluring nature that brings shimmer into the world "
Do you want women to apologize to be manly to be serious sad abstinent chaste and not be glamourous ?
I think that the goal of women is to be glamourous .
This above is what a lot of delusional post modern male and female self proclaiming feminist would tell you .
Of course this campaign is disgusting .
But it'idiots that , if a woman refuses to consider that being glamourous playful naughty alluring and feminine is the ultimate achievment in life , then it doesn't mean that she has to want to stay at home , bake , clean raise children and abandon her career .
I have been eating Divine Chocolate since I saw it on the shelves of my local mega-mart (Central Market, South Austin). Knowing it was fair trade, I went out of my way to buy it over other brands, but because it is so incredibly delicious there was really no reason why I would buy other brands anyways. Now, I have even more reason to treat myself when I make a trip to the grocery.