Spike the Cookies ...

.... Is progress?

At Newsweek, "Women and Whiskey: Why Not?":

This holiday season, there are plenty of ads that play up the same old narrative we’ve come to expect about whiskey as a man’s drink: guy wins over the disapproving father-in-law with Johnnie Walker, guys bond like brothers over a bottle of Bushmills. But between all of them, there’s a Christmas miracle of sorts: a whiskey ad aimed at women.

Spike the Cookies, a new campaign by Jack Daniels, encourages women to host whiskey-themed holiday parties that feature both baking and cocktails (the campaign provide recipes for both Jack and Ginger cookies and Jack and Ginger gimlets). It’s refreshing to see a campaign that addresses the fact that women might like whiskey, too -- and it's dissapointing that it's such an anomoly. After all, women have been drinking whiskey for years -- and some of them even leave the kitchen to do so.

With it’s heavy, smoky flavor, dark, heavy coloring whiskey (and related drinks, like scotch and rye), still carries the connotations of America’s early attitudes towards liquor – mainly, that women shouldn’t have any. “The association with manliness is related to a deep cultural appreciation of alcohol's dangers; having the strength and wisdom to confront and withstand those dangers is at the root of the association with manliness and of the "male bonding" associated with drinking together and shared intoxication,” says James S. Roberts, an associate professor of economics at Duke, in an email to NEWSWEEK. "And all this scales with the beverage consumed, with whiskey at the pinnacle.”

RTWT.