Do you care if your cocktail is poured by a man or a woman?
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It wasn’t all that long ago that women were hired to work cocktail lounges strictly on their looks -- not what they could mix up. ‘Beautiful girls in miniskirts and half-shirts is what you hired,’ says cocktail consultant Aidan Demarest.
All that has changed, says this report by our colleague Jessica Gelt. As bartending takes on the status of a chef-like career, more women are taking the position of authority behind the bar:
‘It’s like with any industry, women are often underrepresented,’ Tricia Alley, 36, says from her post behind the intimate bar at Eva restaurant, where she has been experimenting with five-spice bitters she cooked up in her home kitchen.
Does it matter to you if your cocktail is poured by a man or a woman? I find these dynamics pretty interesting. So I ask: How did we get here? Do some men feel that a woman doesn’t know what she’s doing behind the bar? Are women intimated by other women behind the bar? Am I engaging in ridiculously outdated stereotypes? (I’ll answer that: Yes.)
I don’t care if my drink is served up by a man or a woman, as long as they have a heavy pour. A little flirting doesn’t hurt, either.
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--Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch
