From the “Lager Lovelies” to “The Feminist”: Tennent’s Lager Marketing, 1960–1997

Abstract

This article traces the marketing of Scottish brewer Tennent Caledonian’s “Lager Lovelies” beer cans, which featured sexualized photographs of women, from the initial production of the cans in the 1960s to the rebranding of Tennent’s Lager in 1997. The article considers the development of the cans and situates the marketing in the social and historical context. Oral history interviews with former models, industry employees, and people who remember the cans provide insights into people’s attitudes toward the marketing. The images on the cans are examined using visual discourse analysis, which shows that the marketing was derivative of the pervasive sexual objectification of women’s bodies in media and pornography. The marketing of the cans to White heterosexual men is located within twentieth-century capitalism and patriarchal structures that enabled Tennent’s to commodify and objectify women and eroticize an everyday activity like drinking lager. The article considers the end of the Lager Lovelies cans in the early 1990s and the subsequent attempt to reposition Tennent’s Lager in 1997 as a desirable alcoholic drink for younger generations.