Sex and wine: where progressivism and misogyny collide

Note to readers: this was a commissioned piece for another website I opted to pull out of. As I spoke to women, researched, and expanded my own beliefs and views on this very nefarious topic, I realized the voice was too personal - and complicated - and that self publishing was the only option to preserve my integrity.

In the current climate of for or against, lazy debating reigns.  Agendas rooted in zero sum games posit clear winners and losers, that wield progress as the goal.

Such is the case for the ongoing discourse of sex in wine marketing. The nagging question looms - is it empowering or degrading?

On the one hand, the pearl clutching old guard argue bottles nestled in voluptuous cleavage reveal cheap, attention seeking tactics which rely solely on the male gaze.

On the other, new wave feminism proliferates tropes of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, alleging it is the purveyor who decides whether their images are empowering.

Never has the industry been more binary: misogyny and progressivism co-exist in an ever more polarizing arena. Can someone cue Juicy J and pour me a glass of Coche Dury? This is going to take some serious bandwidth to flesh out.

Furthering the divide: WAP (I’ll let you google what that means) ranked as the number 1 song of 2021; all the while enraged social media posts floated about Instagram over the use of nudity and objectification of women on (largely) natural wine labels. It makes any poor bystander scratch their head in utter disbelief. Some things are empowering, just not all things.

A quick peruse on Instagram showcases a plethora of gorgeous influencers, from promoting conventional wines the likes of La Marca to natural wines like Ganevat. Compilation accounts like @winebarbies exist as a sort of quasi-rolodex of pretty young things, directing thirsty audiences to the most relevant and popular vinfluencer feeds.

Speaking to young, beautiful vinfluencers didn’t provide much clarity for the purposes of my research. They can’t seem to come to any real consensus on what’s going on.

Take, for instance, Italian wine influencer, Chiara Leguerre (@enograstronfanatic), who argues every action taken by humans is motivated by sex. “I believe that behind every human activity there is only one reason: the desire to have sex, or the desire to think about being able to have sex, or even just the desire that someone might want to have sex with us.”

Points for honesty on the board for Chiara, please! But let me be clear: this opinion is not the norm.

What I discovered is that that most influencers aren’t interested in having such unfiltered conversations. In fact, they didn’t want to talk to me at all, with the few who bothered to respond to my query asking if I was also posing these same questions to men, and that the tone of the piece presented as problematic.

I reached out to 30 or so women – some who are blatantly provocative, others less so – the criteria that they were young, attractive, women in wine who show a spectrum of skin. The unwillingness to share why they post sexy photos was palpable – it seemed nobody wanted to talk about the fact that the reason they’re able to promote wine in this capacity, is because they benefit from being hot.  Is this what the woke would call attractiveness privilege?

Lest this start to sound like a vin-fluencer hit piece (you can read a scathing one here), some deeper rooted issues deserve acknowledgement, that former Olympic gymnast now wine professional, Gael Mackie, pointed out when I spoke with her. “Not all people have the same level of sexual energy. It’s a spectrum. How women are portrayed in culture is something that’s conditioned, not just about sex, but acceptance. Ultimately, a lot of these beliefs stem from the church – like shame, and it’s been this way for centuries.”

Modern, female empowerment has been rebranded via the appropriation of shame - the commodification of vulnerability perpetuated by the likes of shame researcher Brené Brown and super model Emily Ratajkowski. Both have written books on the topic.

Essentially, the thrust of their message is that women are free to be sexual, or, ultimately, whatever they want to be. Women can absolutely post enticingly seductive photos of themselves - but - only so long as they acknowledge the shame and societal pressure they felt while doing so. Celebrate your vulnerability and do it in a bikini while sipping pet nat!

Never has it been more confusing to be a female working in wine marketing – the industry seems to be rife with gatekeepers (yes, still) dictating what’s permitted and what’s not, a dichotomy reminiscent to the tune of: if you’re hot, you probably lack intellect. If you’re smart, you shouldn’t be sexual, or risk setting back women in wine decades. Who’s confused yet?

Thus, it’s common for women engaging in self-objectification to celebrate the stereotype of empowerment – even as they knowingly participate in a feedback loop of validation via brief, vindicating hits of dopamine.

The irony of this head scratching duality is the innate, progressive leaning of the wine industry, that proudly preaches diversity and boss girl ideology, all the while perpetuating dated hand cuffs of appropriateness that shackle women.

A recent poll on my own personal Instagram feed portrayed a photo of a mostly naked woman, with a glass of wine “exploding” from her nether regions. I asked participants whether they found the image empowering or degrading. An overwhelming 90% of respondents claimed it to be degrading.

Yet, equipped with this awareness, most wine professionals will publicly affirm the celebration of freedom of expression - especially when it comes to women – but you know, within certain limits.

Such is the conundrum women in wine continue to find themselves in. The ever-vacuous landscape of social media has only grown the divide, where superficiality reigns and substance lurks in the shadows.

While it’s nothing new for women to use feminine guile to their advantage, the power dynamics and class structures at play have never been more glaring.

And while the easy answer is to “just be who you are” or “stop caring what everyone else thinks”, it’s not the reality of working in an industry still very much stuck in the past.

Malleable, easily influenced young women often lack the discernment and conviction that comes with age. Motivation fueled by fear of losing out on opportunities – even with the desire to be a sexy vin-influencer and the repercussions that come with going down a lesser respected path.

Examining why someone would want to express themselves in a certain way versus the reality of their actions is an impossible task. We can examine the mechanism, but the “why” is an amorphous notion, dictated both by society and the individual.

But don’t ask me. I’m just the woman sipping skin contact Muscat in a hot tub in a string bikini, periodically taking selfies that I might post someday if the mood strikes.