Newsflash: To Some Men, Barware Is Gendered
Fellas, I’m here to tell you that no one on Beyoncé’s internet cares what kind of glass your cocktail comes in, but apparently that message is not getting through to enough of you. I know this because The New York Times just did a whole article about it. That’s right, friends, there are socially acceptable glasses for some men to drink their depression juice out of, and spoiler alert: that glass does not have any curves, stems, fun garnishes, or straws that call attention to themselves, OK?
Daniel Kaye, a 26-year-old working in finance, wasn’t thrilled with the fruity cocktail he’d ordered at Commerce Inn while out with his buddies. He said the highball glass, complete with a striped straw, made him feel a little feminine. “I didn’t love it,” he said, adding, “It was a masculine venue, a lot of whiskey being served.”
There are many reasons a bartender will serve a cocktail in a particular kind of glass, dilution and aeration among them. “The 30-something finance bro doesn’t care about that,” said Kyle Kuhl, the head bartender at Rocco’s Sports & Recreation in NoHo.
While efforts to challenge the gender binary are evident in how we talk, dress for work and wear makeup, a visit to the cocktail bar might transport you back to the 1950s. Bartenders say that many men appear as committed as ever to drinking out of “manly” glasses and avoiding glassware they deem too feminine.
Wow, so much toxic masculinity to unpack in such a short three paragraphs. Apparently, only manly men who never talk about their feelings or sip from a straw drink whiskey, so that’s good to know. I’ll file that away in my useless, incorrect knowledge bank to never use again. Also, what, praytell, makes a venue “masculine”? Does it make approximately 20 percent more money than the “feminine” bars for having the same drink menu and output? Make it make sense!
Not only are some men uncomfortable drinking out of glasses that are simply too curvy, they will go so far as to require their bartender to transfer their drink into a different glass they deem more manly. Bonkers. Creating more work for someone because your entire id, ego, and superego is made out of spun sugar and glass, and can simultaneously melt and shatter into a million pieces at any given moment.
“It’s an industry joke that we tend to stereotype people based on their glassware preferences,” said Kaslyn Bos, 30, a bartender at Donna in the West Village. At Donna, the drinks are colorful, sometimes heavily garnished with fruit and cocktail umbrellas and often served in “shapely glasses,” she said.
Ms. Bos has fielded requests — only from men — to transfer a cocktail from one glass to another. She noted that a manly glass, to those asking, is always a rocks glass.
This honestly might be enough internet for the day because who in the world would ever think a glass is gendered?! Just a banana-pants way to look at the world. A glass is an inanimate object! It has no identity!
This is so ingrained in some guys that some bars found that once they started illustrating what kind of glass a cocktail would come in, sales went up. Per The New York Times:
In his 2019 book, “Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense,” the advertising executive Rory Sutherland wrote, “A few years ago, we discovered that men were reluctant to order a cocktail in a bar — in part because they had no foreknowledge of the glass in which it would be served.” The fix, Mr. Sutherland found, “was to put illustrations or pictures of the drinks on the menu.”
If your notion of your own gendered identity is so fragile that you simply cannot handle drinking something out of a glass you deem as “feminine,” I am all but certain the cocktail glass you’re avoiding is the least of your problems. Also, let’s circle back to the fact that a lot of glasses serve a specific purpose. I mean, not for me—I drink everything out of my $5 World Market wine glasses, but if you’re going to a cocktail bar, they’re probably a little fancier than my sad home bar cart that is 80% stocked with flavored syrups to make fun soda combinations. Imagine saying to your dentist, “Excuse me, but you’re cleaning my teeth with feminine tools, and I require a more masculine approach. Perchance you have a drill saw lying around?” You would be laughed out of the room, but probably after you were asked if you were feeling OK.
The glasses are not there to attack your warped view of your gender and how it fits into society at large; they exist to enhance the drink! Let the barware be barware, my dudes. I can only reiterate: no one cares what vessel you enjoy your cocktail in; just tip your bartender well, OK? As you can see, they put up with a lot.
(featured image: 20th Century Television)
Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com
