Fear-mongering health group plays the “dirty little whores” card, and “protect” struggling young women right out of their jobs
You may have heard that last week, Dutch brewer Heineken pulled an advertisement amid accusations of racism, including one from Chance the Rapper. In the spot, a bartender slides a bottle of Heineken Light past several black people before it stops in front of what critics are calling “a lighter-skinned woman”, landing with the tagline “Sometimes lighter is better.”
Heineken USA spokesman Bjorn Trowery said the ad was meant to reference Heineken Light’s qualities over other, higher-calorie beers.
No mention by critics that the woman in question is asian, not white.
Reminds me of the time, back in the 1960s, when Japanese living in South Africa under apartheid were dubbed “honorary white“.
Once again, the underlying racism of politically correct identity politics manifests itself.
Girls, girls, girls
If that wasn’t bad enough, Geneva-based international health group Global Fund then borrowed a page from the AHF playbook and suspended its partnership with Heineken in its campaign against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in Africa.
Why, you ask?
The group says the move was motivated by “recent reports of the company’s use of female beer promoters in ways that expose them to sexual exploitation and health risks,” National Public Radio reported.
That rhetoric doesn’t sound bad — they just want to protect these women, right? What else could they mean?
According to Huffington Post:
The mostly young drink promoters are paid low wages — and work for tips, largely from groups of intoxicated men — to push certain beers in bars. Heineken has come under particular pressure to end the practice in Southeast Asia, especially Cambodia. A 2011 study found that some Heineken beer girls in Cambodian bars moonlighted as sex workers for extra money and faced increased risks of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.
See what they did there? Those poor “young” “promotion girls” are actually dirty, diseased little whores, no doubt forced into sex work and preyed upon by “groups” of drunken men (probably white men; they’re the worst)!
And of course, the embattled brewer capitulated again:
The beer promoters are not employed by Heineken, but are sourced via external agencies … this makes it difficult to properly supervise the working conditions. However, we simply cannot allow them to continue to be confronted with unwanted intimacies and abuse or even with prostitution during their work.
We will take further steps together with our local operating companies, promotional agencies and other relevant parties to deal with these malpractices and prevent them in the future.
Global Fund’s move is now likely to lose these young women their non-sex work jobs. Wow, good going, Global Fund! That’ll really help prevent them from being exploited for cash!
Now, some readers may doubt my construction of the motivations of the PC crowd. By way of a preemptive response, I direct you to reaction of the politically correct cretins at Marketing Dive to Heineken’s troubles:
These incidents highlight how important it is for brands to be culturally sensitive and morally sound in both their consumer-facing marketing and business practices.
“Morally sound”. Not medically soon; not ethically sound — morally sound.
H.L. Mencken once wrote that public health (then called “hygiene”) represented the corruption of medicine by morality. Chalk up another “moral” victory gained at the expense of sex workers.
