This feminist got a nasty surprise on Saturday night while enjoying a beer at Sundance, a basement bar on the famous Whiskey Row in Prescott, Arizona. Sipping my Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and waiting my turn for the billiard table, I was assaulted by a poster advertising a blonde ale. “Have You Had A Slutty Blonde Today?” the poster asked-me, it seemed, because no one else was paying much attention to this question. I was trying to take pleasure in a beer and the company of good friends, but everything in the place seemed to dim around the offending advertisement.
Whiskey Row in Prescott is not known for its progressive clientele. As its name implies, it is one long street packed with bar after bar. From the famous Matt's Saloon to the dive Bird Cage and mellow Coyote Joe's, there is a less-than-wide selection of alcohol-purveying establishments. Sundance, located in a dingy basement on a block of its own, is a less-than-inspiring example. If you happen to drop in around noon on a weekday-as I did, when I went back armed with a camera-you'll find two or three older men at the bar, in cowboy or steel-toed boots, and one very desperate bartender.
But still, I expect more. An advertisement that asks everyone who lays eyes on it whether or not he's “had” a “slutty blonde” takes a number of things for granted. Its audience is, of course, assumed to be male. But more than that, it is assumed that whomever reads the ad finds misogynistic language and an equation between beer and women-each are items to be had on a Saturday night-compelling, or, even, funny. Certainly Mudshark Brewery, which owns and markets the Blonde Ale, thought that the ad was catchy and amusing enough to encourage a potential customer to buy a $3.75 draught and, perhaps, to enjoy the joke that he would “have” at least one blonde that night.
It also assumes that, even if the bar patron reading the ad happens not to be male, she will at least not be offended at finding such words plastered across the wall of an otherwise un-noteworthy establishment. And it assumes, also, that even if she were bothered, she wouldn't find it so offensive that she might feel compelled to widely publicize its repulsive message. And that was just assuming too much.
