Should Doritos launch ‘female-friendly’ crisps? The internet definitely doesn’t think so…

'Women love to carry a snack in their purse'

Releasing gendered products is nearly always a dangerous move - a sure-fire way to make a company very unpopular. Just look at pen company BIC when they were ridiculed for releasing pink ball-point pens so that women could write too.

Hmm. We're fine with blue, thanks.

This week however it's PepsiCo that is facing backlash, with its female CEO, Indra Nooyi, announcing plans to release woman-friendly crisps.

During an appearance on Freakonomics Radio last week, the 62-year-old explained her plans for Doritos, hoping to design a crisp product specifically catered for women.

'When you eat out of a flex bag - one of our single-serve bags - especially you watch a lot of the young guys eat the chips, they love their Doritos, and they lick their fingers with great glee, and when they reach the bottom of the bag they pour the little broken pieces into their mouth, because they don’t want to lose that taste of the flavour, and the broken chips in the bottom,' she explained.

'Women would love to do the same, but they don’t. They don’t like to crunch too loudly in public. And they don’t lick their fingers generously and they don’t like to pour the little, broken pieces and the flavour into their mouth.'

Indra's solution? Gendered packets of Doritos - and they're coming to shop shelves soon.

'It’s not a male and female thing as much as "Are there snacks for women that can be designed and packaged differently?"' the CEO explained. 'And yes, we are looking at it, and we’re getting ready to launch a bunch of them soon. For women, low crunch, the full taste profile, not have so much of the flavour stick on the fingers, and how can you put it in a purse? Because women love to carry a snack in their purse.'

How has the announcement gone down with the public? Not well if Twitter is anything to go by.

'Now that Doritos has delivered us from sexism, what are we gonna do instead of a women's march next year. gals, should we just hang our quietly eating chips?' wrote on Twitter user, while another posted, 'We're gendering snacks now??'

'So to all the girls growing up into women: to hell with them. Crunch your chips, lick the sauce off your fingers, chomp your food, take delight in what you eat. They made up the rules for you as they went anyway, you can do the same,' tweeted Rituparna Chatterjee.

We're not sure how to take this.